Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), consumers can sue a consumer reporting agency (CRA), like Experian, Equifax or TransUnion, or a furnisher of credit reporting information, like a  credit card company or a mortgage company, for failing to reasonably investigate or correct false information about a consumer they publish (for CRAs) or report to CRAs (for furnishers). In most FCRA cases, the CRAs and furnishers involved are private companies, so there is no question they can be sued under the statute.

But what happens when a consumer brings a claim under the FCRA against a furnisher that is a federal government agency, claiming the agency violated the statute? Is that agency protected from liability by the federal government’s sovereign immunity?