Sperling and Bird for American Banker: Banks Can More Easily Defeat FCRA Lawsuits

Glaser Weil Litigation Partner Elizabeth Sperling and Associate Alaina Bird co-authored an article for American Banker titled “Recent court rulings are good news for banks facing FCRA litigation,” discussing Ninth Circuit rulings following the 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez regarding the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The lawsuit addressed consumer credit reports and whether banks’ inaccuracies would give consumer plaintiffs adequate standing to sue.

“A bare technical violation of the FCRA is not sufficient to confer standing. Nor is the fear or risk of future harm (such as the potential inability to obtain credit or a potentially lower credit score) sufficient to constitute injury in fact.”

The authors offer analysis of pertinent cases and conclude that FCRA class actions, in particular, are more difficult to certify after Ramirez because each putative class member must individually demonstrate injury to join the class. The findings are good news for financial institutions, which now, as the authors write, “have more weapons in their arsenal to defeat FCRA lawsuits.”

Read the full article on American Banker (subscription required).