Fidelity National Financial (FNF) believes that a magistrate judge issued an erroneous report on the title insurance giant’s claims in its lawsuit against Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
In a document filed last Tuesday, FNF objected to the report and recommendations made by Magistrate Judge Samuel Horovitz. In his report, Horovitz recommended that the court grant FinCEN’s cross-motion for summary judgment, which would mean that FinCEN would win the suit and its Anti-Money Laundering Regulations for Residential Real Estate Transfers Rule would be upheld.
FinCEN rule will cause “irreparable harm”
Filed in May 2025, the lawsuit lists FinCEN and its director, Andrea Gacki, as well as the Department of the Treasury and its secretary, Scott Bessent, as defendants. In the lawsuit, FNF claims that the rule, which was promulgated under the Biden administration, is “arbitrary and capricious,” and that the rule will cause it “irreparable harm.”
The rule requires title firms to report specific details on all-cash home purchase transactions. These include the names, addresses, dates of birth, citizenship status and ID numbers of all people involved — including minors, payment details and information about trusts and entities that are purchasing the property.
In its most recent filing, FNF claims the FinCEN’s rule “treats an estimated 800,000 to 850,000 lawful, non-financed home sales each year as ‘suspicious’ and ‘relevant to a possible violation of law,’” and that it “compels title firms to collect and report over a hundred data points for each transaction…all at a government-estimated cost of half a billion dollars annually without any meaningful evidence of beneficial impact.”
Due to this, and despite the magistrate judge’s report, FNF argues the rule violates “the governing statute and the major questions doctrine,” on top of being “arbitrary and capricious,” and as such FNF tells the court that the magistrate judge’s report upholding the rule should be reversed.
FNF argues that the magistrate judge’s report erred in all of its evaluations of the firm’s claims, including the claims that FinCEN lacks statutory authority to impose this rule and that the report wrongly allows a rule whose costs outweigh its benefits.
FinCEN had choices of who to target
“FinCEN had choices. It could have targeted actual indicia of criminality, such as transactions involving felons. It could have asked Congress to expand the geographic and temporal limits on GTOs,” the filing states. “It did neither. Instead, it declared millions of ordinary transactions ‘suspicious’ simply because they exist and are not already subject to antimoney-laundering rules. The Report blessed this approach.”
In addition to these objections, FNF also requested oral arguments regarding its objections to the magistrate judge’s recommendations. According to FNF, oral arguments are warranted because the case “presents issues of national importance over the legality of FinCEN’s Rule.”
It remains to be seen how Judge Wendy Berger will view the magistrate judge’s recommendations and how she will rule on the cross motion for summary judgement.
In late September, FinCEN announced it was postponing the implementation of the policy from Dec. 1, 2025, to March 1, 2026.
At the time, FinCEN said the decision was made to “reduce business burden and ensure effective regulation.”
English (US) · 