Sotomayor, J., concurring
inconsistent state laws while exempting state consumer protections that are “greater than the protection provided by [the FDCPA]”). Today’s opinion leaves Congress free to make clear that the FDCPA fully encompasses entities pursuing nonjudicial foreclosures and regulates security-interest enforcers like repossession agencies in only the more limited way addressed in §1692f(6). That too would be consistent with the FDCPA’s broad, consumer-protective purposes. See §1692(e).
Separately, I note that the Court’s opinion recognizes that the question before us involves “no more than the kind of security interest enforcement at issue here,” ante, at 2, which means an entity that takes “only steps required by state law,” ante, at 14. The Court rightly notes, therefore, that nothing in today’s opinion is “to suggest that pursuing nonjudicial foreclosure is a license to engage in abusive debt collection practices like repetitive nighttime phone calls; enforcing a security interest does not grant an actor blanket immunity from the Act.” Ante, at 13–14. Indeed, in addition to the unnecessary and abusive practices that the Court notes, I would see as a different case one in which the defendant went around frightening homeowners with the threat of foreclosure without showing any meaningful intention of ever actually following through. There would be a question, in such a case, whether such an entity was in fact a “business the principal purpose of which is the enforcement of security interests,” see §1692a(6), or whether it was simply using that label as a stalking horse for something else.
Because the Court rightly cabins its holding to the kinds of good-faith actions presented here and because we are bound to apply Congress’ statutes as best we can understand them, I concur in the Court’s opinion.
