28 State AGs File Amicus Brief with Supreme Court in Debt Collection Case

State Issues Courts Debt Collection FDCPA State Attorney General U.S. Supreme Court

On February 24, the New Mexico Attorney General, along with 27 other states and the District of Columbia, announced that his office had joined in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court supporting the plaintiff in Henson v. Santander. As previously covered in Infobytes, the defendant argued below—and the Fourth Circuit agreed—that the FDCPA did not apply to a consumer finance company that purchased and then sought to collect a debt in default on its own behalf because it was not a debt collector as defined in the statute. In their amicus brief, the attorneys general  oppose the Fourth Circuit holding and argue that any “company that regularly attempts to collect defaulted debt that it has purchased is a ‘debt collector’ as the FDCPA defines [the] term,” and therefore, the obligations and restrictions of the FDCPA should apply. The Supreme Court set oral arguments for April 18 of this year.