On December 08, 2010, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court, Northern District of Texas under the Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts against PrimeLending. The plaintiff asked the court for injunctive and monetary relief, claiming that the defendant displayed a pattern and practice of discrimination in lending on the basis of race against African-American borrowers.

On January 11, 2011, the parties entered into a consent order in which Primelending agreed to, 1) refrain from engaging in any act or practice that discriminates on the basis of race in any aspect of a residential real estate-related transaction, 2) alter its lending policy and procedures to prevent the facilitation of race based discrimination, 3) submit to a monitoring and reporting program to ensure compliance with the consent order, 4) provide borrowers with a general notice of nondiscrimination, 5) provide equal credit opportunity training to its employees and officers, 6) provide a total of $2 million to be distributed among those aggrieved, 7) allocate any portion of the $2 million that remains unclaimed to organizations that provide credit counseling and general financial education to African-American borrowers, 8) maintain a complaint resolution program to resolve discrimination claims by borrowers. The consent order remains in effect until 2015.

Gregory Pitt - 08/02/2012


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