The California Supreme Court has struck down Oakland's anti-predatory-lending measure.
Overruling an appellate court decision, the court said in a ruling issued Monday that the city had no right to enact its own ordinance, because a state law already "occupied the field" of predatory-lending regulation.
Donald Lampe, a partner in the Charlotte office of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC, called Monday's ruling a "watershed event." It will cut off a "cascade of new municipal ordinances in California" and stymie interest in such ordinances elsewhere, he said.
The ruling simultaneously struck down a Los Angeles measure, Mr. Lampe noted.
Randy Lively, the president of the American Financial Services Association, the Washington trade group that brought the case against Oakland, said in a press release Monday that the decision "safeguarded the flow of capital" to Californians.
