Litigation

Two related cases the Supreme Court is considering hing on whether state laws preempt the National Banking Act on the payment of interest on mortgage escrow accounts.

Chief Executive Andy Cecere is among the defendants in a shareholder lawsuit that alleges that top officials at the Minneapolis bank profited from the concealment of employee misconduct. A U.S. Bancorp spokesperson denied the allegations.

UMB Financial hired an outside company to provide customer service in connection with some of its credit cards and debit cards. In a lawsuit, the Missouri bank alleges that the vendor suddenly stopped performing its duties, and that the bank's own employees had to step into the void.

The court ruled that the Federal Reserve did not have to provide information about other banks that had applied for master accounts.

The Seafarers International Union sued Bank of America's senior managers and board alleging breach of their fiduciary duty in managing a prepaid debit card program that distributed unemployment benefits during the pandemic.

A federal judge's decision to bar the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from enforcing a small business data collection rule pending the outcome of a Supreme Court case could give banks an opening to block a pending $8 late fee rule as well.

A Texas judge dealt the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a setback that has changed the bureau's calculus for furthering its near-term agenda. But an ambitious Supreme Court could also call all of the bureau's final rules into question.

Two bank trade groups have asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to relieve all banks from complying with its small-business lending rule until after the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether the bureau's funding is constitutional.

A federal judge has temporarily stopped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from implementing its small-business data collection rule until after the Supreme Court rules next year on whether the bureau's funding is constitutional.

The Minnesota Bankers Association and Lake Central Bank jointly filed a lawsuit against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. over its nonsufficient funds fee rules' inclusion of "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" violations in its policy.

The group of banks would pay $68 million to settle the lawsuit, which originally estimated damages at $340 million.

Republicans have urged the Supreme Court to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by tying its funding to appropriations. But regulatory experts say that a ruling against the CFPB would threaten the funding of other similarly structured agencies including the Federal Reserve Board, the Farm Credit System and other regulators that are funded through fees or assessments.

The lawsuit against Prehired involves a relatively new product that consumer advocates say is akin to a student loan — and should be subject to far more protections.

The plaintiff that brought the case on behalf of the state says the banks inflated interest rates through a private, invitation-only VRDO index that influenced SIFMA's weekly index.

In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court Tuesday, the bicameral group of 132 Republican members of Congress argued that an appeals court was right to rule last year that the Bureau's funding system is unlawful.

A challenge to the SEC's use of administrative law judges could have big implications for bank regulators. The FDIC, Fed, OCC and CFPB could be forced to go to federal court in cases that would otherwise be handled in-house.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued the two largest cryptocurrency exchanges this week over allegations of operating as unregistered securities exchanges, rattling the industry but potentially lighting the way to more regulatory certainty.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued only 20 enforcement actions in 2022, but some observers say the enforcement numbers belie the results that director Rohit Chopra is getting from other ways of holding companies accountable.

The three-year-old law required banks and other corporations based in the nation's most populous state to appoint a minimum number of board members from designated underrepresented communities. A federal judge said that it imposed an unconstitutional racial quota.

The San Francisco bank agreed to a deal with its shareholders after allegedly making misleading statements about its progress in resolving regulatory problems. The agreement is the second-largest bank class-action settlement in history.