The Hayride
By: Roger Villere

In Louisiana, we know our businesses and families do best when Washington doesn’t meddle in our state’s affairs. Limited government interference and free market principles allow our state to thrive, and the evidence speaks for itself: This year, Louisiana entered the top ten states for doing business for the first time, thanks to pro-growth policies and President Donald Trump’s efforts to rein in an abusive federal bureaucracy.

Under former President Joe Biden, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a sweeping and illegal “open banking” rule known as Section 1033. This rule would have counteracted Louisiana’s free market values by mandating that banks hand over consumers’ financial data to data middlemen free of charge and allow them to continue accessing that data as often as they’d like, for any reason, including their personal profit. It was a textbook example of how Washington had lost its way.

Fortunately, earlier this year, the Trump administration correctly determined that Section 1033 was unlawful and that the CFPB had overstepped its authority. They weren’t alone in that judgment. A federal judge with decades on the bench has agreed, noting that the CFPB failed to consider the impact of its “open banking” mandate on Americans’ data security.