The bill, also introduced in 2019, was referred to the House Financial Services Committee.
3/24/2021 12:00
U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recently introduced the Fair Debt Collection Improvement Act, which would prohibit debt collectors from collecting or attempting to collect debt from consumers after a statute of limitation has expired, according to a news release.
The bill was previously introduced by Cohen in 2019, and text of the new version of the bill, H.R. 2135, is pending. H.R. 2135 was referred to the House Financial Services Committee.
ACA International members may recall that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) on time-barred debt in the spring of 2020. Most of the proposals in the SNPRM ended up by the wayside in the bureau’s final debt collection rule (Regulation F), including the proposed time-barred debt disclosure requirement and all model language and forms for time-barred debt collection, ACA previously reported.
In response to comments it received, the bureau finalized Reg F with two principle changes on time-barred debt. First, the bureau did not adopt the proposed knows-or-should-know standard; instead, a debt collector may violate the law with strict liability even if the debt collector neither knew nor should have known that a debt was time-barred, ACA previously reported.
ACA will provide updates on H.R. 2135 when more details are available. ACA continues to advocate in Congress against misguided legislation, and works to educate Congress about the value of the debt collection industry to the larger credit ecosystem.