The Supreme Court has ruled against the Biden administration’s efforts to prevent consumer lawsuits against federal agencies.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 8 rejected an attempt by the Biden administration to avoid a lawsuit stemming from false debt reporting, with the landmark ruling opening the door for consumers to sue federal agencies.
In a 9–0 decision on Feb. 8, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government is not immune from lawsuits brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a law that lets consumers sue creditors for failing to fix false credit information that the consumer has requested be corrected.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought under the FCRA by Reginald Kirtz, a Pennsylvania man whose credit score was damaged when the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Rural Housing Service wrongly stated on his credit report that some of his loans were overdue.
The government claimed that it was immune from Mr. Kirtz’s lawsuit and moved to dismiss the case, with several rounds of adjudication in lower courts leading to a request for Supreme Court review.
The high court agreed in June 2023 to review an appeals court ruling that allowed Mr. Kirtz to sue the USDA for false debt reporting.
At issue in the case was whether Congress waived U.S. sovereign immunity from lawsuits when it modified consumer protection laws nearly 30 years ago.
The question that was presented before the high court was whether the civil-liability provisions of the FCRA “unequivocally and unambiguously waive the sovereign immunity of the United States.”
“We think the Third Circuit reached the right decision in this case: The FCRA effects a clear waiver of sovereign immunity,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote in the Feb. 8 opinion.
Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney Nandan Joshi, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, praised the decision.
“Today’s decision confirms that federal agencies cannot escape accountability when they fail to comply with their responsibilities to consumers under the FCRA,” he said in a Feb. 8 statement.
“As the court explained, FCRA’s text means what it says: The FCRA allows consumers to sue any ‘person’ that violates the statute and defines ‘person’ to include any government agency.”
The USDA did not respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment on the ruling.
By Tom Ozimek
