In Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Frederick J. Hanna & Associates, P.C., Judge Totenberg rejected a debt collection law firm’s constitutional challenge under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine and the equal protection doctrine to the CFPB’s authority to bring claims against it.  As to the latter, the District Court found no equal protection violation for placing debt collection law firm’s clients on different footing in having access to the Courts than the clients of any other law firm.  The District Court found that the CFPB adequately stated a claim for an absence of “meaningful involvement” in the law firm’s filing of multiple lawsuits on behalf of its clients, despite the fact that “meaningful involvement” is a judicially created doctrine not mentioned in the FDCPA.  The District Court allowed the CFPB’s claim that the law firm’s affidavits filed with the collection lawsuit were “robo-signed” could proceed.  The District Court also rejected the CFPB’s “no limitations period” statute of limitations argument, but said that likely a 3-year period applied.  A copy of the decision can be found here.