Not without a fight
On any given day there’s always the temptation to talk about whatever Donald Trump has forced the headline issue of the day to be. Often times it’s an outright necessity, as you have to try to put out the biggest fire that he’s set. But it’s important to periodically take a step back and focus on the big picture issues that Trump and his henchmen are hoping you won’t focus on.
By now we all know that the Trump right wing cry against DEI is merely code for wanting a return to racist and sexist hiring practices. It’s profoundly difficult to figure out how to be against something that literally stands for “diversity, equality, and inclusion,” but these creeps have done it. And it turns out the whole anti-DEI stance wasn’t merely the usual Republican scapegoating of women and minorities in order to win an election. Now that Trump is in power, he’s trying to make it the law of the land.
There’s a law called the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 which, among other things, prohibits lenders from discriminating against unmarried or divorced women. It’s why women were able to start getting home loans and credit cards. The fact that you don’t hear much about the ECOA these days is evidence that lenders know better than to try to defy it in anything approaching blatant fashion. The ECOA is also what prevents banks from discriminating on a racial basis. It’s a really important law that, until we entered this psychotic Trump era, was thought to be settled law.
But now Trump has issued an executive order which, among other things, specifically calls for the ECOA to be reevaluated. The reason to do this would be to make it so banks can start denying loans and credit cards to women, which would make them more financially beholden to men. And Trump is trying to make this happen.
I want to be clear that Trump’s executive order carries no legal weight. Why? Because the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 is a law, passed by Congress, and a President can’t just magically override it by issuing a proclamation. In reality executive orders have a very narrow legal scope. It’s why the courts end up partially or fully overturning most major executive orders that are issued.
So no, Trump’s executive order isn’t going to go anywhere, at least not in terms of a straight line. Banks are still legally bound by the ECOA, and it’s hard to imagine they’d be stupid enough to start breaking the law just because Trump announced that the law doesn’t exist. The banks don’t want to have to pay the legal piper later when Trump is gone and the rule of law returns, along with fines and prosecutions for breaking laws like the ECOA.
But as we all know, this kind of thing is a slippery slope. This month Trump is declaring that women and minorities shouldn’t have the equal right to get a bank loan. If unchallenged, next month Trump will make some even more egregious declaration that further challenges women’s rights and minority rights. Trump is just hoping we won’t notice as he ratchets up his attack on laws like the ECOA, while he distracts us with things like tanking the economy and wrecking world relations.
In other words, we have to focus on this kind of thing. We have to make it important, because it is important. So let’s all take a moment this Sunday morning to remind ourselves that Trump’s attacks on women’s rights, and minority rights, and LGBT rights, and immigrant rights, go way beyond the abhorrent rhetoric that comes out of his mouth. He and his ilk really are hoping to take these groups’ most basic rights away. But we’re not going to let it happen on our watch – not without a fight.
