The Clearing House (TCH), joined by the ABA and the ICBA, filed an amici brief in connection with Builders Bank v. FDIC, a case on remand from the Seventh Circuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which raises the question of whether judicial review is available for CAMELS ratings. 

The brief emphasizes the narrowness of the exception in the APA for the availability of judicial review, the significance of CAMELS ratings to the industry, and thus, the importance to the industry of the availability of judicial review for CAMELS ratings in certain instances to serve as a check on the banking agencies’ assignment of such ratings. Among other instances, the brief argues that judicial review is available where an agency has made factual or computational errors, for violation of some separate legislative or regulatory mandate, where CAMELS ratings are based on a constitutionally impermissible ground or are so irrational as to operate as a “sport of chance.”