{"id":164009,"date":"2025-08-21T14:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164009\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T14:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:46:09","slug":"court-ends-ameris-bank-redlining-order-after-bank-was-accused-of-denying-loans-to-jacksonville-minority-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164009\/","title":{"rendered":"Court ends Ameris Bank redlining order after bank was accused of denying loans to Jacksonville minority residents"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.<\/strong> \u2013 Less than two years after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland came to Jacksonville to announce a settlement with Ameris Bank over redlining allegations, a federal judge quietly terminated the consent order in the case, the Jacksonville Daily Record reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

RELATED | <\/b>Ameris Bank accused of \u2018redlining,\u2019 discouraging, denying loans to Black, Hispanic residents of Jacksonville<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Atlanta-based Ameris Bancorp disclosed the termination in its quarterly report filed Aug. 8 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard approved the termination on May 20 after the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to end it, but the dismissal was not previously announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn support of this motion, the United States advises the Court that Ameris Bank has demonstrated a commitment to remediation,\u201d the Justice Department said in its motion to dismiss filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division.<\/p>\n

Garland announced the consent order in October 2023, alleging Ameris \u201cengaged in a pattern or practice of redlining predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Jacksonville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garland said Ameris Bank engaged in the practice of redlining<\/a>, where lenders deny, discourage or avoid providing loans in neighborhoods because of the race, color or national origin of the people living in those neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

The DOJ alleged that the bank located its branches in specific areas of Jacksonville to serve majority-white neighborhoods and to avoid serving Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. This included failing to open even a single branch in a majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhood in Jacksonville, despite having opened 18 full-service branches in other parts of Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

In another example, Garland said that in 2020, Ameris sent out a \u201cfree checking mailer\u201d that the bank said was targeted to low-and moderate-income areas in majority-minority neighborhoods. Ameris mailed over 22,000 postcards with images of white models to 13 ZIP codes in Jacksonville. Not one postcard was sent to a single resident in a majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhood, Garland said.<\/p>\n

Ameris denied the allegations but said it agreed to the settlement to avoid litigation.<\/p>\n

Under the consent order, Ameris agreed to several provisions to improve its practices in Jacksonville, and the Justice Department said in its motion to dismiss that the bank has complied.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmeris Bank has disbursed the full amount of the loan subsidy fund ($7,500,000) as required,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Under the terms of the settlement, Ameris said it would provide $7.5 million in mortgage loan subsidies over a five-year period in majority Black and Hispanic Census Tracts in Jacksonville. The bank said it will also commit, for the same five-year period, $900,000 for focused advertising and outreach and $600,000 for community development partnerships providing services related to credit, financial education, homeownership, and foreclosure prevention.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmeris Bank is substantially in compliance with the other monetary and injunctive terms of the Consent Order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ameris has been headquartered in Atlanta since moving its executive offices from Jacksonville in 2019.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Less than two years after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland came to Jacksonville to announce…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,8314,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-164009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-duval-county","10":"tag-fl","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115067301614555232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}