Warnock, Warren, Senate Democrats Urge Vought to Rescind CFPB's Proposal to Gut Civil Rights Protections in Lending

Warnock, Warren, Senate Democrats Urge Vought to Rescind CFPB's Proposal to Gut Civil Rights Protections in Lending

"This proposal would gut longstanding civil rights protections, widen the wealth gap, and increase housing, credit card, car loan, and other borrowing costs by undermining ECOA's core purpose of ensuring everyone has fair and nondiscriminatory access to credit."

Letter to Vought

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senators Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, led a group of Democratic Senators in a letter to Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, urging him to rescind the CFPB's harmful proposed rule to end disparate impact enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act - a proposal that would gut longstanding civil rights protections, widen the wealth gap, and increase housing, credit card, car loan, and other borrowing costs by ensuring everyone has fair and nondiscriminatory access to credit.

Other signers of the letter include U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

"We write today to urge you to rescind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)'s proposed rule to end the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA)'s disparate impact test, which would prohibit the agency from blocking lending policies that have an unfair impact on historically discriminated-against groups. Despite what you claimed in an op-ed last week, this would open the floodgates for discrimination in all consumer lending, including mortgages, credit cards, and car loans. It would also stop lenders from establishing Special Purpose Credit Programs (SPCP), which are designed to expand homeownership access those same marginalized communities," wrote the Senators.

The Senators continued: "The disparate impact test has been used for over 50 years to combat some of the most nefarious forms of discrimination and has been upheld by the Supreme Court repeatedly. The Trump Administration's wrongheaded attempts to destroy this longstanding tenet of our civil rights protections-and your defense of those actions-is callous, unjust, and yet another handout to industry on the backs of American consumers."

The Senators also warned that rolling back disparate impact enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act would raise housing and borrowing costs during an ongoing affordability crisis.

The Senators urged Vought to rescind the CFPB's proposed rule and provide a briefing on the agency's efforts to do so by February 10, 2026.

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