Payday Lending: Boon or Boondoggle for Tribes?

Early in the day this week, the Washington Post published a piece that is fascinating the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a little indigenous American tribe that fundamentally went in to the pay day loan business in a search for much-needed financing for tribal federal federal government. But exactly what this article doesn’t point out is the fact that some supposedly “tribal” payday loan providers aren’t really run by—or for the power of—an real tribe.

Indigenous American tribes are sovereign nations plus in some circumstances are resistant from obligation under state legislation.

It’s the vow of the crazy West free from government legislation and away from reach associated with the civil justice system which has attracted loan providers towards the “tribal sovereign” model.

An increasing wide range of privately-controlled businesses are affiliating by themselves with tribes in order to make use of the tribes’ sovereign immunity from state law—a trend that threatens the legal rights of both tribes and customers. Public Justice is representing borrowers victimized by unlawful pay day loans and dealing to reveal these “rent-a-tribe” plans and make sure that lenders is held accountable once they break regulations. Continue Reading