Guilty! "Obama Sued Citibank to Force it to Make Bad Loans"

"...look at what some fellow bloggers have dug up while researching Obama’s legal career. Looks like a typical ACORN lawsuit to get banks to hand out bad loans."

Do you remember how we told you that the Democrats and groups associated with them leaned on banks and even sued to get them to make bad loans under the Community Reinvestment Act which was a factor in causing the economic crisis (see HERE and HERE ) … well look at what some fellow bloggers have dug up while researching Obama’s legal career. Looks like a typical ACORN lawsuit to get banks to hand out bad loans.

In these lawsuits, ACORN makes a bogus claim of Redlining (denying poor people loans because of their ethnic heritage). They protest and get the local media to raise a big stink. This stink means that the bank faces thousands of people closing their accounts and get local politicians to lobby to stop the bank from doing some future business, expansions and mergers.

If the bank goes to court, they will win, but the damage is already done because who is going to launch a big campaign to get the bank’s reputation back?It is important to understand the nature of these lawsuits and what their purpose is. ACORN filed tons of these lawsuits and ALL of them allege racism.

Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982.

Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.

U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo certified the Plaintiffs’ suit as a class action on June 30, 1995. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 322 (N.D. Ill. 1995).

Also on June 30, Judge Castillo granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of a sample of Defendant-bank’s loan application files. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 338 (N.D. Ill. 1995).

The parties voluntarily dismissed the case on May 12, 1998, pursuant to a settlement agreement.

Plaintiff’s Lawyers Alexis, Hilary I. (Illinois) FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Childers, Michael Allen (Illinois) FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Cummings, Jeffrey Irvine (Illinois) FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Obama, Barack H. (Illinois) FH-IL-0011-7500 | FH-IL-0011-7501 | FH-IL-0011-9000

Excerpt from: Media Circus at: http://www.mediacircus.com/2008/10/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/

The court's ruling advanced Obama's argument parphrased here:

If a community bank is in an area with a lot of poor people who could never qualify for a real mortgage, and most of those people are black, then the bank is racist and has to give them mortgages anyway.

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Below is the actual court ruling that certified all blacks seeking a mortgage as a "class" in a class action lawsuit against the banks - which is devastating to the defendant bank:

In this case, the sole legal theory underlying Plaintiffs' claims is that Citibank's alleged redlining policy, coupled with its discriminatory pattern of denying home loans to African-American applicants, violates the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Plaintiffs' constitutional rights under the Thirteenth Amendment.

Citibank opposes certification on the basis of typicality by arguing that:

[e]ach decision to grant or deny a mortgage loan application depends upon a myriad of individual facts including income, existing credit obligations, credit history, employment history, the amount of financing being sought, and the value of the property being financed. Proof that Citibank allegedly applied its lending criteria in a discriminatory fashion to one applicant would not establish that any other rejected applicant was qualified to receive a loan under Citibank's lending criteria or that Citibank discriminated in applying its lending criteria to that applicant.

See Def.'s Opp. at 9. In particular, Citibank argues that neither injunctive nor compensatory relief can be fashioned for an entire class “absent a challenge to a particular Citibank underwriting criteria.” Id. According to Citibank, without such a challenge, the Plaintiffs' cannot prove discrimination, because the “plaintiffs must demonstrate that their claims are based upon the same core of factual allegations such that proof of one plaintiff's claims would establish the bulk of the elements of each class member's claims.” See Citibank's Suppl.Mem. at 3-4 (citing Allen, 828 F.Supp. at 553).

Once again, Citibank misses the point. It is the allegedly discriminatory subjective application of Citibank's neutral underwriting criteria as a whole that may have adversely impacted the class. Plainly, the named plaintiffs' claims arise out of the same alleged course of conduct giving rise to the claims of the other class members. Although Citibank may ultimately prove that they did not engage in a pattern of race discrimination by rejecting African-Americans' applications for home loans, the determination of whether the named plaintiffs are typical class members for purposes of class certification does not depend upon resolving the merits of this case. The typicality requirement is satisfied because the named representatives' claims have the “same essential characteristics” as the potential class, i.e., they were African-Americans who were allegedly denied home loan based upon their race or the racial composition of their neighborhoods.FN14

FN14. In fact, Citibank's argument that different types of underwriting criteria may have been applied to applicants based on an “individualized treatment of the [applicant's] circumstances,” see Citibank's Suppl.Mem. at 5, simply lends credence to Plaintiffs' theory that the neutral underwriting criteria were being applied to the class members with considerable subjectivity. If the statistical evidence shows that the class members were given “individualized treatment” based on “circumstances” related to their race or the racial composition of their neighborhoods, then Plaintiffs' claims may be valid.

Loaning standards were lowered, then utterly obliterated, because of these race-hustlers—they SAID they were an anti-redlining effort, but it was all really an anti-white, communist strategy to collapse our capitalist economy by overwhelming and overloading it with aggressive, unrelenting demands for emtitlements and “equality.”

“Diversity” quotas in mortage lending were enforced, and just as our educational, industrial, cultural, and intellectual institutions are collapsing under the strain of lowered/non-existent standards due to the pandemic affirmative-action zeitgeist, so has the housing industry and our entire economy.

Do NOT believe what ACORN and CNN and “moderates” from either party say about it all.

It was a campaign of financial affirmative-action blackmail and shakedowns, and if we as a nation don’t grow a spine and a pair, we will continue to cower, grovel, and kow-tow to the minorities that seek the EEOC—Eventual Elimination Of Caucasians.

That’s still the problem with McCain ‘taking the gloves off’ even on Fannie and Freddie. The big deal isn’t just Obama’s taking donations—everyone’s heard that about both sides for years.

It is going to 1) Congress forcing the banks to make bad loans and Fannie and Freddie to take them, 2) all of the ACORN pressure on banks and policy makers, and 3) both Obama’s role in that in the ACORN case back to 1995 and his serving as a ‘trainer’ for them.

Now that all the ACORN corruption is coming out is the time to make that link. Otherwise, they are still really letting Obama off the hook. Too many weak swings at the guy are counterproductive.

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