October 15, 2026
For Immediate Release
Yesterday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a 47-page report, Debanked: Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans. The incident described on pages 22-23 sounds eerily like something that happened to the Ruth Institute. Although the report does not name names other than Wells Fargo Bank, the report is consistent with an incident that happened to us in 2017.
Our credit card processing service abruptly stopped doing business with us, claiming we were promoting hate. The OCC report confirms what we had suspected: the real cause of the unnamed nonprofit losing its credit card processor was its views about marriage.
The Ruth Institute believes marriage is the union of a man and a woman. This mainstream opinion, held throughout history and by millions of Americans, landed us on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map.
Regardless of whether the case described is literally ours, the Ruth Institute is thankful to President Trump, Comptroller Jonathan Gould, and everyone in this administration who took this problem seriously.
Some of the incidents described in the report were much worse than ours, and other organizations suffered much more than we did. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has told the truth in writing, and that means a lot to all of us. No American should lose their banking or related services because of their faith.
I hope this report prompts banks and regulators to reverse policies that discriminate against organizations like the Ruth Institute.
