Consumer Law & Policy Blog

FTC announcements this week

FTC Sends Nearly $2.3 Million in Refunds to People who Lost Money to Credit Card Debt Relief Schemes (July 29)

FTC Obtains $450,000 Settlement in Tate’s Auto Group Case (July 29)

CFPB: Financial protections during the pandemic

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has created this web page describing a variety of programs and strategies for financial protection during the pandemic.

Two elite law reviews sneer at consumer law

by Jeff Sovern

I have started submitting my article, Six Scandals: Why We Need Consumer Protection Laws Instead of Just Markets, to law reviews and in hopes of winning the law review lottery, decided to try my luck at the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal (as if, as my students said about twenty years ago). Anyway, both ask submitters to identify the subject area of the article and offer a list of legal subjects from which to choose. I am saddened to say that Harvard omits consumer law from the list, though it does include animal rights. Apparently animals have rights worth writing about but not consumers. Et tu, Brute? Yale also leaves out consumer law, though it at least includes a checkbox for "other." At Yale, both cyber law and military law exist but consumer law has been othered. At least I have one consolation: when they reject my submission, I can find comfort in the knowledge that they seem not to know consumer law exists. Oh, and if you are a law school professor, please urge your law review editors to make an offer for my piece, when I get past this blow and resume submitting it. And if the students at the Harvard Law Review or Yale Law Journal want to make it up to me, I can think of a way they could do that.

By the way, law reviews are edited by second and third year law students who cannot possibly be expected to know about the full range of legal subjects. (sob)

New article on the right of access to court records

Jordan Elias as written 'More Than Tangential': When Does the Public Have a Right to Access Judicial Records? Here is the abstract:

Public accountability requires open proceedings and access to documents filed with the courts. The strong policy favoring access to judicial records creates a presumption against sealing documents without a compelling reason. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently held that this presumption of access arises when a proceeding relates “more than tangentially” to the merits. This is a low standard under which many types of motions qualify for the compelling reasons test. With too much litigation occurring in secret, courts can use the “more than tangential” standard proactively to keep electronic case dockets available to citizens.

Learn about the enhanced child tax credit and its enormous benefits for consumers

The Tax Policy Center -- a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings -- has produced this informative paper on the new, expanded child tax credit, which is a part of the American Rescue Plan. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 92 percent of families with children will get an average child tax credit of 4,380 in 2021, far more than under prior law. 

This chart shows the benefits under the new law compared to prior law:

Sixth Circuit says that the Center for Disease Control's eviction moratorium is unlawful

The Sixth Circuit just ruled that the Center for Disease Control's eviction moratorium is unlawful because it lacks any basis in the statute that the government says authorizes it. Read the decision here.

US PIRG report on CFPB's first 10 years

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau turns 10 years old, a new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund recaps how the agency has helped consumers over the past decade and the steps under way to refocus the CFPB on its mission after three years of retrograde decisions under the Trump Administration. The report also provides recommendations for CFPB action moving forward, especially on credit reporting.

FTC actions this week

FTC to Ramp Up Law Enforcement Against Illegal Repair Restrictions (July 21, 2021)

FTC Rescinds 1995 Policy Statement that Limited the Agency’s Ability to Deter Problematic Mergers (July 21, 2021)

FTC Votes to Reverse Course on Repeal of Fabric Care Labels (July 21, 2021)

Reuters: Former CFPB Director Kraninger to join crypto firm

Here. Excerpt: 

Cryptocurrency startup Solidus Labs has hired the former director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as its top regulatory official, she told Reuters.

* * *

Founded in 2017 by former Goldman Sachs employees, New York-based Solidus Labs provides cryptocurrency trading surveillance and risk monitoring tools. Its backers include private equity firms Evolution Equity Partners and Hanaco Ventures.

Kraninger will lead and build out Solidus Labs' regulatory team, spending most of her time working with regulators, U.S. lawmakers and traditional institutions to explain how digital markets can be effectively policed, she said in an interview.

Vijay Raghavan article on Consumer Law's Equity Gap

Vijay Raghavan of Brooklyn has written Consumer Law's Equity Gap, Utah Law Review (forthcoming 2022). Here is the abstract:

This article is about the views that shape and constrain the development of consumer law. Consider the market for short-term, high-cost loans. Policymakers tend to justify intervening in these markets on inefficiency grounds (consumers exhibit present bias) and rarely on equitable grounds (these loans cost too much). Why? One recent explanation suggests that policymakers may focus on inefficiency because they believe access to credit is essential for social and economic development. In this article, I offer an alternative explanation. The lack of equity in consumer law is not a function of narrow conceptions internal to consumer law but the external view that the law should prioritize efficiency and ignore equity. The dominant rationale for this view is that redistribution through legal rules distorts economic behavior more than redistribution through an income tax. Here, I discuss the longstanding and recent critiques of this rationale and build on these critiques to show why it is a fundamental mistake to ignore distribution in consumer law. In particular, background legal rules shape consumer demand in particular markets. These background conditions may mean that seemingly irrational exchanges are, in fact, rational. An approach tethered to consumer preferences may struggle to justify altering the terms of rational exchanges. In order to overcome this problem, I suggest that we center distribution in the way we justify interventions and conceptualize solutions to problems in consumer financial markets. I detail what centering distribution in consumer law might look like and conclude by considering some objections to redistributive policies in consumer law.