Kathleen Bankhead, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated v. Wintrust Financial Corporation and Barrington Bank & Trust Co., N.A.

Summary

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois grants Defendants’ motion to dismiss Plaintiff Kathleen Bankhead’s Second Amended Complaint. The court holds that the complaint does not plausibly allege intentional discrimination or a causal connection between specific lending policies and alleged racial disparities under the ECOA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982, or the FHA. The court also dismisses the state-law claims and terminates the civil case with prejudice.

Holdings

1. A plaintiff alleging a class-wide pattern or practice of intentional race discrimination based on uniform lending policies must plead sufficient factual detail to make the asserted discriminatory policy and discriminatory animus plausible; statistics showing disparate outcomes, without facts connecting those outcomes to discriminatory intent, are insufficient. Bankhead's allegations did not state a plausible intentional-discrimination claim.
2. To plead disparate impact, a plaintiff must identify a specific policy or practice, allege a statistical disparity affecting a protected group, and plausibly allege a causal relationship between the policy and the disparity; under the FHA, the challenged policy must also be artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary. Statistics alone, even statistics controlling for objective factors, do not state a plausible disparate-impact claim.
3. After dismissal of all claims supporting federal jurisdiction, the usual practice is to relinquish supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the Second Amended Complaint plausibly alleged intentional race discrimination under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1982, and the Fair Housing Act.
2. Whether the Second Amended Complaint plausibly alleged disparate-impact discrimination under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.
3. Whether the court should retain supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law claims after dismissing all federal claims.

Disposition

dismissed