Federal Reserve Must Face Bank Suit over Credit Card Fee Rules

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke lost a bid to end a bank lawsuit challenging the legality of forthcoming rules limiting the amount of money the largest U.S. banks can collect for debit card transactions, Bloomberg New reported today. U.S. District Judge Lawrence L. Piersol in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, yesterday denied the U.S. government's request to throw out the case filed last year by TCF National Bank. He also rejected the bank's request to block the regulations and allowed the case to move forward while Congress debates the issue. TCF bank, a unit of Wayzata, Minnesota-based TCF Financial Corp., sued Bernanke and the Fed's Board of Governors in October challenging the legislation appended to last year's Dodd-Frank financial regulation overhaul bill. The provision, sponsored by Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois and known as the Durbin Amendment bars banks with more than $10 billion in assets from collecting from retailers more money per debit-card transaction than the actual cost of providing that service.

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