CFPB dismisses enforcement action against TransUnion

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped its enforcement action against TransUnion, one of many cases the bureau has abandoned as it rolls back its enforcement actions under new directives from the Trump administration. 

The CFPB sued TransUnion and a former executive in 2022 for allegedly violating a 2017 order from the bureau about deceptive marketing practices. The case has been caught up in courts for years, with the credit bureau arguing that the complaint should be dismissed because it violates the Constitution’s appropriations clause. 

The original 2017 complaint alleged that TransUnion, as well as Equifax, deceived customers about the cost of credit monitoring and reporting services. While then-CFPB Director Richard Cordray signed off on TransUnion’s restitution plan for customers, he did not sign off on its compliance plan, and neither did CFPB’s subsequent director, Kathy Kraninger. 

In 2019, the CFPB said it had received nearly 100 customer complaints that TransUnion enrolled them in unwanted monthly monitoring services. Some of those customers said they were enrolled because they responded to ads to get a free credit score and did not realize that in the fine print, they would enroll in the credit-monitoring program. TransUnion denied that they were deceiving customers. 

The case has been “voluntarily dismissed against all defendants” with prejudice, according to a court filing on Friday. That means that the case cannot be brought against the company at a later time. 

“We are pleased with the dismissal of this case, which reflects our long-standing view of the facts and our ongoing work to support consumers,” TransUnion said in a statement. 

The bureau separately dropped another enforcement action, with prejudice, against 1st Alliance Lending, a mortgage lender that the CFPB sued in 2021 for allegedly engaging in “unlawful mortgage-lending practices.” 

The actions come as the CFPB on Thursday dropped several more lawsuits against financial companies.

One was against Capital One Financial, alleging that the bank cheated long-standing customers out of more than $2 billion in interest by declining to honor high rates that were offered to new customers. The bureau also dropped lawsuits against the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, Rocket Homes and Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance. 

The CFPB also dropped a lawsuit against Heights Finance, which subprime lender CURO Group bought in 2021, alleging that the company operated a “loan-churning scheme” that forced borrowers to refinance multiple times and pushed them into “financial quicksand.”

Earlier in the month, the CFPB dismissed a pending lawsuit against SoLo Funds, a peer-to-peer lending company, that the bureau alleged was deceiving borrowers about the total costs of loans. 

This brings the total number of enforcement actions dropped by the CFPB to eight. 

The rapid pullback in enforcement against companies that are, in some cases, accused of cheating customers out of billions of dollars, comes as the Trump administration curtails the agency’s activities. 

A filing from the Justice Department earlier this week insists that the Trump administration intends to keep the CFPB — which was established by legislation and can only be undone by an act of Congress — with a lower budget and headcount. 

A reply memorandum from the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB employees, however, describes a wholesale attempt by the Trump administration to gut the agency and put a halt “to the CFPB’s performance of its statutorily mandated functions.”

“Defendants are systematically eliminating the Bureau’s capacity to function at all,” one terminated CFPB employee said in the filings. 

Kate Berry contributed to this article.