Justices are siding with car-title lenders in their fight to keep key aspects of their business a secret.
The Supreme Court of Virginia is siding with the state’s largest car-title lenders — TitleMax, LoanMax and Fast Auto Loans — in their legal case to keep details about their business secret. The Center for Public Integrity tried to get documents outlining how many cars these companies repossess, for example, but state regulators denied the request. State Senator Scott Surovell represented the center in court.
“The actual aggregate data is reported, and it’s not clear to me why getting individual data from individual car-title lenders would for some reason prejudice anybody unless they’ve got something to hide.”
Surovell says justices ruled on a technicality, leaving the law ambiguous. Virginia legal expert Rich Kelsey says that’s a quintessentially Virginia ruling, leaving the lawmaking to lawmakers.
“So he’s right, it’s a technicality. But the net result of it ironically is that it’s up to the legislature to go back and clear this up."
The car-title lending companies argued that they shouldn’t be forced to hand over the documents because they include personal financial information. The court never got around to determining if TitleMax was a person or not because they ended up throwing the case out without examining the merits.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
