Editor’s Note: on, a day after this story went to press, the Oklahoma tribe and its chairman filed an appeal in Connecticut state court friday.
Connecticut recently slammed the entranceway on an Oklahoma Indian tribe’s tries to ply needy residents with ultra-high-interest “payday loans” via the web, a move who has opened a brand new portal to the legal debate over whether or perhaps not Indian tribes must follow state consumer-lending rules.
In another of their last functions before retiring as state banking commissioner, Howard F. Pitkin on Jan. 6 granted an opinion that tagged as baseless claims because of the Otoe-Missouria tribe and its own tribal president so it has “tribal sovereignty” to grant loans for under $15,000 with interest of 200 per cent to 450 per cent, despite the fact that such personal lines of credit violate state legislation.
As well as if their operations that are paydayn’t appropriate in Connecticut, the tribe’s “sovereign resistance,” they allege, shields them from $1.5 million in civil charges and a couple of cease-and-desist purchases their state levied against it and their frontrunner. The tribe claims Connecticut’s along with other states’ consumer-protection rules cannot bar it from pursuing enterprises that generate income and jobs for tribal people.
It really is, based on one Connecticut banking division official, the very first challenge that is tribal of state’s consumer-lending statutes. Continue reading