Redlining

In a new book, Mehrsa Baradaran argues that the same forces of poverty that African-American banks were supposed to alleviate are now holding them back.

Efforts to repeal a Dodd-Frank mandate for lenders to report data on small-business applicants — including race and ethnicity — overlook the benefits of the provision to both communities of color and banks.

While the courts have affirmed cities’ right to file predatory lending suits, they are also now holding them to a much higher standard in proving that banks knowingly steered minority borrowers into high-cost home loans.

The city joins a growing list of municipalities that have filed similar lawsuits, just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities have standing to sue lenders under the Fair Housing Act.