The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an independent bureau within the U.S. Treasury Department, on Wednesday released a 47-page report on “debanking activities” by nine of the country’s largest banks, revealing each of them established policies between 2020 and 2025 that resulted in Americans losing or being denied access to financial services “because of their political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities.”
The report states that banks began reconsidering their political debanking policies after states, including Tennessee, Florida, and Idaho, enacted “fair access” laws that prohibit financial institutions from debanking customers based on their political or religious beliefs.
Tennessee’s law took effect in 2024 and “prohibits financial institutions and insurers from denying or canceling services to a person, or otherwise discriminating against a person, based upon the use of a social credit score or other factors,” and was passed following testimony to the General Assembly from Republican and Christian groups who claimed they were debanked due to their views.
“Passage of these state laws likely served as a catalyst for many banks to re-think their industry-specific restrictions, or at least to update their policies and procedures to clarify how business
lines should implement them,” according to the report.
In response to laws like Tennessee’s, the government office reported, “many banks revised their policies in late 2023 and 2024 to eliminate any indication that employees should categorically prohibit access to banking products and services on an industry-wide basis; instead, bank policies were revised or clarified to indicate that certain industries presented ‘heightened’ risks and that clients or potential clients in those industries should undergo enhanced, individualized reviews.”
The report followed the August 2025 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, titled Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans, which stated that political debanking would violate the administration’s policies, and instructed all federal banking regulators to purge reputational-risk considerations that could enable politically motivated debanking, and to review financial institutions for policies encouraging debanking.
While the report said banks began reversing in response to laws like Tennessee’s, it also said Trump’s executive order inspired them to “move more rapidly” away from debanking.
“Specifically, amid increased regulatory scrutiny following the Executive Order, banks engaged in expanded, accelerated, and more formalized efforts to assess the role and practical implications of incorporating reputation risk in policies and processes,” according to the report.
The report documented numerous instances of banks closing accounts, denying financial services, or imposing heightened scrutiny against numerous types of organizations, including merchants selling pro-Trump merchandise, conservative media companies, religious nonprofits, pro-life and abortion-rights organizations, gun-rights advocates, firearms manufacturers, and businesses in the energy and healthcare industries.
However, the report offered another example of the industry changing its practices after Trump’s return to the White House and referenced Bank of America and an unnamed private prison company.
After previously debanking the private prison company, the report stated that Bank of America attempted to reestablish the relationship just months after Trump’s victory in 2024.
The finding appears to resemble the account of Tennessee-based CoreCivic, which publicly accused Bank of America of debanking it for political reasons in 2019. Damon Hininger, the company’s CEO, confirmed last year that Bank of America had offered to resume the relationship.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bank Teller” by Myfuture.com. CC BY-ND 2.0.
