The Federal Government Just Outlawed LGBTQ Discrimination in Credit

[DonViejo]

By Mark Joseph Stern

SEPT. 15 2016 3:56 PM

The federal government just accomplished a decadeslong goal of LGBTQ advocates with a single letter.

Since 1974, progressives have sought to broaden federal civil rights laws’ ban on “sex discrimination” to encompass discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and what we today call gender identity. One key area where LGBTQ people need protection is credit—bank loans, mortgages, brokerage services, and the like. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency, has declared that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act’s sex discrimination ban encompasses sexual orientation and gender identity. This guidance effectively prohibits creditors like banks, retailers, credit card companies, finance companies, and credit unions from engaging in anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

The CFPB announced its new guidance in response to an inquiry from an advocacy group called SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders). Older LGBTQ people are more likely to live in poverty than others due to a lifetime of discrimination; this discrimination can extend through retirement, when creditors may hesitate to provide financial assistance out of ignorance or animus. SAGE already worked closely with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help that agency clarify that its Equal Access Rule protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in Department of Housing and Urban Development–financed housing. In June, it asked the CFPB whether it “views credit discrimination on the bases of gender identity and sexual orientation … as forms of sex discrimination prohibited under the ECOA.”

It was a good question. Over the last several decades, courts and agencies have expanded the scope of “sex discrimination” bans to encompass both anti-trans and anti-gay discrimination. The Supreme Court itself seemingly affirmed this expansive interpretation of sex discrimination in a 1989 decision holding that sex stereotyping—bias against gender nonconformity—constitutes discrimination “on the basis of sex.” From that decision, courts have intuited that discrimination against LGBTQ people is itself sex discrimination: Transgender people, after all, are not conforming with the sex they were assigned at birth, and gay and bisexual people aren’t conforming to the stereotype that they should only be attracted to the opposite sex. I asked SAGE’s CEO, Michael Adams, what he thought of the CFPB’s guidance.

“LGBT older people face higher poverty rates than their non-LGBT peers, while facing disproportionate rates of social isolation,” he told me. “This means that they don’t always have a support network in place when facing challenges related to finances. The CFPB’s clarification with respect to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act moves the ball forward in ensuring that LGBT older people have access to credit on an equal playing field.”

-snip-

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/09/15/lgbtq_credit_discrimination_is_now_illegal_thanks_to_sage_and_the_cfpb.html

[sakabatou]

1. So, how long until people who give credit cry foul?