Rally Credit Union, the Credit Union National Association, and Cornerstone Credit Union League (Credit Union Intervenors) have filed a joinder to the motion for preliminary injunction filed by Texas First Bank, Independent Bankers Association of Texas, and Independent Community Bankers of America (Community Bank Intervenors) in the Texas lawsuit challenging the CFPB’s final small business lending rule (Rule).

After the court granted the motions for leave to intervene filed by the Credit Union Intervenors and the Community Bank Intervenors, the Community Bank Intervenors filed a motion for preliminary injunction.  In their motion, the Community Bank Intervenors have asked the court to enter a preliminary injunction prohibiting the CFPB from enforcing the Rule nationwide or, alternatively, as to the Community Bank Intervenors and their members.  In their joinder to the preliminary injunction motion, the Credit Union Intervenors state that “[t]o avoid duplicating efforts and unnecessarily compounding these proceedings, Credit Union Intervenors join, in full, Community Bank Intervenors’ motion for preliminary injunction.”

The CFPB will now have an opportunity to respond to the preliminary injunction motion and the court will need to decide if the two sets of intervenors have standing and are entitled to the relief they seek.  The Certificates of Conference or Conferral attached to the Community Bank Intervenors’ preliminary injunction motion and the Credit Union Intervenors’ Joinder state that counsel for the CFPB has advised that the CFPB opposes the preliminary injunction motion.  We will be interested to see whether, in its opposition to the preliminary injunction motion, the CFPB again argues, as it did in opposing the preliminary injunction granted to plaintiffs and their members (i.e. Texas Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, and Rio Bank), that any relief granted should be limited to the Credit Union Intervenors, the Community Bank Intervenors, and their members.  Hopefully, regardless of the CFPB’s position, the court will now be willing to grant nationwide preliminary relief as requested by the Credit Union Intervenors and the Community Bank Intervenors.

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