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Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.1 Introduction

Blind and visually impaired recipients face unique challenges in navigating an EBT system. One way to accommodate these special needs is to provide an alternative to EBT benefits delivery. Allowing blind state cash assistance recipients to opt out of EBT and receive a paper check instead may be the best accommodation possible, although an opt-out is possible only for state benefits. Accommodations for blind and visually impaired recipients should include specialized training and training materials as well as mechanical accommodations to ATM and POS equipment.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.2 Training and Written Materials for the Blind and Visually Impaired

All training and other written EBT materials, whether provided at the time of training or during the ongoing use of the EBT system, should be available in alternate formats that are accessible to blind and visually impaired recipients. These include Braille documents, large-print versions, and oral recordings. Videotaped materials used in EBT training or support should include full narration to describe the material being presented.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.3.1 Nature of the problem

Issues particular to blind and visually impaired recipients arise in the everyday use of an EBT system. With paper food stamp coupons, as with paper currency from a cashed assistance check, many blind and visually impaired recipients could devise personal systems for differentiating the coupons or bills. For example, a visually impaired individual may horizontally fold all $10 bills while vertically folding $20 bills or keep all coupons of a particular denomination in the front wallet pocket and another denomination in the wallet’s back pocket.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.3.3 Access to account balances

Blind and visually impaired recipients should have an accessible means of acquiring account balance information. Typically, this information is found either on the EBT transaction receipt or the ATM screen. Neither of these formats is accessible for blind and visually impaired recipients, who will have to depend on a store clerk, a stranger at an ATM, or some other third party to read this information off the machine’s screen or the printed receipt. This limits the recipient’s autonomy and encourages fraud or theft of benefits.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.5.1 Training

Certain modifications must be made to the state’s standard training program to accommodate deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired recipients. For recipients who communicate through sign language, the most effective approach is to have a sign language interpreter available in local public assistance offices, either at all times or on a set schedule.246

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.6 Mentally Ill Recipients

Recipients with mental illness may have difficulty keeping track of the EBT card and remembering the PIN.254 In the event of a lost card or forgotten PIN, replacement services should be simple to access and prompt. The state should also consider the special needs of recipients with mental impairments when applying a limit to the number of replacement cards allowed per recipient.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.7.1 Introduction

States should also have procedures for issuing cards and materials to homeless recipients. If the state issues EBT cards and PINs through the mail, homeless recipients should be permitted to pick up the card, PIN, and EBT materials at local offices instead. A mail-only policy that does not allow recipients to pick EBT cards up at local offices presents a serious problem for eligible recipients who have no mailing address at which to receive the EBT card and materials. As discussed below, such a policy is likely unlawful, violating three different food stamp requirements.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.7.2 Mailing Address Cannot Be Eligibility Requirement for Food Stamps

According to USDA Food Stamp regulations, “[t]he State agency shall not require an otherwise eligible household to reside in a permanent dwelling or have a fixed mailing address as a condition of eligibility.”256 By requiring applicants to provide a mailing address to which an EBT card will be sent, the state effectively makes a mailing address a condition of eligibility in violation of federal law.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.8 Obtaining Benefits Through Group Living Facilities and Homeless Meal Providers

USDA has granted waivers to numerous states and the District of Columbia that permit group living facilities and homeless meal providers to act as retail food establishments. This allows group living facilities and homeless meal providers to deposit recipients’ food stamp benefits directly into the facility’s financial institution through the use of on-site POS equipment. Then the facility can make food purchases directly from its own bank account rather than from each recipient’s individual EBT account.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.9 Functionally Illiterate Recipients

Because of the mandatory EBT delivery system, recipients face a literacy requirement that was not present with paper coupons. Reading the prompts on an ATM or POS device to negotiate an electronic debit of funds or reading a transaction receipt or account transaction history requires greater reading skills than signing and cashing a paper check.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.10 Meeting Non-English Speakers’ Special Needs

In order for program instructions, training materials, and customer service lines to be accessible to all recipients, they should be made available in multiple languages. The SNAP regulations set standards for when states must provide program information and certification materials in languages other than English, as well as bilingual staff or interpreters.264

Collection Actions: 2.3.9.2 The Client

An important consideration in the decision whether to take the case is the client. Is the client likely to stay in touch throughout the whole length of the case, or is the client likely to lose interest and fail to attend a critical hearing? Are the client’s expectations unreasonably high, indicating it may be difficult to conclude the case to the client’s satisfaction?

Collection Actions: 2.3.10 Client Intake Checklist

This checklist provides information that the attorney should obtain in the first client interview or through other means. The checklist is also available online as companion material to this treatise (see under Practice Tools).

Client Information

Collection Actions: 2.4.1 Introduction

Whether or not an attorney takes a consumer’s case, the attorney can offer basic advice concerning minimizing the impact of the debt collector’s postjudgment remedies. This advice will have immediate utility if a default or other judgment has already been entered and can also educate the consumer as to the stakes involved in defending a collection action pro se, as well as the steps to take to avoid the worst consequences of losing the case.

Collection Actions: 2.1.5 Reason #5: Alleviation of Emotional Distress

Being sued can be extremely upsetting for some clients, particularly older and vulnerable consumers. Some may never have been sued in their whole lives and can become very distressed over a suit, even for a relatively minor debt. That distress can have medical consequences, which can be accentuated when the consumer cannot obtain legal representation to explain to them what is happening and to defend the consumer’s interests.

Collection Actions: 2.1.9 Reason #9: Development of Expertise and a Name in the Community

Attorneys report very good results representing consumers in collection actions, particularly those brought by debt buyers. Many attorneys build on this success to develop expertise defending against collection actions. That capability in turn enhances one’s reputation as a consumer attorney among judges, other attorneys, and the community at large, thus leading to increased referrals of other collection cases and also other consumer law matters.

Collection Actions: 2.9.2.2 Settlement Language Requiring the Debt Collector to Completely Remove Disputed Debt from the Credit Report

A settlement of the debt can include a provision requiring the collector to seek to clean up the consumer’s credit report. Reproduced below is a sample settlement provision that requires the creditor to withdraw the entire report of the disputed debt. This withdrawal is sometimes referred to as a “hard delete.” The credit record will then be altogether silent about the debt and will not even provide a basis for another creditor, interested in the creditworthiness of the consumer, to inquire further. This approach is often the simplest solution for the consumer and the safest.

Collection Actions: 2.9.2.3 Settlement Language Requiring Debt Collector to Withdraw Only Adverse Information from the Credit Report

Sometimes the consumer wishes to keep information about an account in the credit report to show a history of payments and only wishes to delete adverse information supplied about the account. To accomplish this goal, the settlement provisions must carefully delineate what information cannot be furnished to an agency because it might be construed unfavorably to the client. Relevant sample settlement language is found below.

Collection Actions: 4.2.1 Introduction

This section focuses on three forms of evidence collectors commonly use: the consumer’s admissions, affidavits, and business records. This section provides merely an overview of the subject as it relates to collection actions. It does not replace a thorough knowledge of a state’s rules of evidence. The discussion should also be supplemented with review of general treatises on evidence.

Collection Actions: 4.2.4.5 The Consumer’s Discovery As to the Affiant’s Knowledge

When the collector brings a summary judgment motion and appends business records and an affidavit to authenticate them, the consumer may wish to question whether the affiant has sufficient knowledge as to how those records were created and kept. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d) and comparable state rules allow the consumer to ask the court to allow discovery of these facts. Nevertheless, the court has discretion whether to allow such discovery and, in any event, deposing an out-of-state affiant may be expensive.