DOJ asks to terminate NJ bank’s redlining order early

The Department of Justice, which recently terminated one Biden-era fair lending consent order, is now pushing to free another bank from its obligations under a three-year-old redlining settlement.

The DOJ filed an unopposed motion last week asking a federal judge to dismiss the department’s consent order with New Jersey-based Lakeland Bank more than two years before it’s slated to end.

Lakeland — which was acquired last year by Provident Financial Services — was hit by the Justice Department in 2022 with one of the costliest redlining settlements in the agency’s history. The DOJ alleged that the bank failed to provide mortgage lending services to Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Newark, New Jersey, area between 2015 and 2021.

The bank agreed at the time to invest $12…