Ninth Circuit Rules In Favor of Wells Fargo, Against African Americans

WASHINGTON - Sept. 28, 2021 - PRLog -- The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled that racist bank lending practices, even those causing a City to incur significant costs, are not a violation of the Fair Housing Act. The Court states that banks do not have to pay for negative community impacts, but that they are, however, free to profit from positive short term market impacts. We note that, after paying $9 billion in fines for various illegal and unethical activities, Wells Fargo earned $90 billion from 2016 to 2020.

According to the Court,

"The en banc court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's partial grant and partial denial of Wells Fargo's motion to dismiss and remanded for dismissal of the
City of Oakland's claims under the Fair Housing Act, alleging that Wells Fargo's discriminatory lending practices caused higher default rates, which in turn triggered higher foreclosure rates that drove down the assessed value of properties, and which ultimately resulted in lost property tax revenue and increased municipal expenditures.

The en banc court held that under Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, 137 S. Ct. 1296 (2017), foreseeability alone is not sufficient to establish proximate cause under the Fair Housing Act, and there must be 'some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged.' The en banc court held that the downstream 'ripples of harm' from Wells Fargo's alleged lending practices were too attenuated and traveled too far beyond Wells Fargo's alleged misconduct to establish proximate cause."

This is false. What this ruling means is that "fair housing" laws do not require a discriminatory bank to pay for all damages caused.

The Court ignored ample direct evidence of harm, claiming the negative impact of the Bank's racist behavior was too subtle to directly link to damage. As we stated in our Amicus Brief, technology now allows for the calculation of exact damages, to the penny, in real time, using social media and other tools (including blockchain). The Court's decision is very much like a Court ignoring body-cam footage of a racist white police officer harming an unarmed diabetic Black man, and the officer claiming that the cause of damage was the underlying  health condition.

We hope the City will appeal to the Supreme Court. The case is CITY OF OAKLAND,
v. WELLS FARGO & COMPANY, et. al., No. 19-15169.

To review our Amicus Brief, see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18e9hzYxJ9PnN2FFCk8f0MvBm...