The Center for Responsible Lending and National Consumer Law Center filed their amicus brief in NAIB v. Weiser, and it stakes the whole case on four words. The filing tells the en banc court “loans made in such State” means wherever the borrower receives the funds, not wherever the bank’s underwriters sit, and that Colorado’s opt-out under Section 525 of DIDMCA should still reach out-of-state banks lending to its residents.
That’s the new yardstick. The old one is FDIC Interpretive Letter No. 83-16, issued in 1983, three years after DIDMCA passed, which told banks they could keep exporting their home state’s interest rate even into states that had opted out. CRL and NCLC lean on the FDIC’s 2020 valid-when-made rule instead. I noticed the hedge buried in their own brief: it calls that 2020 language only an “illustration of ordinary usage,” not an authoritative reading, a concession that weakens the very citation it’s attached to.
This dispute doesn’t stay in Colorado. Whatever the Tenth Circuit decides “loans made in such State” means becomes the template other opt-out states, and their challengers, will fight over next.
The docket now holds the OCC’s own amicus brief alongside filings from the FDIC, red states, blue states, and two former agency chiefs backing the consumer groups’ reading. Worth reading the briefs now.
Rebecca Lauren