A District Court judge in the District of Columbia has denied a defendant’s motion to enforce a modified civil investigative demand from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because what the CFPB is doing was not prohibited under the terms of the modified CID.
A copy of the order in the case of CFPB v. Nexus Services can be accessed by clicking here.
Originally, the CFPB served Nexus with a CID seeking, among other things, the location information of 17,000 individuals who were clients of Nexus and obtained products or services related to an immigration bond. Nexus fought the CID, suing the CFPB in federal court. The court ordered the two sides to mediation and they ultimately agreed to a modified CID, in which Nexus would not have to provide the location information.
But the CFPB sent a CID to other third parties, not associated with Nexus, seeking essentially the same information it wanted from Nexus. Nexus filed a motion to enjoin the CFPB from obtaining the information, saying that the agency “reneged on its stipulation and is acting in bad faith.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that there was nothing in the modified CID that precluded the CFPB from going to a third party for the same information it wanted from Nexus.
“…Nexus has not identified any standard or ethical rule that the CFPB lawyers violated – the CFPB is not required to disclose that it is issuing CIDs to third parties, nor are they precluded from seeking information from third parties,” Judge Berman Jackson wrote.
