OceanFirst Bank reached a $15 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over claims that the company “redlined” Black, Hispanic, and Asian neighborhoods in three New Jersey counties by discouraging minority residents from seeking home loans.
The DOJ’s complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, alleged that from 2018 through 2022, OceanFirst disproportionately focused its advertising on “majority-white” neighborhoods while it closed branches in majority-Black, Asian, and Hispanic towns in Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean counties. The allegations accused the bank of the discriminatory practice of “redlining,” where credit services are denied to individuals living in communities of color because of the race, color, or national origin of residents in violation of the Fair Housing and the Equal Credit Opportunity Acts. The case is captioned U.S. v. Oceanfirst Bank.