Judge reverses biden-era rule to remove medical debt from credit reports

A federal judge in Texas removed a Biden-era finalized rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would have removed medical debt from credit reports.

U.S. District Court Judge Sean Jordan of Texas’s Eastern District, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, found on Friday that the rule exceeded the CFPB’s authority. Jordan said that the CFPB is not permitted to remove medical debt from credit reports according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which protects information collected by consumer reporting agencies.

Removing medical debt from consumer credit reports was expected to increase the credit scores of millions of families by an average of 20 points, the bureau said. The CFPB states that its research has shown outstanding health care claims to be a poor predictor of an individual’s ability to repay a loan, yet they are often used to deny mortgage applications.

The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — announced last year that they would remove medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The CFPB’s rule was projected to ban all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports.

The CFPB estimated the rule would have removed $49 billion in medical debt from the credit reports of 15 million Americans.

Settlement reached in meta lawsuit

Meta Platforms investors say they have reached a settlement with current and former directors at the company to end a multibillion-dollar case in Delaware. Terms of the settlement, which were reached one day after the trial started, weren’t immediately disclosed. Representatives from Meta declined to comment.

The deal would end a legal fight over the way company leaders handled the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, including claims that the company overpaid in a 2019 Federal Trade Commission settlement in order to personally protect Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

The litigation in Delaware Chancery Court focused on the $5 billion that Meta, then known as Facebook, paid to settle with the FTC over privacy issues. The case followed disclosures that an outside developer collected personal data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. Cambridge Analytica used the information when it was hired by Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Couche-Tard ends pursuit of 7-Eleven

After a year of prolonged negotiations marked by dramatic twists and turns, Canadian retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard said it was abandoning its multibillion-dollar bid to acquire the owner of 7-Eleven convenience stores.

The company, which operates Circle K convenience stores, wrote to 7-Eleven owner Seven i Holdings that it was withdrawing its proposal because of a lack of “sincere or constructive engagement” that would allow the deal to progress. It accused the Japan-based Seven i of a “calculated campaign of obfuscation and delay.”

Seven i said in a statement that it would accept Couche-Tard’s decision, though it found the announcement “regrettable.”

Compiled from Associated Press, Bloomberg and New York Times reports.