Capital Briefs: Judge to ABA, NCUA: Wait for Supreme Court

A federal judge on Wednesday urged banking and credit union officials to put their legal wranglings on hold until the Supreme Court decides whether to accept a case challenging expansions by the nonprofit financial institutions.

"Let's give it a rest until we have seen what the Supreme Court will do," Judge Thomas P. Jackson told officials from the National Credit Union Administration and American Bankers Association.

The Supreme Court is expected to act Feb. 14. Until then, the judge barred both sides from filing new motions or engaging in discovery, the fact-gathering process that precedes a trial. The judge also told the NCUA to refrain from issuing new chartering rules.

A federal appeals court ruled in July that all members of an occupation- based credit union must share a single, common bond.

Judge Jackson implemented that decision this fall, barring credit unions from expanding their fields of membership and striking down interim NCUA rules that would have permitted credit unions to serve all members of an occupation or trade. He is expected this spring to decide whether 3,586 credit unions must divest groups that are unrelated to core members.