Sponsors (101)
Official title: To amend certain banking laws to prohibit certain financial service providers who deny fair access to financial services from using taxpayer funded discount window lending programs, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 5, 2025 by Garland H. Barr · Last progress February 5, 2025
The bill broadens access and protections for legally compliant individuals and businesses against de‑banking and deplatforming while increasing regulatory enforcement and litigation risk that will raise compliance costs and may lead some financial institutions to restrict services or exit markets.
Legally compliant individuals and small businesses (including low‑income people, immigrants, and small‑business owners) will face fewer arbitrary denials of bank accounts, loans, ACH and card services, improving access to basic financial services.
Merchants and lawful sellers are protected from being cut off by card networks or payment processors for political or reputational reasons, preserving their ability to accept card and ACH payments and reducing sudden payment disruptions.
Customers denied services would receive written, specific reasons and have a strengthened private right of action (federal court venue, attorney's fees, treble damages), increasing transparency and enforcement against unlawful de‑banking.
Banks, credit unions, and payment networks will face higher compliance, monitoring and litigation costs (documenting quantitative standards, issuing individualized denials), and those costs are likely to be passed to consumers and businesses through higher fees or reduced services.
Large banks and covered institutions may respond to legal and regulatory risk by restricting services, exiting product lines or markets, or tightening onboarding — reducing choices and access for low‑income customers, specialized commercial users, and some small businesses.
Conditioning emergency liquidity, deposit insurance or other supervisory leverage on nondiscrimination at very large banks risks destabilizing those institutions if applied, creating potential systemic contagion risks.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Bars large banks, credit unions, ACH and card networks from refusing services to lawfully compliant customers for political/reputational reasons and creates enforcement and private remedies.
Prohibits large banks, credit unions, and payment networks from refusing to provide financial services to persons or businesses that are acting lawfully on the basis of political, reputational, or ideological criteria. It conditions certain Federal Reserve and deposit insurance privileges on nondiscriminatory access, creates civil penalties and a private right of action with treble damages for harmed customers, and authorizes agency enforcement against payment networks that block lawful users. The bill sets $50 billion and $500 billion asset thresholds for key prohibitions, requires covered institutions to use pre-established, quantitative, risk‑based standards for denials, forbids coordination of denials, and mandates written reasons when services are denied. It seeks to force impartial, individualized access decisions and to deter broad, category-based de‑banking of lawful but politically unpopular industries or persons.