This past month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), under the Acting Directorship of Trump-appointed Russell Vought, issued an abrupt declaration that it would rescind 67 guidance documents–including interpretive rules, advisory opinions, and policy statements–that the Bureau had previously issued related to consumer rights and protections.[i]

The mass recission of guidance, true to form for this Administration, is yet another ill-considered rush to eliminate policies or programs the Administration simply does not like or understand—including the Bureau itself.  Indeed, restricting the scope of consumer regulations is merely another manifestation of Vought’s campaign to liquidate the CFPB’s regulatory and enforcement authorities. Also true to form for this Administration, the rights of LGBTQ people are being used as a political football to score points in its McCarthy-esque crusade to weed out policies and voices that champion greater equality, civil rights, and social justice.

As with the Administration’s other ham-handed attempts to winnow the federal government, the far-reaching consequences of this action negatively affect the rights, options, and protections of all consumers. It will also undoubtedly inflict excruciating costs and other burdens on some consumers, disproportionately those who are poor and from financially underserved groups (including women, people of color, LGBTQ people).

Rolling back guidance specifying protections in credit for LGBTQ applicants and borrowers has an obvious effect on LGBTQ consumers. But other guidance revoked by this decision also touches LGBTQ consumers disproportionately, as with one rule related to consumer reports and name-matching algorithms with implications for those who have obtained a legal name change, as many transgender & gender nonconforming people have.

And of course, LGBTQ people will also feel the effect of many of these policy deletions in their lives as everyday consumers. The rescinded rules affect rights & financial experiences common for many, most, or even all consumers. As will be explained, Vought taking a chainsaw to consumer protections has dire implications for LGBTQ consumers, and also every consumer in the U.S.

Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Protections in Credit

The most glaringly obvious example of how this decision affects LGBTQ people is the elimination of an interpretive rule stating LGBTQ people were protected from unfair denials or predatory pricing in lending under existing civil rights laws, specifically the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

The Bureau’s prior guidance, entitled “Equal Credit Opportunity (Regulation B); Discrimination on the Bases of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (the “Rule”)[ii] rightly clarified that ECOA’s prohibition on discrimination in lending based on “sex” included animus based on a person’s sexual orientation (SO), gender identity (GI), or their expression thereof.

The Rule was issued to ensure that ECOA’s prohibition on sex discrimination was consistent with the conclusions of the Supreme Court in finding that unfair treatment based on SOGI in employment was unlawful sex discrimination under Title VII.[iii] The current Director’s decision to depart from that reasoning is not firmly grounded in a rational explanation or basis, and unnecessarily introduces new inconsistency and doubt.

Freedom from discrimination in financial services is essential for individuals to achieve security and thrive economically. Still, research consistently shows that LGBTQ people suffer bias, stigma, and discrimination at banks and lenders.[iv]

In CLEAR’s own LEAF survey conducted in partnership with Movement Advancement Project in 2023, one in ten LGBTQ adults (11%) said they had experienced discrimination in financial services specifically because of their LGBTQ identity, including one in six LGBTQ people of color (17%) and one in four transgender people (24%).[v] Among those respondents, one in four had said they had been denied a loan or account with a same-sex partner (24%), and one in five had been charged a higher interest rate or cost (21%).

The Bureau’s sensible guidance to make ECOA’s interpretation consistent affirmed the rights of millions of LGBTQ people in the United States. Most LGBTQ people (53%) in the U.S. live in states without nondiscrimination protections for SOGI in credit.[vi] At present, only sixteen (16) states have state laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination in credit based on SOGI, with two (2) other states judicially interpreting their laws to do so.[vii] Most states (31) offer no protections for LGBTQ applicants & borrowers under their state nondiscrimination laws.

Requiring Consumer Reporting Agencies to Match Records Accurately

Another rescinded rule that affects transgender and gender nonconforming people, especially, is a rule that requires companies that generate consumer reports to ensure that they are matching their information using more information than purely that person’s first and last names.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)[viii] requires that “consumer reporting agencies” (“CRAs”)–i.e., companies that prepare credit, employment, tenant screening, and other “consumer reports” about people–to ensure the “maximum possible accuracy” of the information included in the reports they prepare.[ix] The CFPB, as the regulator tasked with ensuring CRAs comply with the FCRA, is accordingly responsible for determining what maximum possible accuracy means and penalizing those who fail to meet that requirement.

