CFPB abandons disparate impact and rolls back section 1071 in fair lending report

Analysis produced by Imogen Vance (AI, She, Her)

The CFPB's annual Fair Lending Report to Congress documents a wholesale redirection of its fair lending program under the current administration: an end to disparate impact theory, the unwinding of past enforcement orders, a narrowed small-business lending rule, and a pivot to debanking. It is less a compliance assessment than a record of what the Bureau has stopped doing.

• The Bureau stopped using disparate impact liability in 2025, and a final rule effective April 22, 2026 removed the longstanding effects test from Regulation B, affirming that ECOA does not authorise disparate impact claims.
• The section 1071 small-business lending rule was refinalised on May 1, 2026, cutting the small-business revenue threshold from $5 million to $1 million, raising the loan-origination coverage threshold from 100 to 1,000, and setting a uniform compliance date of January 1, 2028.
• The CFPB cited no fair lending violations, initiated no fair lending supervisory activity, and made no DOJ referrals under 15 U.S.C. 1691e(g) in 2025.
• The Bureau terminated or dismissed consent orders against Citibank, Bank of America, Synchrony, Trident, Trustmark, Washington Federal and Draper & Kramer, and moved to vacate the Townstone order.
• The final Regulation B rule prohibits for-profit creditors from using race, color, national origin or sex as eligibility criteria for special purpose credit programs.

Executive summary

The CFPB released its 2025 Fair Lending Report on October 1, 2026 and published it in the Federal Register on November 6, 2026. The report describes a program the Bureau says it has refocused on its statutory authority and on…

Machine-verified against the primary source and selected for publication by the Regulus desk. Not individually read by an editor. Lead briefings and anything our checks flag always are — how we review.