On August 19, 2024, the CFPB filed its reply brief in support of the CFPB’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce (Fort Worth Chamber) for lack of standing and, if granted, transfer the case to the Federal District Court for D.C. in the lawsuit challenging the CFPB’s credit card late fee final rule (“Rule”). The CFPB filed its brief in support of the motion to dismiss on July 29, 2024 and the plaintiffs filed their brief in opposition to the CFPB’s motion to dismiss on August 12, 2024. Judge Pittman will hear the motion next week on August 27, 2024.
In its reply brief, the CFPB doubles down on its “lack of germaneness” argument that Plaintiff Fort Worth Chamber lacks associational standing and the Fort Worth Chamber’s localized purpose is not furthered by this lawsuit to challenge a regulation targeting the 35 largest credit card issuers in the country who are all based outside of Fort Worth. The CFPB argues that “a business is not adversely affected by a challenged Rule everywhere it may have customers” and continues to emphasize the fact that the credit card issuers who are members of the Fort Worth Chamber are based out-of-state and states that office and branch presence in Fort Worth of such members would not feel the effects of the Rule. Despite these arguments, the CFPB states it is not imposing a “headquarters” requirement and states that a different type of organization with a different mission based in Fort Worth could establish associational standing if the injuries to its members arising out of the Rule were germane to the organization’s interests. The CFPB claims that the Rule’s alleged market impacts on smaller issuers and the effects on the Fort Worth economy are speculative at best.
The CFPB urges the court to not endorse the plaintiffs’ expansive approach to which interests are “germane” to Fort Worth’s mission and instead consider the decision made by an Ohio Federal District Court in Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce v. Becerra, No. 3:23-cv-156, 2024 WL 3741510, at *1 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 8, 2024). In Dayton Area Chamber, the chamber was suing to challenge a federal rule on behalf of members located far from the local economy that the chamber served (drug manufacturers based in California and Illinois). The court in Dayton Area Chamber dismissed the Dayton Area Chamber for lack of associational standing based on “lack of germaneness” requirement. The CFPB suggests that evidence such as the Fort Worth Chamber’s declarations, which were absent in the Dayton Area Chamber case, do not distinguish this case as “[t]he Dayton Area Chamber court made clear that that kind of evidence would not suffice: ‘The Program’s potential downstream effects—on unnamed members in the supply chain, and on unknown investment’ in other companies in the industry—‘are far too speculative to connect this lawsuit to the business climate of the Dayton area.’”
With respect to venue, the CFPB states that a “substantial” part of the events giving rise to the claim must take place in the venue and “[a]llowing challengers to regulations to bring suit anywhere they do business would eviscerate the plaintiff-based standing rule laid out in § 1391(e)(1)(C), which allows suit only where a plaintiff resides, not anywhere it does business.” Finally, the CFPB argues that the court could avoid chaos of a dismissal by transferring the case to D.D.C., a venue that “all parties agree is appropriate.”
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