Hospitals, insurance companies, and debt collectors need to step up their communication efforts to prevent the illegal collection of medical debts that have been previously paid or covered by providers’ charity care programs, according to the CFPB in its report to Congress on the status of the FDCPA, issued on September 5, 2024. Communication to consumers from debt collectors should provide more specific information about debts to enable consumers to identify the accounts on which collectors seek payment, as well.
On June 28, in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, et al., the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron deference doctrine, a long-standing tenet of administrative law established in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. This doctrine directed courts to defer to a government agency’s interpretation of a statute if the statute was ambiguous regarding, or simply did not address, the issue before the court, as long as the interpretation was reasonable.
Student loan payments on hold as a result of COVID-19 were due to resume in September 2023, and while borrowers who have not resumed payments are seeing interest accrue on those accounts, there has been a grace period and those accounts have not been reported as delinquent to the credit bureaus.
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a proposed order against the student loan servicer Navient for its years of failures and lawbreaking. If entered by the court, the proposed order would permanently ban the company from servicing federal Direct Loans and would forbid the company from directly servicing or acquiring most loans under the Federal Family Education Loan Program . These bans would largely remove Navient from a market where it, among other illegal actions, steered numerous student loan borrowers into costly repayment options.
Businesses with a website beware: California regulators just warned that the law prohibits your website from making website users jump through hoops or otherwise confusing them as they try to exercise their privacy rights, regardless of whether you intend to have that effect. If your website can be accessed by California residents, regardless of where your business is located, this news may impact your business.
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