Your bank isn’t supposed to judge your beliefs. The administration just proved some did.

For years, Americans who lost their bank accounts over their beliefs were told they were imagining things. Banks sent form letters. Customer service read from scripts. Nobody would say why. The federal regulator that oversees the nation’s largest banks recently confirmed what many of us have argued all along: politicized debanking was real, it was widespread, and it can easily happen again.

President Trump issued an executive order in 2025 to address politicized debanking. To carry it out, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency spent months examining the nine largest national banks it oversees. The OCC reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints, hundreds of individual bank decisions, and about 420,000 pages of internal bank documents. The result is an extensive report called “Debanked: Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans.” It found that these banks used broad “reputation risk” policies, with no clear standards and no objective, risk-based criteria, to “disadvantage” Americans because of their political, religious and social views. Debanking also hit businesses that offended the progressive sensibilities of bank employees, like those in the oil and gas, coal, and firearms industries.

As an attorney, I read a lot of corporate policies. Most are dull. These were troubling. One bank told employees to scrutinize “controversial clients,” and it listed “religious leaders” among them. Banks treated the opinions of “advocacy groups,” “activist groups,” and “elected officials” as factors in deciding whom to serve. Some relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hyper-partisan and deeply discredited........

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