Marriage Equality has been a hot-button issue in politics for the last decade, but despite personal and religious beliefs, mortgage regulators in the United States are working towards everyone getting equal treatment when it comes to applying for credit and loans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has just issued a memo about same-sex couples applying for mortgages that officially recognizes all same-sex and traditional marriages in all counties and cities nationwide. The wording in the memo is quite clear on the Bureau’s stance:
“On June 26, 2013, in United States v. Windsor, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. This decision has important consequences for our work. In order to fully implement this decision, we took steps to clarify how the decision affects the rules that we are responsible for. Recently, Director (Richard) Cordray issued a memo to staff clarifying that, to the extent permitted by federal law, it is our policy to recognize all lawful marriages valid at the time of the marriage in the jurisdiction where the marriage was celebrated. This aligns our policy with other agencies across the federal government.”
Meredith Fuchs, the Bureau’s General Counsel, wrote the blog post which you can read here. What does this mean? It means that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will view same-sex marriages as valid marriages when enforcing and investigating consumer protection issues and applying important tools of equality such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices, and the Truth in Lending Act.
Mortgage application denials are still happening for same-sex couples, but with education and the efforts of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we can work towards fixing that.
