In this alert, Winston’s Financial Services Industry Group takes a closer look at the OCC’s new stance on disparate impact liability and its implications for the financial services industry.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced on July 14, 2025, that it will cease supervising banks for disparate impact liability, instructing its examiners to “no longer examine for disparate impact.”[1] Accordingly, OCC examiners will not request, review, conclude on, or follow up on matters related to a bank’s disparate impact related risk, risk analysis, or assessment processes or procedures.[2] The OCC also removed references to disparate impact liability from its fair lending examination manual. 
This policy shift follows President Trump’s April 2025 executive order mandating the elimination of disparate impact liability across federal agencies and claiming that disparate impact liability forces companies to “engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.”[3] Given the Trump administration’s approach, the OCC’s policy shift is unsurprising. But the change means financial services companies should reconsider how they evaluate and address disparate impact risk, not only from the perspective of this revised federal regulatory lens, but also with the understanding that state attorneys general and private litigants will continue to pursue disparate impact claims as long as such claims remain legally viable. 
What does this mean to you and your clients? 

On Friday, July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (the OBBB), making permanent many of the tax provisions enacted under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and enacting many of the policy objectives of the Trump administration.  The following discussion summarizes at a high level some of the more significant consequences of the OBBB to the wind and solar industry—specifically, to the tech-neutral investment and production tax credits for solar and wind projects under Sections 45Y and 48E (the PTC and ITC, respectively) of the Internal Revenue Code (the Code).  The IRS and Department of the Treasury are also expected to issue additional guidance and regulations to interpret the OBBB.  Among other expected areas of additional guidance, on July 7, 2025, the Trump White House released Executive Order “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources” (the BOC EO), announcing its specific intention to cause Treasury to issue new guidance relating to the Beginning of Construction rules applicable under the ITC and PTC.On Friday, July 4, 2025, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (the OBBB), making permanent many of the tax provisions enacted under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and enacting many of the policy objectives of the Trump administration.  The following discussion summarizes at a high level some of the more significant consequences of the OBBB to the wind and solar industry—specifically, to the tech-neutral investment and production tax credits for solar and wind projects under Sections 45Y and 48E (the PTC and ITC, respectively) of the Internal Revenue Code (the Code).  The IRS and Department of the Treasury are also expected to issue additional guidance and regulations to interpret the OBBB.  Among other expected areas of additional guidance, on July 7, 2025, the Trump White House released Executive Order “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable, Foreign Controlled Energy Sources” (the BOC EO), announcing its specific intention to cause Treasury to issue new guidance relating to the Beginning of Construction rules applicable under the ITC and PTC.