SAFE Banking Reintroduced In House And Senate
May 2, 2023Bipartisan pairs of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress refiled the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act last week. Introduced by senators Jeff Merkley and Steve Daines, of Oregon and Montana, respectively, and by representatives Dave Joyce and Earl Blumenauer, of Ohio and Oregon, the bill broadly speaking shields banks from penalties and criminal liability for providing financial services to cannabis businesses in states that have passed legalization measures.
“Forcing legal businesses to operate in all-cash is dangerous for our communities; it’s an open invitation to robbery, money laundering, and organized crime—and it’s way past time to fix it,” Merkley said. “For the first time, we have a path for SAFE Banking to move through the Senate Banking Committee and get a vote on the floor of the Senate. Let’s make 2023 the year that we get this bill signed into law so we can ensure that all legal cannabis businesses have access to the financial services they need to help keep their employees, their businesses, and their communities safe.”
The SAFE Banking Act of 2023 would prevent federal banking regulators from: penalizing a bank for providing financial services to a legitimate state-sanctioned and regulated cannabis business or an associated business (such as a lawyer or landlord providing services to a legal cannabis business); terminating or limiting a bank’s federal deposit insurance primarily because the bank is providing services to a state-sanctioned cannabis business or associated business; recommending or incentivizing a bank to halt or downgrade providing any kind of banking services to these businesses; or taking any action on a loan to an owner or operator of a cannabis-related business. Thanks to new revisions, it also explicitly extends the safe harbor to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDI) to ensure they can also serve cannabis businesses.—Danny Sullivan
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