CFPB Empowers States to Bring ‘Complementary’ Enforcement Cases

State attorneys general and financial regulators can bring enforcement actions against companies and individuals even if the CFPB is engaged in its own action against the same entity, the federal agency said Thursday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an interpretive rule outlining state powers to enforce federal consumer financial laws. The rule includes a provision confirming that states can bring “complementary enforcement activities.”

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act expressly prohibits the CFPB and the Federal Trade Commission from bringing independent enforcement actions against the same entity at the same time. But the law makes no such express limitation on state ...