The question is motivated originates from: Trump sues Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase for alleged 'political' account closures
If a bank wanted to stop doing business with anyone / any organization, I WOULD speculate that discrimination based on race / gender, or the like would be running afoul of the law. Assuming that said debanking was of "woke" origin, what exactly precludes a bank from discriminating based on being "woke"?
What exactly would this statute be?
From the suit:
Florida has prohibited financial institutions from terminating their banking relationship with an individual or a business based on their political opinions, speech, or affiliations.
There are other more general allegations, but your question is about the political aspect, which would be unlawful under Florida law.
This site does not like answers that move from statements of fact about laws into why lawsuits are brought or how the law is used in ways other that its stated purpose. But I submit the purpose of this lawsuit is not to remedy damages. I submit that it would not be difficult at all to show that the "de-banking" was done due to civil or criminal practices by the plaintiff, which are a matter of public record. In addition, plaintiff will not be willing to show financial records to show actual harm.
My prediction is that the suit will be settled, similar to ABC and CBS lawsuits, with an agreement of what to JPMC is a nominal fee payment to some Trump-controlled entity. It will not be settled in court on its merits.
florida law generally prohibits financial institutions from engaging in "unsafe and unsound practices" when determining whether they will provide or deny services to customers. Fla. St. § 655.0323.
That statute includes a list of practices explicitly designated as unsafe and unsound, including discriminating against a customer or potential customer on the basis of their "political opinions, speech, or affiliations" or their "religious beliefs, religious exercise, or religious affiliations."
To the extent Trump is relying on this law, though, I think his lawsuit could be in trouble:
Refusing service based on prohibited discrimination is illegal. There are several laws that determine what would be considered "unfair" or "discriminatory" action. The ABA has a list in their article on this topic:
Congress gave the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the ability to prohibit “unfair” acts or practices in or affecting commerce, a term that Congress would later give a precise statutory definition. And for more than 50 years, Congress enacted a series of civil rights laws to protect consumers from invidious discrimination on the basis of specific characteristics and in specific contexts, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (employment), the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (housing), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 (credit), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (disability). Most recently, in 2010, Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and gave it authority nearly identical to that of the FTC to prohibit “unfair” acts or practices by covered persons or service providers offering or providing consumer financial products and services. Congress separately authorized the CFPB to implement two specific antidiscrimination laws, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).
None of those would likely apply to this lawsuit.
There may also be state laws that banks may need to comply with. The lawsuit was brought in a local state court in Florida, even though at least two of the plaintiffs are not at all related to Florida (and neither are the defendants, at least not the individuals).
However, this particular lawsuit is likely going to either resolve in a "settlement", similarly to many other lawsuits Trump brought against various companies in his personal capacity, or dismissed because the law in Florida the complaint refers to only went into effect in 2024, way past the timeline outlined in the complaint (2021).
Notice that despite naming the plaintiff as "President Donald Trump", it is the individual Donald Trump that's suing, not the POTUS in his official capacity. Trump alleges that Chase decided to drop him due to his politics, but on the other hand Chase is claiming that it's due to the potential liability. Given the lengthy record of criminal and civil convictions in various cases related to fraud and financial irregularities of the plaintiff, it sounds like a very plausible explanation. Similarly, the $5B in damages would need to be proven, for which the plaintiff would need to present evidence and testify under oath. I see no reality in which Donald Trump discloses his financials or testifies under oath.
Discrimination in the provision of services is (with some exceptions) prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 if the discrimination is based on any of 9 "protected characteristics" which are:
"Belief" is definied in the Act as
10(2) Belief means any religious or philosophical belief and a reference to belief includes a reference to a lack of belief.
So it means a particular philosophical belief or a lack of a particular philosophical belief.
The legal test for what constitutes a philosophical belief for the purposes of the Act was set out in the case of Grainger v Nicholson
I shall endeavour to set out the limitations, or criteria, which are to be implied or introduced by reference to the jurisprudence set out above:
(i) The belief must be genuinely held.
