What happened
On September 28, 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Justice Department announced a joint auto-lending action against Fifth Third Bank. The CFPB said Fifth Third’s dealer-markup system charged African-American and Hispanic borrowers more than similarly situated non-Hispanic white borrowers from January 2010 through September 2015, without regard to creditworthiness, and that thousands of minority borrowers paid, on average, over $200 more. DOJ filed in the Southern District of Ohio; the court entered the consent order on October 1, 2015.
The CFPB required $18 million in consumer damages: $12 million into a fund, $5–6 million credit for money already paid, and a top-up to $18 million, distributed by a settlement administrator. The Bureau said it assessed no auto-lending civil penalty because of steps to cut dealer discretion. A same-day CFPB credit-card add-on case ($3 million estimated relief and a $500,000 penalty) is a separate deceptive-marketing action, not this race file. This auto action named African-American and Hispanic borrowers; it did not name Asian/Pacific Islander borrowers.
The Cookout read
Mixed. Who pays more to finance the car is a bread-and-butter civil-rights question, and the agencies put $18 million on it. Restitution is not generosity. The bank’s ordered markup caps sit in the same consent-order package. This file will not relabel $18 million in damages as a racial-equity donation, and it will not treat a consent order as a jury’s verdict.