Cuomo v. Clearing House Ass'n, LLC
The Court ruled that a federal banking regulator's rule blocking states from enforcing their own consumer-protection laws against national banks went too far, because the National Bank Act only bars states from acting as bank regulators, not as ordinary law enforcers in court.
The decision draws a line between a state 'supervising' a national bank (which only the federal government can do) and a state suing a national bank in court to enforce a general law (which states can still do), while barring New York's attorney general from bypassing courts entirely by issuing his own subpoenas.
“We can discern the outer limits of the term “visitorial powers” even through the clouded lens of history.”
The majority's basis for limiting deference despite acknowledging some ambiguity in the term.
How it got here: A federal trial court enjoined New York's attorney general from pursuing the banks; the Second Circuit affirmed; the attorney general asked the Supreme Court to review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
New York's attorney general sent letters to several national banks asking, "in lieu of subpoena," for nonpublic information about their lending practices, suspecting violations of state fair-lending laws. The federal bank regulator (the Comptroller of the Currency) and a banking trade group sued to block the request, arguing that a federal regulation shielded national banks from this kind of state action entirely.
The question before the Court
Could New York's attorney general use a federal banking regulation loophole to demand records from national banks and threaten to sue them over fair-lending violations?
Why it matters
State attorneys general keep the power to sue national banks in court over violations of state consumer-protection and fair-lending laws, subject to normal court procedures and discovery rules. But they cannot sidestep courts by issuing their own investigative subpoenas directly to national banks, preserving a zone of exclusive federal oversight over banks' day-to-day operations.
What changes now
The case is a final merits decision, not a remand for further fact-finding. The injunction against New York's attorney general is affirmed insofar as it blocks him from issuing his own investigative subpoenas to national banks, but vacated insofar as it barred him from filing lawsuits in court to enforce state law. State attorneys general elsewhere can now pursue judicial enforcement actions against national banks under similar reasoning.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not decide whether any particular state fair-lending law actually applies to national banks or whether the banks violated it. It also does not give states back the power to inspect bank records or conduct examinations outside of ordinary court-supervised lawsuits.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Thomas
“At common law, all attempts by the sovereign to compel civil corporations to comply with state law—whether through administrative subpoenas or judicial actions—were visitorial in nature.”Thomas's central historical objection to the majority's narrower reading of visitorial powers.
Justice Thomas agreed that the regulator's construction of 'visitorial powers' deserved deference under Chevron but disagreed with limiting that deference. He argued the term was genuinely ambiguous and that history supports a broader reading under which a state's judicial enforcement of general laws against banks — not just examinations — can count as a visitorial power. He would have upheld the regulator's rule entirely, including its bar on enforcement lawsuits, and affirmed the Court of Appeals in full.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied Chevron deference, the doctrine under which courts defer to a federal agency's reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute it administers, but only within the outer bounds the statutory text can bear.
- The Court read the historical meaning of 'visitorial powers' at the time the National Bank Act was passed in 1864, finding that it described a sovereign's supervisory oversight of a corporation's affairs — things like examinations and inspections — as distinct from the separate power to enforce laws in court.
- Applying that history, the Court concluded the regulator's own rule stretched too far by treating a state's ordinary law-enforcement lawsuits as if they were an exercise of supervisory 'visitorial' power, when the two have always been treated as different in the Court's precedents.
- The Court found further support in the statute's own carve-out preserving powers 'vested in the courts of justice,' reasoning that this exception would be meaningless unless it was meant to protect ordinary judicial lawsuits from the visitorial-powers ban.
- The Court then evaluated the specific conduct at issue: the attorney general's request 'in lieu of subpoena' was not a court filing but a threat to issue his own investigative subpoena, which the Court treated as an exercise of supervisory-type power rather than ordinary law enforcement in court.
- Because the threatened subpoena was not judicial action, the Court held it fell within the statute's ban, while a genuine lawsuit filed in court would not.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms First Nat. Bank in St. Louis v. Missouri (263 U. S. 640)
The Court relies on this 1924 case as consistent authority distinguishing a sovereign's visitorial oversight from its power to enforce law in court.
Distinguishes Watters v. Wachovia Bank, N. A. (550 U. S. 1)
The Court says Watters addressed a different question (subsidiary oversight) and does not control this case's issue.
Reaffirms Guthrie v. Harkness (199 U. S. 148)
The Court relies on this case's distinction between private shareholder suits and public visitorial supervision.