Consumer Rights - Legal Action Chicago

For people who are living in poverty or have been deprived of the opportunity to create financial security, a financial crisis or consumer fraud or debt collection can strip them of their resources, putting them at risk of homelessness, job loss, and/or the inability to meet their most basic needs. Families need opportunities to make progress, buy decent goods and services at fair prices, access reasonable credit, and build wealth for their children and grandchildren. Legal Action strives to make these opportunities a reality for all Illinoisans.

Our Values:

Everyone should have the opportunity to create and maintain financial security. Illinoisans should be able to access fair and helpful credit and financial services and should not be subjected to fraud or predatory practices.
Our consumer protection system must ensure that debt collection policies and practices do not turn financial problems into financial crises.
Ensuring that everyone has a fair opportunity to create wealth (especially through home ownership) and pass it on to future generations is a critical step on the path to addressing and eliminating the racial wealth gap.

To learn more about some of our current Consumer initiatives, click below.

Legal Action is working on a project to improve legal protections against harmful debt collection practices. Even before the pandemic, debt collectors aggressively used the courts to strip wealth from working families—particularly families of color— who were struggling with debt. By taking steps to shield additional wages, amounts in bank accounts, and other assets from seizure by debt collectors, Legal Action aims to prevent these harmful practices and the continued widening of the racial wealth gap.
Debt collectors file massive numbers of cases in local courts and win most of them by default when the debtors do not appear to contest the case. Many of these claims are based on sketchy evidence, are beyond the statute of limitations, or have other flaws that would be revealed if they were subject to analysis by a court. Legal Action is working to improve court procedures to reduce the numbers of defaults and increase the accountability of debt collectors.
Legal Action is working to reduce the barriers low-income families often encounter in transferring homes from one generation to the next. For example, a City of Chicago policy prevents families from recording a property deed if the property has unpaid water bills. This policy can cause the loss of family assets and contribute to the racial wealth gap. Legal Action is advocating for an ordinance that would change the City’s practice and help protect what is often a family’s most important and valued asset.

In another initiative to promote home ownership and inheritance, Legal Action is researching the possibility of a new program in Illinois that would allow the heirs of a homeowner whose property is of modest value and who died without a will to become owners of the home without the significant time and expense of formal probate proceedings that act as a barrier to the transfer of ownership.
Legal Action filed its first class action lawsuit on behalf of clients Tracey Calhoun and Venancio Orozco, both of whom lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic and fell behind on their car payments. Then, their cars were remotely disabled by Chicago–based Overland Bond & Investment Corporation by activating “kill switches” previously installed by its car dealer partner Car Credit Center. These kill switches prevented the cars from starting and rendered them useless, causing the vehicles to sit idle for years while losing value. State law prohibits such conduct, and deprives consumers of what is often their only mode of transportation, and therefore their only way to sustain jobs that allow them to pay their bills.

In addition to this pending class action lawsuit, Legal Action Chicago is exploring remedies at the state and federal level. In September 2022, Legal Action submitted a regulatory comment to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that it formally regulate – and limit – the use of kill switch devices in debt collection nationwide.
Legal Action Chicago supports environmental justice efforts and their intersection with economic justice efforts in the communities served by legal aid organizations, and everywhere across Illinois. In doing so, it is committed to three sets of fundamental principles: Energy Equity, Openness and Integrity, and Accountability.
- Energy Equity: We recognize that poor communities, particularly communities of color, have been historically harmed by polluted air and water while being asked to shoulder a heavy and often disproportionate burden of rising utility bills. As such, Legal Action Chicago supports efforts to identify and remediate the adverse human and environmental harms that pollution causes, move Illinois towards a carbon-free future, avoid racially disparate billing and collection practices, and keep utility bills affordable for all.
- Openness and Integrity: A just regulatory system requires open access to information and the ability for the public to have their thoughts and concerns heard in in an open, timely manner. It also requires honesty and trust—between the public and regulators, between the public and utilities, and among all stakeholders.
- Accountability: Legal Action Chicago believes that our state’s public utilities must operate with transparency and accepting responsibility for their actions. This means showing leadership and courage; providing ample public information; admitting mistakes; and working collaboratively with stakeholders to keep utility costs affordable for vulnerable citizens.
Legal Action Chicago works with partner organizations in Chicago and across Illinois to identify opportunities to assist low-income utility customers. In September 2022, Legal Action – in collaboration with the National Consumer Law Center, the Citizens Utility Board, and Community Organizing and Family Issues – submitted comments to the Illinois Commerce Commission on proposed regulations that would exempt low-income customers from having to provide security deposits or pay late fees to utilities. In doing so, Legal Action and its allies are seeking to broaden the regulations as much as possible to ensure that every Illinois consumer who could qualify for these new protections will qualify. Read our submission to the Illinois Commerce Commission here.

In 2023, Legal Action Chicago also participated in three utility rate proceedings in front of the Illinois Commerce Commission. In the Nicor Gas Company and Peoples Gas / North Shore Gase cases, Legal Action intervened on its own behalf in order to advocate that the companies be required to adopt an effective “low-income discount rate” for consumers living in poverty, along with a more modest fixed “customer charge.” In the Commonwealth Edison case, Legal Action Chicago represents Illinois Public Interest Research Group in its efforts to stop the company from obtaining historically high – and unfair – profits that would transfer wealth from citizens to shareholders of the utility’s corporate parent.

On November 16, 2023, the Illinois Commerce Commission ordered both Nicor and Peoples Gas / North Shore Gas to implement Legal Action Chicago’s proposed low-income discount rate program, and froze the companies’ customer charges in place. On December 14, 2023, the Commission also ordered the downstate Illinois gas utility Ameren to adopt a discount program virtually identical to Legal Action’s Nicor and Peoples Gas proposals. That same day, the Commission also significantly cut the size of Commonwealth Edison’s proposed profit margin for the four years of its multi-year rate plan, saving its customers tens of millions of dollars. View media coverage of these historic decisions here and here.