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 group, to flag customers for cancellation. As if that weren’t enough, the SPLC itself now faces criminal indictment on charges that include money laundering and making false statements to a federally insured bank.

A JPMorgan-owned payment processor closed the account of an organization described as a “[r]ight wing religious conservative non profit,” and a bank employee later scrubbed the words “right wing” and “religious” from the records. The same processor shut down an account raising money for a devout Christian’s legal challenge to an anti-discrimination law. PNC turned down a growing media company for a line of credit after an employee wrote that its owners held opinions “very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values.”

TD flagged a faith-based healthcare sharing ministry because its religious requirements appeared to “conflict with TD’s values of diversity and inclusion.”That should worry everyone, whether or not you share the views or faith of those being targeted today. A bank that can cut off your neighbor for his views can cut you off for yours.

For-profit businesses suffered too, and small businesses are especially vulnerable. Big companies can weather storms. But for a small business, losing the ability to make payroll or pay bills for even a few weeks can be ruinous. The bank practices identified in the OCC report don’t reduce risk. They protect large incumbents and push out smaller competitors.

Many debanked customers never learned the real reason. The report found that closure letters often just cited the bank’s right to close an account “for any reason and at any time.”My colleagues and I have seen this firsthand. In 2023, Bank of America closed the accounts of Indigenous Advance, a Memphis-based Christian charity that serves orphaned and vulnerable children in Uganda, along with a local church that supports it.

The bank’s letters used the same boilerplate language the OCC flagged: that the ministry was “operating in a business type we have chosen not to service” and no longer “aligns with the bank’s risk tolerance.”The report’s most important warning concerns the future. Banks have revised their policies, but some have simply relabeled reputation risk as “franchise” or “brand” risk. The OCC says it cannot say with confidence that current policies will keep banks from returning to these practices, and no bank has fully and publicly acknowledged its past debanking decisions.

Trump’s executive order declared that no American should be denied financial services because of protected beliefs, affiliations or political views, and it set this OCC report in motion. But executive orders and regulators change with administrations. Laws passed by legislatures provide durable protection.

That’s why the states matter. Tennessee, Idaho and South Carolina have passed legislation to protect consumers from discriminatory debanking. These bills were based on Alliance Defending Freedom models. The report found that state laws like these likely pushed many banks to rethink their industry-based restrictions. Other states should follow their lead. They should require banks to give customers specific reasons when they are cut off, prohibit decisions based on protected speech, religious exercise, or engagement in a lawful business, and give harmed Americans a real legal remedy.

Large banks benefit from wide-ranging government support, including greater lending power, FDIC insurance rates, subsidies, bailouts, and an anticompetitive chartering system. In return, they owe every American fair treatment. Your bank account should depend on measurable financial risk, not on your faith or your politics.

Jeremy Tedesco is senior counsel and senior vice president, global censorship at Alliance Defending Freedom(@ADFLegal).