On October 22, 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ), in partnership with the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPB) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), announced a new initiative to combat discriminatory mortgage lending practices, or redlining (initiative). In connection with the initiative, the DOJ also announced a settlement resolving redlining allegations against Trustmark National Bank.

Redlining, the process by which financial institutions deny services to individuals in a neighborhood because of the race or national origin of the people who live in those communities, is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

The initiative will be led by the DOJ’s Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division and will:

Announcing the initiative, Attorney General Merrick Garland indicated that it "represents the department's most aggressive and coordinated enforcement effort to address redlining" and "we will spare no resource to ensure that federal fair lending laws are vigorously enforced and that financial institutions provide equal opportunity for every American to obtain credit."

The Attorney General also announced the initiative's first settlement reached with Trustmark National Bank (Trustmark) to resolve redlining allegations. The underlying complaint alleged that from 2014 to 2018, Trustmark engaged in unlawful redlining in Memphis, Tennessee by avoiding predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods because of the race, color, and national origin of the people living in, or seeking credit for properties in, those neighborhoods. The complaint alleged that Trustmark’s branches were concentrated in majority-white neighborhoods, bank loan officers did not serve the credit needs of majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, bank outreach and marketing avoided those neighborhoods, and the bank's internal fair-lending policies and procedures were inadequate to ensure that the bank provided equal access to credit to communities of color. Under the proposed consent order, Trustmark will: