Congress urged to make political debanking protections permanent after OCC report
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a report on Oct. 17 concluding that the nation’s nine largest banks denied or limited services to lawful customers for political reasons.
The investigation, launched under President Donald Trump’s Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans executive order, found evidence of discrimination at JPMorgan Chase’s payment‑processing subsidiary, PNC Bank and Wells Fargo. The OCC documented that JPMorgan Chase closed accounts belonging to Trump‑merchandise sellers and a nonprofit described by staff as “right wing” and “religious.” PNC denied credit to a growing media company whose conservative owners expressed views contrary to the bank’s stated “beliefs/values.” Wells Fargo pressured a payment processor to shut a religious nonprofit’s account because the group opposed same‑sex marriage, even though the processor found no rule violations.
Regulators removed the “reputation risk” category from supervisory oversight earlier this year, a move the OCC described as a “good first step.” The category, added in 1995, allowed banks to weigh potential public backlash alongside financial risk, effectively opening a door for political discrimination. Critics say the removal alone is insufficient because future administrations could reinstate the standard.
“Americans should have access to financial services regardless of their beliefs, affiliations or political views,” Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould said in the report. “Fair access to financial services is not a mantra – it is a mandate.” The OCC reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints and examined roughly 50,000 documents spanning about 420,000 pages from the nine banks under its supervision.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R‑ND) echoed the report’s findings, telling Newsmax that the discriminatory practices have driven up financing costs for politically disfavored industries such as oil, natural gas and coal. He urged congressional action to cement protections into law, warning that a future administration could reverse the recent regulatory changes.
The editorial accompanying the report argues that allowing banks to deny services based on political expression violates the First Amendment and threatens democratic participation. It calls on Congress to prohibit federal banking regulators from using reputation risk as a supervisory category, making the ban permanent and insulating it from political swings.
The next step, according to lawmakers, is drafting legislation that would enshrine the OCC’s new standards into statutory law, ensuring that no individual or organization is denied basic banking services because of protected political or religious beliefs.
