Trump’s CFPB has proposed a rule that would dismantle foundational protections under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and open the door to widespread discrimination in lending. The proposal eliminates longstanding safeguards designed to prevent lenders from denying credit based on race, gender, national origin, age, and other protected characteristics.
The rule removes the consideration of disparate impact, a core civil rights tool used for decades to identify discriminatory patterns and practices and hold financial institutions accountable. Without it, lenders could adopt policies that harm entire communities without consequence. This would reverse decades of progress in fighting redlining and lending discrimination.
The proposal weakens civil rights protections against discouragement by limiting enforcement to cases where lenders explicitly state they will not serve certain groups. This ignores the many ways lenders can quietly exclude applications from protected communities through targeted marketing, branch location decisions, and biased communication patterns. Techniques that were at the heart of past discrimination cases would now be allowed.
The rule also targets Special Purpose Credit Programs, which have helped expand fair access to responsible credit products. SPCPs provide down payment assistance, affordable mortgage options, and tailored lending models for communities historically denied access to financial opportunity. They have delivered meaningful benefits to more than 57,000 borrowers and helped address systemic inequities. The proposed rule threatens to eliminate these programs entirely.
This rule would worsen existing racial, gender, and geographic inequities in lending, undermine consumer protection, and remove a crucial framework for combating discrimination. The CFPB must withdraw this proposal and preserve the full protections of ECOA, including tools that have been upheld by courts and used effectively for more than forty years.
Submit your official public comment today urging the CFPB to withdraw this harmful rule and protect fair access to credit.