ICYMI: Prominent Republican Defends Arbitration Rule
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In an American Banker column, Dean Clancy a long-time conservative advocate and thinker with experience in George W. Bush’s White House and at the Koch brothers’ FreedomWorks came to the defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule against forced arbitration.
Congressional Republicans have proposed legislation to repeal the rule, which means that victims of bad financial actors like Wells Fargo and Equifax, would have to take their complaints to secret arbitration courts where these powerful financial institutions that wronged them call all the shots.
Below are the key quotes from Clancy’s piece:
- “The CFPB’s new rule would allow consumers to band together in class actions against companies they do business with in pursuit of redress for injuries or fraud. Today, such lawsuits are increasingly impeded for the vast majority of Americans because fine-print mandatory arbitration clausesfrom corporations have become ubiquitous.”
- “Although the new arbitration rule has been welcomed by consumer advocates, and some libertarians and constitutional originalists, congressional Republicans and corporate interests are working to kill it.”
- “Arbitration clauses have become controversial because they have become effectively mandatory, slamming the door on people’s Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial.”
- “The CFPB’s rule restoring the optional nature of such clauses, for millions of Americans, may be bad news for alleged corporate wrongdoers like Equifax and Wells Fargo, but surely for the victims of such wrongdoing — and for consumers, generally — it is good news indeed.”
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