NORTH CAROLINA BANKING INSTITUTE Volume 4 | Issue 1 Article 23 2000 The ommC unity Reinvestment Act & Credit Unions C. Blythe Clifford Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncbi Part of the Banking and Finance Law Commons Recommended Citation C. B. Clifford, The Community Reinvestment Act & Credit Unions, 4 N.C. Banking Inst. 607 (2000). Available at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/ncbi/vol4/iss1/23 This Comments is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Banking Institute by an authorized administrator of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Community Reinvestment Act & Credit Unions I. INTRODUCTION Banks and credit unions have been waging a war since the birth of credit unions. One of the most recent issues in this war involved whether credit unions should be regulated by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA).1 The issue was spawned by the last major battle between banks and credit un- ions, one that centered around a challenge by several banks to the National Credit Union Administration's (NCUA) interpretation of the "common bond" requirement for membership in a federal credit union.2 The statute requires a common bond of occupation or association or, alternatively, limits membership to "groups within a well-defined neighborhood, community, or rural dis- trict."3 The NCUA interpreted the "common bond" rule so as to allow several unrelated employer groups to be members of a sin- gle credit union.4 The Supreme Court sided with the banks, mak- 1.