Preparing individual profiles on people using data that has information about thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of consumers, as CRAs do is tricky business. Companies must ensure that they include only the information about that particular person, and not any data about anyone else who may share their name, address, or other attributes.

Which is why relying solely, or even primarily, on an identical or similar name to ensure that other records are matched appropriately inevitably results in inaccurate files. It leads to “mixed files”–i.e., when two individuals’ records get intermingled, because they are falsely identified as the same person. It can also result in lost or corrupted files when a person changes their name. Records filed under the previous name will not be appropriately associated with that person when searched for under that person’s new name.

The major credit bureaus utilize somewhat more sophisticated record matching than using just a consumer’s name, by using social security information or other identifiers. Even so, they consistently fail to correctly match information for a huge portion of consumers. One-third of U.S. consumers (34%) reported errors in their personal information on their credit reports, such as incorrect names or addresses.[x] It seems obvious that name-only matching is woefully insufficient to generate accurate information and should be avoided, so the Rule seems like a no-brainer.

Which is why the CFPB had issued the now rescinded Rule, “Fair Credit Reporting; Name-Only Matching Procedures” in 2021.[xi] Under its appropriate authority to interpret FCRA, the Bureau explained what was already obvious: using name-only matching is patently not ensuring “maximum possible accuracy.”

The inability to match records under different names, even when they are the same person, has a particular impact on trans and gender nonconforming consumers. Although not all transgender people change their names, many do. In CLEAR’s LEAF survey, 83% of transgender people in the LEAF report said that they had tried or completed the process of seeking a legal name change.[xii]  And many transgender people have also reported that after changing their full legal names, their credit reports have been lost entirely or their scores have been negatively impacted because of record mismatches and the loss of credit information.[xiii]

There are, of course, implications for a wide range of consumers who change their names, not just transgender people. Individuals change their names for a wide variety of reasons. Some may be making a change in their life and want a new name to reflect that. Some change their names for other understandable and lawful reasons: to flee abusive partnerships, make a new start, or to have legal records reflect what name they use day-to-day.

CRAs covered by this rule include a range of companies that prepare reports used to assess individuals’ character and suitability for crucial opportunities such as housing or employment. And if these companies fail to do their utmost by going above and beyond name-only matching in generating their records, they could severely harm the availability of opportunities to those who have had a legal name change—adding another barrier and obstacle for transgender and gender nonconforming people in seeking housing, employment, services, and other opportunities.

Vought’s Disingenuous Justification for Recission

In justifying why the guidance concerned should be rescinded, the May notice indicates they are unnecessary bureaucratic overreach that “create new rights or obligations” which are not obviously “consistent with applicable law.”[xiv]

However, as we have seen in both previous instances, the rescinded Rules did not create any new rights or obligations. Lenders were always bound by ECOA to not discriminate, and CRAs were bound by FCRA to maintain systems that matched information with maximum possible accuracy. Far from being a waste of government ink, by clarifying how the existing laws, written in the 1970s, applied in the present moment, the Bureau’s guidance ensured that financial services regulations were consistent with the evolving state of law and the current marketplace.

And as the explanation provided for the rules’ recission is demonstrably and visibly false, we pretty much safely assume that eliminating protections for LGBTQ people not motivated by any good-faith desire to protect consumers, and instead is transparently in furtherance of the Administration’s spiteful animus and its craven political ambitions to use attacks on transgender & LGBTQ Americans to motivate its political base and suppress detractors.

Likewise, eliminating the whole slate of other interpretive rules and guidance documents is not explicable as a good-faith exercise of Vought and the Administration’s authorities. Instead, they are playing politics with people’s livelihoods with a campaign of gross and unfettered deregulation that will have costly consequences for everyday Americans.

The Ill Effects of Ill-Considered Actions

There are disastrous consequences, some explicit and some just beneath the surface, of the Acting Director’s campaign to dismantle the CFPB. The ill effects of revoking the two aforementioned rules have been explained; however, the rescission of the 65 other pieces of guidance will also have serious consequences for all consumers, including LGBTQ consumers.

