Empowering States' Rights to Protect Consumers Act

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It’s time to stop Wall Street banks and their credit card subsidiaries from taking advantage of struggling families in Rhode Island and across the nation.

That’s why I’ve teamed up with Senator Elizabeth Warren to introduce the Empowering States’ Rights to Protect Consumers Act, a bill that would protect consumers by restoring the ability of states to set limits on credit card and other consumer loan interest rates.

For over 200 years states had the right to protect consumers from abusive interest rates. A misguided court decision stripped states of this right, and today, we see too many families bogged down with credit card interest rates that would have been illegal a generation ago.

And in the words of my colleague Senator Elizabeth Warren, “We need to ensure states have the ability to enforce their own rules against lenders doing business within their borders. States should be empowered to take action to protect consumers from tricks and traps buried in the fine print by credit card companies.”

Our bill would amend the Truth in Lending Act of 1968 to clarify that credit card companies and other consumer lenders—regardless of their location or legal structure—must abide by the interest rate limits of the states in which their customers reside.  In my home state of Rhode Island, for example, there was a state-level interest-rate cap for many years, but the cap was abandoned after the Marquette decision rendered it moot.  The Empowering States’ Rights to Protect Consumers Act would allow Rhode Island to re-instate a cap.

I’ve introduced similar legislation in previous sessions, but with your help and the help of Senator Warren, I know we can make progress.

Please add your name below to become a citizen co-sponsor of our bill.