Investigations Involving Alleged Redlining

Perhaps the signature initiative of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division under the current Administration has been its Combatting Redlining Initiative. By "redlining," the Department means that a lender has avoided providing access to home mortgage loans to homeowners and prospective homeowners in majority-minority census tracts, in violation of the Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts. The Department itself calls the initiative its "most aggressive and coordinated enforcement effort to use federal civil rights laws to eradicate redlining," and it has grabbed headlines and made an impact, including, among other examples, the largest settlement for redlining in the Department's history and the first resolution with a non-depository mortgage company.