Supreme Court Declines CashCall’s Petition Ending 12 Year Battle With The CFPB

The Supreme Court has declined to review CashCall’s petition, so a more than $134 million restitution award in favor of the CFPB is now final, effectively ending the agency’s 12‑year fight over CashCall’s tribal‑lending scheme.

What just happened

• On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied CashCall’s cert petition in CashCall, Inc. v. CFPB, leaving in place the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision affirming the district court’s order that CashCall pay over $134 million in legal restitution.

• This means the CFPB can now collect that restitution for affected consumers and the long‑running enforcement action is effectively over, aside from mechanics of collection and distribution.

Case background in a nutshell

• CashCall funded, purchased, serviced, and collected high‑rate online installment loans nominally made by Western Sky Financial, a lender tied to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, with APRs reportedly as high as 343 percent.

• Loan agreements had tribal choice‑of‑law clauses, but courts found the tribe’s involvement was “economically nonexistent” and held CashCall was the true lender, using tribal law only to evade state usury and licensing laws, rendering the loans void or uncollectible in numerous states.

• The CFPB sued under the CFPA’s UDAAP provisions; the district court found CashCall and its CEO liable, and the Ninth Circuit later confirmed liability, held the conduct reckless from at least September 2013, required reassessment of penalties at a higher tier, and instructed the lower court to reconsider restitution.

The money and remedies

• On remand, the district court awarded approximately $134 million in legal restitution to compensate consumers, using CashCall’s net revenues from the unlawful loans as the measure of unjust gains rather than net profits.

• The court also imposed civil penalties (earlier reported as bringing total monetary relief to around $167 million when combined with restitution), and held CashCall’s CEO personally liable for CFPA violations.

• The Ninth Circuit upheld the restitution methodology and rejected CashCall’s arguments that the CFPB’s funding mechanism violated the Appropriations Clause, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case leaves those rulings intact.

Why it matters for small‑dollar and tribal models

• The decisions reinforce that “rent‑a‑tribe” structures where a non‑tribal company bears the economic risk and uses tribal law solely to escape state rate caps are highly vulnerable, and courts may disregard tribal choice‑of‑law clauses and apply borrowers’ home‑state usury laws instead.

• The rulings also underscore that: (1) non‑banks can be deemed the true lender even when a tribal or other front entity is named as creditor; (2) restitution can be measured by consumer loss/net revenues without offsetting the lender’s costs; and (3) constitutional attacks on CFPB structure and funding, when raised late, are unlikely to rescue defendants from long‑running enforcement judgments.

Quick comparison: key milestones