On 1/14/2022, the CFPB issued an article regarding discrimination based on their religious beliefs. The blog post, authored by Lorelei Salas, emphasizes that it is illegal to penalize borrowers for being religious. In the blog post, the CFPB also expressed its concern about how financial institutions might be making use of artificial intelligence and other algorithmic decision tools such as uses third-party data to analyze geolocation data to power their credit decision tools.

On 10/22/21, the CFPB announced that it, along with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and OCC, took action to put an end to alleged redlining by Trustmark National Bank. The CFPB and DOJ allege that Trustmark discriminated against Black and Hispanic neighborhoods by deliberately not marketing, offering, or originating home loans to consumers in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Memphis metropolitan area. The CFPB and DOJ also allege that Trustmark discouraged consumers residing in or seeking credit for properties located in these neighborhoods from applying for credit.

On 10/22/21, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the launch of a new Combatting Redlining Initiative. The new Initiative represents the department’s most aggressive and coordinated enforcement effort to address redlining, which is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

On 10/22/2021, the CFPB released the remarks of new CFPB Director Rohit Chopra at a Joint DOJ, CFPB, and OCC press conference on the Trustmark National Bank Enforcement Action. While describing the enforcement action (which we covered here), Mr. Chopra warned of “digital redlining.”