District Court Refuses ABA Request for Preliminary Injunction against IRPS 99-1

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 10, -- The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today refused the American Bankers Association's request for a temporary injunction to block the NCUA's new chartering and field of membership regulation, IRPS 99-1.

The ABA filed the lawsuit against the National Credit Union Administration shortly after the regulation took effect on January 1, 1999. The rule implements the provisions in Title I of the Credit Union Membership Access Act of 1998. That bipartisan legislation, referred to as CUMMA, was passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Clinton on August 7, 1998.

In her strongly worded 52-page decision, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly concluded that "without any probability of prevailing on the merits, the Plaintiffs' purported injuries, no matter how compelling, do not justify preliminary injunctive relief.

"The Court's decision today against the ABA is good news for NCUA and for America's credit unions and their members," commented NCUA Chairman Norman E. D'Amours. "We can only hope that the banking industry now will cease their constant harassment of credit unions, and turn their attention to providing quality, low-cost, credit union-like service to their own customers," D'Amours said.

The culmination of this decade-old legal assault by the banking industry may finally be nearing a close. A final ruling on the merits of this latest lawsuit, American Bankers Assn et al., v National Credit Union Administration et al., could come by fall 1999. In the interim, credit unions are free to continue affiliating new groups and enrolling new members under the guidelines adopted in IRPS 99-1.