Philadelphia’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo over allegations the company’s allegedly discriminatory lending practices damaged the city is too much of a stretch to proceed, the company has argued as part of its effort to dismiss a type of action that was only recently sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In mid-May, Philadelphia city government lawyers sued the national lending company, alleging it violated the Fair Housing Act by targeting minority borrowers with high-risk and high-interest loans. The suit was the first that a city lodged against a financial institution since the Supreme Court’s May 1 decision in Bank of America v. City of Miami and Wells Fargo v. City of Miami, which established that municipalities have standing to sue banks over allegedly discriminatory lending practices.
