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Bank Runs and Social Media
Wednesday, May 1, 2024

In this post from 14 years ago, I speculated as to whether California Financial Code Section 1327 was constitutional.  Two years later, the California Court of Appeal declared the statute unconstitutional.   Summit Bank v. Rogers, 206 Cal. App. 4th 669 (2012).  See  Court Declares Bank Trash Talk Statute Facially Unconstitutional.  

In a recently published article, Adjunct Professor of Law Eric J. Spitler discusses the Summit Bank opinion at some length and posits:

Perhaps reflecting agreement that the “modern constitutional requirements” described in Summit Bank no longer support these kinds of statutory restrictions on speech, some other states have repealed their bank slander statutes in recent years. (footnote omitted)

Yelling "Fire" in the Financial Theater: Bank Runs in the Social Media Age and the Threat to Financial Stability, 28 N.C. BANKING INST. 1 (2024).  Section 1327, however, remains on the books (as does a sister statute, Financial Code Section 14051, pertaining to credit unions).  

In any event, Professor Spitler does not see tougher bank slander statutes as the answer:

As is clear from the operational and constitutional defects of the bank slander statutes, the government will not be able to prevent misinformation or disinformation on social media from threatening financial institutions even if there were the political will to pursue that approach.

Instead, he argues for "taking steps to shore up the banking system and the deposit insurance scheme" thereby hardening banks against the blasts of misinformation and disinformation in social media.  With the very recent failure of Pennsylvania's Republic First Bank, Professor Spitler's argument is especially timely.

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