THE EQUAL CREDIT OPPORTUNITY ACT (ECOA) is a United States law (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq.), enacted October 1974, that makes it unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract); the applicant's use of a public assistance program to receive all or part of their income; or the applicant's previous good-faith exercise of any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.
Technically, women won the right to open a bank account in the 1960s, but many banks still refused to let women do so without a signature from their husbands. This meant men still held control over women’s access to banking services, and unmarried women were often refused service by financial institutions.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited financial institutions from discriminating against applicants based on their sex, age, marital status, religion, race or national origin. Because of the act’s passage, women could finally open bank accounts independently.
The law applies to any person who, in the ordinary course of business, regularly participates in a credit decision, including banks. retailers, bankcard companies, finance companies, and credit unions.
The part of the law that defines its authority and scope is known as Regulation B, that appears in Title 12 part 1002's official identifier: 12 C.F.R. § 1002.1(b) (2017). Failure to comply with Regulation B can subject a financial institution to civil liability for actual and punitive damages in individual or class actions. Liability for punitive damages can be as much as $10,000 in individual actions and the lesser of $500,000 or 1% of the creditor's net worth in class actions.
Before the enactment of the law, lenders and the federal government frequently and explicitly discriminated against female loan applicants and held female applicants to different standards from male applicants. A large coalition of women's and civil rights groups pressured the government to pass the ECOA (and the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974) to prohibit such discrimination.
I hope it gives all of us pause to understand this is a mere 50 years ago. Something that occurred within the lifetimes of many of us. And along with other rights most of us take for granted, are under siege. VOTE VOTE VOTE (another right women only achieved 100 years ago.)
