ABA Asks Full Appeals Court to Void NCUA's FoM Rule Posted by AVCU on 10:01 AM

As reported in CU Times, the American Bankers Association (ABA) is asking the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a panel’s decision that the NCUA had the power to expand its Field of Membership rules.

A three-judge panel of appeals court judges said, in dismissing much of the ABA’s challenge of the rule, that the agency did not violate federal law when it allowed an expansion of those rules.
In that ruling, the judges said that the NCUA has broad authority in issuing rules governing fields of membership.

However, the court also ruled that the NCUA must better explain the part of its rule stating that credit unions may serve core-based statistical areas without serving the area’s urban core.

NCUA Chairman Rodney Hood has said that the agency will propose a rule that clarifies that section of the rule and that public comment will be solicited on it.

In its request, filed Friday October 4, the ABA said that the judges upheld the NCUA’s interpretation of “local community.”

“Under this expansive interpretation, large regions covering tens of thousands of square miles and narrow strips of land connecting cities hundreds of miles apart automatically qualify” as local communities, the trade group said.