Michigan Debt collection Law Preempted again by the Feds?

In USA Today, an article reports that the House of Representatives is expected to vote next week a bill that would prevent you, as the consumer from freezing your credit report. Freezing one’s credit report is the process of suspending further entries into your credit bureau in the event that your identity is stolen.


The laws in 17 states allow a consumer to freeze one’s credit bureau in such a situation. The bill known as Financial Data Protection Act of 2006 would make it more difficult to freeze one’s bureau. One would have to file a police report or take other action to show that indeed, one’s identity was stolen.
Proponents believe that credit issues are of national importance and that it is necessary to have uniform laws across the country to govern these issues. They may be right. Afterall, we have several other credit laws that govern credit issues as well such as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act. Natually, some states representatives are complaining that this law further erodes state’s rights. I believe the benefit of a federal uniform law would greatly benefit the credit industry and the consumer.
If the states do not care for this law, they may pass individual laws that are more stringent that the federal law and then, pre-emption would not be an issue. For example, Michigan has the Michigan Collection Practices Act which is more stringent than the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Michigan Act is thus not pre-empted by the FDCPA. While the FDCPA naturally applies here in Michigan, the Michigan version of this statute has given our state a little more control and provided a few more rights to the consumer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 and is filed under Debt Collection Laws - Federal . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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