Seven federal agencies have jointly withdrawn the 2022 assurance that told lenders special purpose credit programmes were permissible, and the withdrawal takes effect the day it publishes
The document being withdrawn is four and a half years old and one page long.
On Monday the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Justice Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency filed a joint notice rescinding the Interagency Statement on Special Purpose Credit Programs Under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B, dated 22 February 2022. It takes effect on publication, which is Tuesday. There is no comment period, because a rescission of guidance does not require one.
A special purpose credit programme is a lending programme aimed at a defined class of borrowers. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act permits them, and the 2022 statement did not create them. What the statement did was tell lenders that the agencies considered such programmes permissible, and reassure those that were unsure.
The stated reason is that the ground moved
The notice gives three reasons and they are worth separating.
The first is technical. The 2022 statement quoted a provision of Regulation B that has since been amended, at 91 FR 21620 on 22 April 2026. The earlier version permitted creditors to run lending programmes based on the race, colour, national origin or sex of the applicant in certain circumstances. The agencies say the statement and its related guidance referenced that earlier text.
The second concerns housing. The assurance the statement gave about the Fair Housing Act rested on a HUD interpretation that is no longer in effect.
The third is the substantive one. The agencies write that the prior interpretations cannot be reconciled with the statutory text of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act, both of which prohibit discrimination on the listed characteristics, and they cite Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard for the proposition that race-based policies face higher scrutiny and that a general desire to remedy societal discrimination does not meet it.
This was the last piece
Three related items had already gone, one at a time, and the notice lists them.
HUD withdrew its Office of General Counsel guidance on the Fair Housing Act's treatment of these programmes on 25 September 2025. It withdrew the separate FHEO statement on 17 September 2025. The CFPB withdrew its December 2020 advisory opinion on 17 June 2026. Monday's notice removes the one document all seven agencies had signed.
What it does not say
It does not say the programmes are unlawful. The closing paragraph states that all special purpose credit programmes must comply with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Regulation B and, where applicable, the Fair Housing Act, and that creditors should not rely on the rescinded statement or related issuances going forward. It adds that federal law does not authorise generalised remedial equity initiatives absent specific cases of unlawful discrimination.
No lender is named. No programme is named. No enforcement action is announced.
Seven officials signed it: Benjamin K. Olson at the FDIC, Frank Kressman at the NCUA, Melissa Love at the OCC, Mark Paoletta at the CFPB, Craig Trainor at HUD, Harmeet K. Dhillon at the Justice Department and Clinton Jones at the FHFA. The docket number is FR-6606-N-01.
