Four current and former Wells Fargo employees, who are Hispanic, have alleged in a San Antoniio federal lawsuit that they and Spanish-speaking customers were discriminated against by the bank. Customers use ATMs in April at a Wells Fargo Branch in California.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
San Antonio Express-News
Patrick Danner, Staff writer
Four current and former Wells Fargo Bank employees have filed a potential class-action lawsuit alleging the bank discriminated against them and its Spanish-speaking customers.
In a complaint filed last week in San Antonio federal court, the plaintiffs allege Wells Fargo forced them to offer predatory lending options to Spanish-speaking customers. The plaintiffs also say the bank refused to allow them to join a pilot program that let mortgage consultants earn commissions regardless of their actual sales. Only employees who solely spoke English were permitted to join, they say.
The suit seeks unspecified economic and noneconomic damages as well as punitive damages. It estimates the size of the class at more than 20.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson had no immediate comment.
The named plaintiffs and class representatives are Raul Garcia, Patty Mora, Miguel Ramirez and Kevin Hinojosa. Each is from Mexico. They and at least seven others filed a charge of discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission either in October or March, the suit says.
The EEOC issued a “Determination and Notice of Rights” to the four plaintiffs in April and June, allowing them to proceed with a lawsuit. Allison Hartry, a lawyer representing them, declined to comment Thursday.
Costlier option
The plaintiffs allege that Wells Fargo management last fall created a mandatory program that directed bilingual sales consultants to steer Spanish-speaking customers away from home equity lines of credit — which have no closing costs — and into refinancing because the closing costs typically ranged from $5,000 to $10,000. The employees were instructed not to disclose the closing costs, they say in their complaint.
The workers say they “expressed concern about this direction” because most of the customers served by the bilingual team have lower education levels and Wells Fargo refused to provide them Spanish-language materials. The bank “brushed these concerns off,” the suit says. As a result, some customers were later surprised to discover they had been charged “substantial closing costs.”
The complaint accuses Wells Fargo of “institutional racism and discrimination toward its Hispanic customers,” adding that it extends to members of the bank’s bilingual team.
Wells Fargo’s refusal to allow members of the bilingual team to join the pilot program “violated the law by creating a disproportionately adverse effect” on them, the suit alleges.
The plaintiffs say they have been paid mostly on commission. Their compensation, though, plummeted when the mortgage industry “crashed” last year. Had they been permitted to join the pilot program in equal numbers to the English-speaking team, they say, they would have “received guaranteed commissions based on their (fourth quarter) 2021 performance, substantially increasing their wages for all of 2022 and beyond.”
Missing commissions
When some members of the English-speaking team were laid off in February 2023, they say, it led Wells Fargo to make the “eye-brow raising claim that exclusion from the pilot program actually 'benefited' the Bilingual team members.”
In reality, the plaintiffs say, they earned “substantially less” than those in the pilot program for more than a year because fewer consumers were buying homes as mortgage rates climbed.
The suit says Wells Fargo created a policy that intentionally discriminated against Hispanics and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination.
The complaint also says Wells Fargo has a “long history of charging fees to Hispanic borrowers or improperly placing minority customers into subprime loans.”
In 2012, it agreed to pay $184.3 million to settle Justice Department allegations that the bank discriminated against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending business from 2004 through 2009.
Three Georgia counties have a pending federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo for alleged predatory and discriminatory lending practices involving minority borrowers. Last week, the bank filed an answer seeking dismissal of the suit and an award of its costs, including attorney fees.
In addition, there have been at least seven instances since 2021 in which bank regulators and other federal agencies assessed more than $4 billion in fines and redress against the bank over alleged misdeeds. The largest of those involved the bank’s widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts. In December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered the bank to reimburse customers $2 billion and pay a $1.7 billion fine.