Civil Rights Today: The Landmark Case of Adkins et. al. v. Morgan Stanley

22.10.12

Civil Rights Today: The Landmark Case of Adkins et. al. v. Morgan Stanley: Originally posted by Equal Justice Society.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Morgan Stanley in what may become the most important civil rights case in a generation. If successful, the implications of this suit are profound and the impact could be staggering, both in addressing the damages suffered by devastated communities as a result of predatory lending triggering the foreclosure crisis and the symbolic importance of framing these damages as civil rights violations.

Too often, the story of the foreclosure crisis is told as a story of the failure of communities of color and individuals who signed loans they could not afford rather than the story of how sophisticated financial institutions and their investors preyed on these communities to earn billions by deliberately pushing bad loans. And, until now, there has been very little done to address the harms suffered by these communities. And where the government has acted, it has sued banks, not the secondary market, on grounds of fraud rather than civil rights violations.