The U.S. Federal Reserve was given a week to tell a federal judge its position on immediately rewriting regulations setting debit card swipe fees in the wake of a court found the current rule unlawful, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon yesterday ordered Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez to appear in his courtroom on Aug. 21 after a lawyer for the Fed said it hadn’t made any decisions on how to replace the current rule, or whether to appeal the judge’s ruling. Earlier in the hearing, Judge Leon laid out a timeline that would put a final interim rule in place by the end of the month. An interim final rule takes effect immediately before any public comments are accepted. Yesterday's hearing comes two weeks after retailers battling banks over debit card transaction costs were handed a victory by Judge Leon, who said that merchants were overcharged billions of dollars under an unlawful swipe fee set by the Fed.
