St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

Professor Jeff Sovern was quoted in four media outlets in the past few weeks. On February 16, Politico’s Morning Money Newsletter, ran the following:

Jeff Sovern

SHOULD TRUMP HEAR FROM CONSUMER GROUPS? — St. John’s University law school’s Jeff Sovern emails: “You reported today that the president ‘will participate in a listening session with the Retail Industry Leaders Association and member company CEOs.’ You have reported a number of sessions in which the president met with CEOs. When will he hold a listening session with consumer advocates? The people who help the ordinary Americans the president pledged to work for during the campaign.”

Bloomberg BNA’s February 24 article, Chastened FTC May Foretell Future of CFPB, explained:

Jeff Sovern, a consumer law professor at St. John’s University in New York and a CFPB supporter, favors the decisiveness a single director can provide. “A commission structure like the FTC”—currently down to two commissioners in office—“increases the likelihood of gridlock,” he told Bloomberg BNA.

In a February 17 article headlined Facing Trump, CFPB Picks Up Enforcement Pace, Law360 reported:

[T]he more the CFPB puts itself in the public eye, the more grist it creates for its opponents, according to St. John’s University Law School professor Jeff Sovern.

“A countervailing pressure might be the knowledge that a slip-up could be used to tarnish the bureau in the unforgiving environment in Congress. That would tend to push people to measure twice before cutting once,” Sovern said.

And that, too, will play a role in the fight to come.

On February 13, Pacer Monitor’s piece, Challenges to Consumer Debt Regulations Have Legal Scholars on High Alert, provided Sovern’s comment about the Supreme Court’s forthcoming Fair Debt Collection Practices Act decision in Henson v. Santander Consumer USA:

“That’s an important issue because debt buyers buy and collect on many debts and if they are not subject to the FDCPA, they may be able to avoid liability for certain conduct prohibited by the statute,” Jeff Sovern, professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law writes said via email. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would still have the power to proceed against debt buyers under its power to prohibit deceptive, unfair and abusive practices, and state statutes may prohibit some conduct, but the debt collection landscape would change dramatically if the Court were to rule that the FDCPA doesn’t apply to debt buyers. Consumers could no longer sue debt buyers for violating the FDCPA.”

Posted on March 7, 2017 at 10:29 pm in Uncategorized   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL