Two American Indian Tribes said they sued New York state’s financial regulatory agency and its head over his crackdown on businesses that do lending over the Internet, some of which are tribally-owned.
A lawsuit seeking a court order against Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, the Native American Financial Services Association said in a statement. The complaint couldn’t be immediately verified in court records.
Lawsky on Aug. 6 ordered 35 online lenders, including at least four tribal companies, to stop offering loans in New York. He also sent a letter to 117 banks — including Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — requesting their help to block improper lending by cutting off the lenders’ access to the electronic payments system they rely on.
The executive director of the Native American Financial Services Association, Barry Brandon, said that only the U.S. Congress can regulate tribes. The association was formed last year to defend services based in tribal communities.
“We wrote a letter to Lawsky with our concern about his actions, requesting a meeting,” Brandon said yesterday during a telephone press conference. “We received no response from him.”
Payday Lenders
“It is a sad day when payday lenders are suing to make illegal predatory loans, which serve only to trap families in endless cycles of debt,” Matt Anderson, a spokesman for the financial services department, said in an e-mail. “Payday loans are illegal in New York. We have respect for tribal sovereignty, but these are loans sold illegally to New Yorkers outside of tribal boundaries.”
The New York regulator’s effort already has effectively blocked tribal businesses’ access to the Automated Clearing House network that handles the credits and debits, according to David Bernick, a lawyer representing the tribes. They want the courts to stop Lawsky from “attacking the banking relationships the tribes absolutely depend on,” Bernick told reporters on a conference call.
Filing suit were the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians, based in Red Rock, Oklahoma, and the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, based in Watersmeet, Michigan, according to a copy of the complaint the groups said they filed. According to the document, there are 564 federally-recognized tribal nations in the U.S.
No Authority
“The states have no authority to regulate these tribes in a way that limits their sovereign rights,” said Bernick, a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP in New York. He said the tribes have developed the lending businesses in line with their own and federal laws, and customers agree to be subject to tribal requirements. “It’s the virtual equivalent of someone coming on to tribal land.”
Also suing Lawsky are three tribal loan companies and two tribal regulatory agencies, according to a copy of the complaint.
Lawsky has called the bank-directed access to the payments system “the foot in the door that online payday lenders need to prey on vulnerable New Yorkers.”
Last week, the Online Lenders Alliance wrote to the organization that manages the payments network, Nacha, asking that it tell the banks to allow access to businesses doing legitimate lending.
–By Don Jeffrey and Jesse Hamilton
Read more at Bloomberg.