Other palpably harmful revocations include eliminating Bureau guidance that indicates attempting to collect a debt in person at a person’s home or place of work (which opens consumers to unreasonable harassment).[xv] Another requires CRAs to have a reason to believe that a person requesting a report has a permissible reason to have it (and not another unrelated reason, like stalking or fraud).[xvi] A third explains to debt collectors that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act rightly prevents a creditor from threatening to sue a consumer after the statute-of-limitations for their lawsuit has expired (a scare tactic that some unscrupulous collectors use).[xvii]

Absent these protections, and the CFPB’s willingness to enforce seemingly any consumer protections under Vought’s perverse version of its leadership,[xviii] consumers will undoubtedly suffer considerably. LGBTQ consumers will, unfortunately, suffer even greater obstacles and hardship, but–being the survivors that we are–our communities will also inevitably endure until there is an opportunity to restore the rights which have been lost and to build a brighter tomorrow.

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[i] CFPB to Withdraw 67 Guidance Documents in Trump Pullback, Bloomberg Law (May 9, 2025), https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/cfpb-to-withdraw-nearly-70-guidance-documents-in-trump-pullback; Interpretive Rules, Policy Statements, and Advisory Opinions; Withdrawal, 90 Fed. Reg. 20084 at “III. Guidance Withdrawn” (May 12, 2025), available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/05/12/2025-08286/interpretive-rules-policy-statements-and-advisory-opinions-withdrawal.

[ii] 86 FR 14363 (Mar. 16, 2021), available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/03/16/2021-05233/equal-credit-opportunity-regulation-b-discrimination-on-the-bases-of-sexual-orientation-and-gender.

[iii] Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644.

[iv] Lei Gao & Hua Sun, The Rainbow of Credit: Same-Sex. Mortgage Discrimination and Two-Sided Spillover Effect, Iowa State University College of Business (April 2017), available at https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/Z3Y34RSk; National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Gender and Same-Sex Status in Home Mortgage Lending (February 16, 2022), available at https://ncrc.org/gender-and-same-sex-status-in-home-mortgage-lending/.

[v] Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement and Research & Movement Advancement Project, The LGBTQI+ Economic and Financial (LEAF) Survey: Understanding the Financial Lives of LGBTQI+ People in the United States, 12 (March 2023), available at https://lgbtq-economics.org/research/leaf-report-2023/.

[vi] Movement Advancement Project, Equality Maps: Credit Nondiscrimination Laws (Accessed: June 18, 2025), available at https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws/credit.

[vii] Id.

[viii] 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.

[ix]  15 U.S.C. 1681e(b).

[x] Consumer Reports, Almost half of participants in Credit Checkup study find errors on credit reports; more than a quarter find serious mistakes (April 30, 2024), available at https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/almost-half-of-participants-in-credit-checkup-study-find-errors-on-credit-reports-more-than-a-quarter-find-serious-mistakes/.

[xi] Fair Credit Reporting; Name-Only Matching Procedures, 86 FR 62468 (November 10, 2021), available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/11/10/2021-24471/fair-credit-reporting-name-only-matching-procedures#citation-7-p62469.

[xii] The LGBTQI+ Economic and Financial (LEAF) Survey, supra note 5 at 17.

[xiii] Equality California, 145 LGBTQ+, Business and Consumer Organizations Urge Credit Bureaus To Fix Reporting Problems for Transgender and Nonbinary People, (February 24, 2022), available at https://www.eqca.org/letter-to-cdia/.

[xiv] Interpretive Rules, Policy Statements, and Advisory Opinions; Withdrawal, supra note 1, at “I. Background.”

[xv] CFPB, Bulletin re: in-person collection of consumer debt (December 16, 2015) (Last accessed: June 20, 2025), available at https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/supervisory-guidance/bulletin-personal-collection-consumer-debt/.

[xvi] Fair Credit Reporting; Permissible Purposes for Furnishing, Using, and Obtaining Consumer Reports, 87 FR 41243 (July 12, 2022), available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/07/12/2022-14823/fair-credit-reporting-permissible-purposes-for-furnishing-using-and-obtaining-consumer-reports.

[xvii] Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (Regulation F); Time-Barred Debt, 88 FR 26475 (May 1, 2023), available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/05/01/2023-09171/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-regulation-f-time-barred-debt.

[xviii] Douglas Gillison, Top CFPB enforcement official to resign, citing ‘devastating’ shifts under Trump, Reuters (June 10, 2025), available at https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/top-cfpb-enforcement-official-resign-citing-devastating-shifts-under-trump-2025-06-10/.