Debanking Realignment: CFPB to Protect Christian Free Speech

Populist realignment brings some voices in the Biden administration into a tacit alliance with Christian conservatives against Wall Street.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a legal filing to an appeals court last week, cited the “debanking” of Christians as a form of the “across the spectrum” discriminatory behavior by financial institutions it is seeking to curb. 

The new free speech on financial platform push, led by the CFPB director Rohit Chopra, opens up a significant rift within the Biden administration and offers a glimpse of potential ideological realignment. 

In recent years, activists from both the right and left have been banned from bank accounts and digital financial platforms over political speech-related allegations with virtually no due process – a phenomenon informally known as debanking.

Hundreds of supporters of the anti-vaccine mandate Canadian truckers movement were debanked and left with no access to bank accounts and had money removed from PayPal accounts over nebulous claims around “misinformation.”

Pro-life groups such as the Arkansas Family Council and Ruth Institute have similarly lost access to bank services with JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo over allegations that the organizations promote hate.

Meanwhile, over the last year, activists in the U.S. and U.K. supporting Palestinian humanitarian causes have received notifications that fundraising accounts have been blocked and transactions frozen. 

The issue presents a new cross-current of unlikely bedfellows. Christian conservatives and a flank of Republican legislators are fighting alongside populist Biden administration figures such as Chopra for free speech rights and new protections against debanking.

They are up against an alliance of tech giants and banking lobbyists, along with some voices at the Department of Homeland Security and liberal nonprofits, who favor unlimited corporate rights to remove users over allegations of misinformation or hate.

While many prominent Democrats have embraced speech restrictions, Chopra has charted his own course and reached out to the right.

In remarks earlier this summer before the Federalist Society, Chopra argued that the growth of financial tech platforms has increased the dangers of private actors engaging in “oppressive or censorious” behavior with no democratic recourse for ordinary Americans.

Venmo and PayPal, Chopra noted, had set terms of use that allowed the company to confiscate money from users for activities unrelated to payments, such as political beliefs or speech. See his comments below beginning at 45 minutes into the video:

The words have followed with actions. The CFPB appellate filing explicitly defending Christian free speech from debanking was part of a response to an injunction imposed in September 2023 by a federal judge in Texas, who sided with a group of bank trade associations seeking to overturn an update to the CFPB's examination manual. 

The updated manual was designed to allow regulators to classify discriminatory conduct as "unfair," a legal term of art that could bring further scrutiny to non-credit financial institutions that have banned users over speech-related concerns.

GOP officials have also mobilized against banking and financial tech platforms. 

In April, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the very first debanking law. The measure prevents banks with at least $100 billion in assets from discrimination against customers based on political or religious views, speech, or affiliations. The law came in response to Bank of America last year revoking the accounts of Indigenous Advance Ministries, a nonprofit associated with a Tennessee church.

The action also prompted a stern warning from Republican attorneys general, led by Kansas’ Chris Kobach. The AGs sent a letter to Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan raising concerns that his bank and others appear to be "conditioning access to its services on customers having the bank's preferred religious or political views."

Bank and financial institutions have largely hidden behind a dark money wall of opaque trade associations to lash out at the CFPB and GOP legislators opposed to debanking.

"We strongly opposed the bill on the grounds that it interferes with free market principles and allows the state to dictate who banks must do business with," Amy Heaslet, the executive vice president of the Tennessee Bankers Association, wrote in a statement. 

The CFPB, meanwhile, is contending in court with an array of similar banking trade associations, including the American Bankers Association, Texas Bankers Associations, and Independent Bankers Association of Texas.

Photo: Getty Images / sorbetto