Over 18,000 members of Americans for Financial Reform signed a petition calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure that consumers aren’t deprived of their day in court.

The petitioners call on the Bureau to strengthen its proposed rule on forced arbitration and restore consumers’ right to choose how to resolve disputes with financial institutions in the final rule.

AFR formally submitted these 18,717 comments on behalf of our members in response to the Bureau’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Docket ID CFPB-2016-0020).

The petition language signed onto by these individuals is as follows:

To: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Consumers already face a stacked deck when they try to hold large corporations accountable for harms — but forced arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts make it nearly impossible to beat the odds. I support the CFPB’s proposed rule to restore consumers’ right to join together and take companies to court when they break the law.

Barring consumers from joining class actions directly opposes the public interest. I urge the CFPB to act on its congressional mandate by restricting the abusive practice of forced arbitration in the final rule.