On October 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit granted a motion by banking and credit union trade groups to expedite review of a district court’s permanent injunction blocking parts of Illinois’ Interchange Fee Prohibition Act, consolidating the Illinois attorney general’s October 9 appeal and the trade groups’ October 13 cross-appeal for briefing and disposition. Adopting the dates the trade groups proposed, the court made the attorney general’s brief due by November 23, the trade groups’ brief due by December 21, and any reply from the attorney general due by January 11, 2027, and said oral argument will be held before the end of February 2027. The attorney general had opposed expediting the case, noting that the act is not scheduled to take effect until July 1, 2027.

The appeals seek review of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’ September 22 decision extending to federal credit unions its permanent injunction against the act’s interchange fee limitation, as well as earlier decisions that had already found the IFPA preempted as to national banks, federal savings associations, out-of-state state banks, and payment card networks (previously covered by InfoBytes here). On September 28, the court entered final judgment and a separate, agreed order setting out the injunction’s terms, with both sides preserving their appeal rights. The injunction bars enforcement of both the interchange fee limitation and the act’s data usage limitation against those institutions but does not reach state-chartered credit unions, savings associations, or savings banks, or Illinois-chartered institutions. The attorney general seeks reversal “to the extent it granted plaintiffs injunctive relief,” appealing the judgment, the injunction order, and “all adverse interlocutory orders.” The trade groups, in turn, challenge the denial of declaratory and injunctive relief for out-of-state state-chartered credit unions and savings associations under both provisions.