CT ruffles tribal feathers with online pay day loan ban
Editor’s Note: on, a day after this story went to press, the Oklahoma tribe and its chairman filed an appeal in Connecticut state court friday.
Connecticut recently slammed the entranceway on an Oklahoma Indian tribe’s tries to ply needy residents with ultra-high-interest “payday loans” via the web, a move who has opened a portal that is new the appropriate debate over whether or otherwise not Indian tribes must follow state consumer-lending legislation.
In another of their last acts before retiring as state banking commissioner, Howard F. Pitkin on Jan. 6 granted an opinion that tagged as baseless claims because of the Otoe-Missouria tribe and its own tribal president so it has “tribal sovereignty” to grant loans for under $15,000 with interest of 200 per cent to 450 per cent, and even though such personal lines of credit violate state legislation.
And also if their operations that are paydayn’t appropriate in Connecticut, the tribe’s “sovereign resistance,” they allege, shields them from $1.5 million in civil charges and a set of cease-and-desist sales hawaii levied against it and their frontrunner. The tribe claims Connecticut’s along with other states’ consumer-protection guidelines cannot bar it from pursuing enterprises that generate earnings and jobs for tribal people.
It’s, in accordance with one Connecticut banking division official, the very first challenge that is tribal of state’s consumer-lending statutes.
