A federal judge in Philadelphia has denied the Justice Department\u2019s request to prematurely end a settlement agreement it reached with a Pennsylvania bank it had accused of redlining in and around Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s request was in line with other Justice Department moves across the country under the Trump administration to end similar fair-housing and antidiscrimination settlement agreements.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Justice Department accused ESSA Bank & Trust<\/a>, based in Stroudsburg, of avoiding lending in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.<\/p>\n The bank denied the government\u2019s accusations but entered into a settlement agreement<\/a> in which the bank would give more than $2.9 million in loan subsidies to homebuyers in formerly redlined communities. The bank also agreed to take steps to work with homebuyers in neighborhoods it was accused of ignoring.<\/p>\n Last month, the Justice Department asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to allow it to end its five-year agreement<\/a> three years early.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: The Justice Department wants to end an agreement it reached with a Pa. bank it accused of redlining in Philly<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n In a decision filed Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson rejected the government\u2019s argument that ESSA Bank had substantially complied with the agreement.<\/p>\n The bank\u2019s \u201cpartial satisfaction\u201d of the settlement agreement \u201cdoes not achieve its purpose \u2014 to remedy ESSA\u2019s previous discriminatory lending practices and promote equal access to mortgage credit to prevent future discrimination,\u201d Baylson wrote.<\/p>\n He said enforcement of the legal agreement must continue for its remaining three years.<\/p>\n Baylson said the agreement \u201cdirectly advances the goals of federal antidiscrimination law, delivers tangible benefits to the people of Philadelphia, and promotes the public interest in the finality and integrity of judicial remedies.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to the Justice Department\u2019s motion last month to end the agreement early, the National Fair Housing Alliance<\/a> and local civil rights organizations joined the case and argued that cutting short the legal agreement with ESSA Bank would eliminate \u201chard-won protections\u201d and leave Philadelphians vulnerable to discrimination.<\/p>\n The Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center<\/a> and the law firm Stapleton Segal Cochran LLC<\/a>, which has offices in Philadelphia and Marlton<\/a>, represented the National Fair Housing Alliance, the nonprofit Housing Equality Center of Pennsylvania<\/a>, and POWER Interfaith<\/a>, the Pennsylvania faith-based community organizing network.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a victory for the West and Southwest Philadelphia communities who fought hard for these protections just two years ago,\u201d Rachel Wentworth, executive director of the Housing Equality Center, said in a statement released Thursday. \u201cFor decades, banks of all kinds have used redlining to deny neighborhoods of color access to wealth and opportunity, and this ruling signals that lending discrimination will not be tolerated in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n The Justice Department said in its motion requesting an early end to the agreement that ESSA Bank \u201chas demonstrated a commitment to remediation,\u201d including disbursing required loan subsidies, and is \u201csubstantially in compliance\u201d with other terms of the court order.<\/p>\n But Baylson noted that during oral arguments this week, the civil rights organizations \u201cemphasized that a risk-averse institution like ESSA is unlikely to continue complying with the terms of a terminated\u201d agreement.<\/p>\n And, Baylson said, \u201cESSA\u2019s counsel admitted uncertainty as to whether ESSA would maintain those activities.\u201d<\/p>\n The bank did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Philadelphia has denied the Justice Department\u2019s request to prematurely end a settlement agreement it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":91669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,60835,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-91668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-essa-bank-trust-redlining-settlement-philadelphia-doj","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","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\/114914517596886753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91668","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=91668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}