The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) allows consumers to dispute the validity or accuracy of information in their credit reports and gives them three options for doing so. A consumer may file a “direct” dispute with the entity that furnished the allegedly false or inaccurate information to a consumer reporting agency (CRA). Or, that consumer can file an “indirect” dispute with the CRA, which can pass the dispute onto the furnisher for further investigation. As a third option, a consumer can file both direct and indirect disputes.

Recently, in Ingram v. Experian Information Solutions, No. 21-2430 (3d Cir. Oct. 2, 2023), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit tackled the question of whether furnishers, when faced with a potentially frivolous indirect dispute, have the same discretion under the FCRA to decline to investigate that kind of dispute as they have to decline to investigate a potentially frivolous direct dispute. The court, in a straightforward statutory interpretation opinion, held that the FCRA did not give furnishers that same discretion because the statute’s language did not provide it.

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