Neil Gorsuch issued his first Supreme Court opinion on Monday, delivering a decision limiting the scope of a law protecting consumers from abusive debt collection practices.
Gorsuch wrote that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) only applies to agencies working on behalf of creditors, and that it’s legal for banks to attempt to collect on defaulted debts that they have purchased.
Keeping with Supreme Court tradition, the rookie Justice’s debut opinion was short—just thirteen pages long—and relatively uncontroversial in the legal world. There were no dissenting Justices, and the unanimous decision upheld two prior lower court rulings.
“All that matters is whether the target of the lawsuit regularly seeks to collect debts for its own account or does so for ‘another,’” Gorsuch wrote, citing FDCPA language.
The case centered around Santander Bank, a Spanish financial institution whose US operations are headquartered in Boston. Plaintiffs had accused Santander of violating the FDCPA after the bank purchased defaulted auto loans before attempting to collect payment.
While saying the FDCPA only applies to collection agencies, Gorsuch did, however, leave room for debtors in a similar case to make the case for relief.
He noted that, outside of the FDCPA, there is a broader statutory definition of “’debt collector’–one that encompasses those engaged ‘in any business the principal purpose of which is the collection of any debts.’”
“But the parties haven’t much litigated that alternative definition and in granting certiorari we didn’t agree to address it either,” he wrote. “Writ of certiorari” is the term SCOTUS uses for deciding to hear a case.
Having ruled out a strong case on plaintiff’s legal theory, Gorsuch focused much of his opinion on their lexicon, at one point citing The Cambridge Guide to English Usage.
“[T]his much doesn’t follow even as a matter of good grammar, let alone ordinary meaning,” Gorsuch wrote, of one argument.
