CT ruffles tribal feathers with online loan ban that is payday
Editor’s Note: On Friday, on a basis that is daily this story went along to press, the Oklahoma tribe and its own president filed an appeal in Connecticut state court.
Connecticut recently slammed the entranceway for an Oklahoma Indian tribe’s attempts to ply needy residents with ultra-high-interest “payday loans” via the net, a move that features exposed a portal this is certainly brand new the debate that is appropriate whether or simply maybe not Indian tribes must follow state consumer-lending laws.
In another of their final functions before retiring as state banking commissioner, Howard F. Pitkin on Jan. 6 provided a viewpoint that tagged as baseless claims due to the Otoe-Missouria tribe in addition to its tribal president this has “tribal sovereignty” to grant loans at under $15,000 with interest of 200 per cent to 450 per cent, even though such individual personal lines of credit violate state legislation.
In addition to if their operations which are paydayn’t appropriate in Connecticut, the tribe’s “sovereign resistance, » they allege, shields them from $1.5 million in civil fees and a collection of cease-and-desist demands their state levied against it and their frontrunner.