(ii) It must be a belief and not, as in McClintock, an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.
(iii) It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour.
(iv) It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
(v) It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others
The last point was the subject of the appeal in the case of Forstater v CGD Europe and it was held that point (v) covers a very broad spectrum.
In our judgment, it is important that in applying Grainger V, Tribunals bear in mind that it is only those beliefs that would be an affront to Convention principles in a manner akin to that of pursuing totalitarianism, or advocating Nazism, or espousing violence and hatred in the gravest of forms, that should be capable of being not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Beliefs that are offensive, shocking or even disturbing to others, and which fall into the less grave forms of hate speech would not be excluded from the protection.
The above cases are in the employment context rather than in the case of provision of services but the same definition in the Equality Act 2010 applies to both. For costs-shifting reasons, employment claims are much more common than provision of service claims, and there are therefore more employment cases which reach an appeal court.
So, in general, debanking someone because they have some particular philosophical belief, or debanking someone because they do not have some particular philosohical belief, will give rise to civil liability in England and Wales and Scotland.
The legislation includes discrimination based on perception so if a bank perceives a customer to have, or to lack, a particular philosophical belief and debanks them for that reason, they also incur civil liability. It also covers discrimination based on association - i.e. debanking someone because they associate with, or are thought to associate with, third parties who have, or are perceived to have, or to lack, a particular philosophical belief (see For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers at [249]).
Although "woke" is not a precise term, it is likely that most "woke" beliefs would be philosophical beliefs (as defined by the Grainger test) so that debanking someone because they have, or are perceived to have, a "woke" belief would be unlawful discrimination.
What happens more often in practice is that an institution debanks someone because they are perceived not to be "woke" in some respect and then the bank is commonly described as being "woke" for adopting that general approach. This would also be unlawful discrimination - discrimination based on the customer's lack of a particular philosophical belief as it is perceived to be based on their actions and/or public utterances.
The question title refers to "politics or the like" and this raises the question of whether it is unlawful discrimination to debank someone merely because they belong to a particular political party.
It is reasonably clear that in the unlikely event that an institution debanked someone simply because they were a member of some middle-of-the road political party which is noted for nothing much in particular except perhaps opportunism (such as, some might say, the Liberal Democrat Party when led by Nick Clegg) they would not incur liability under the Equality Act 2010. But in practice that must be very rare.
When a instituation debanks a customer based on politics, in practice it will usually be because the institution has a "woke" approach of not tolerating anyone whose politics is perceived to be not "woke" in some particular respect. So the reason for the treatment will typically be because the customer does not have a certain philosophical belief or is perceived not to have a certain philosophical belief, or is believed to have a certain philosophical belief or associates with others who are so perceived. That perception could arise because of the words of the customer, their actions, and/or from their associations - for example because they belong to a particular party which is known for espousing a particular belief meeting the Grainger criteria.
One of the features of politics in Britain (and the USA and France and no doubt elsewhere) in recent years is a certain polarisation. There is a tendency for those whose political opinions are on the "Left" to characterise those on the "Right" as "Far Right" and a willingness for those on the Right to characterise those on the "Left" as crypto-Marxist. So I would opine that in the vast majority of cases of political or 'woke' debanking the unfavourable treatment is based on the perception that the debanked customer holds, or does not hold, a philosophical belief meeting the Grainger criteria (or associates with others meeting that description), and would therefore fall foul of the Equality Act 2010.
Note: The specific lawsuit filed by President Trump, the ABC News report of which prompted the question, appears to be based not on anti-discrimination laws as such but on a slightly different basis. The concept of wokeness referred to in the Complaint appears to be not so much that President Trump was discriminated against because he himself is not "woke" but rather that he was debanked because he is a Conservative and that to debank people based on their political affiliation is a "woke" thing for the bank to do, and this allegation of woke debanking action by the bank (which is alleged to be widespread and not limited to President Trump) supports the claim of a violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and a breach of contract claim.
