Nationally renowned civil rights and personal injury attorneys Ben Crump and Adam Levitt filed a lawsuit on behalf of Black plaintiffs Laquita Oliver and Cherelle Jacob who sought home loans with defendant Navy Federal Credit Union. The lawsuit alleges that Oliver and Jacob’s denials for their home loans are due to Navy Federal’s discriminatory lending practices.

The suit alleges while drawing research insights from a recent CNN bombshell report, that Navy Federal, the country’s largest and most important credit union, systematically discriminates against would-be borrowers by race.

Plaintiffs Laquita Oliver and Cherelle Jacob sought home loans with Navy Federal. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs, like many others, were denied home loans because of their race and suffered harm as a result. Navy Federal has approximately 13,000,000 members and more than $165 billion in assets, making it the country’s largest and most dominant credit union.

“The outright discrimination that occurs when Banking While Black continues to reveal itself in the lending practices of many of America’s largest financial institutions,” said Crump. “It is shameful that Navy Federal, an organization that prides itself in helping the families of men and women who served their country, does not give their Black and Latino customers the same opportunities as White customers.”

According to the recent CNN report, Navy Federal Credit Union approved 77% of the mortgage applications by white applicants, but only 56% of the applications from Latino applicants and 48% of the applications from Black applicants. The lawsuit states this disparity is the largest of any of the 50 largest home mortgage lenders in the U.S. and remains persistent, even accounting for more than a dozen separate variables including, among others, income, debt-to-income ratio, property value, down payment percentage, and neighborhood characteristics. The study also revealed that Navy Federal approved a higher percentage of applications from white borrowers making less than $62,000 a year than it did from Black borrowers making $140,000 or more.

“We hope this legal action will stop racial lending discrimination in its tracks and require Navy Federal to right their wrongs,” said Adam Levitt. “Home ownership is recognized as the cornerstone of the American Dream. We will not sit by while that dream is denied to hard-working and deserving Americans based on discriminatory practices and algorithms.”