Department of Agriculture Rural Development Rural Housing Service v. Kirtz (2024)

Citation: 601 U.S. 42 (2024) · Court: Supreme Court of the United States · Decided: February 8, 2024 (Gorsuch, J., for a unanimous Court).

Verified case page. Legal information, not legal advice. Last verified: 2026-06-02.

Facts

Reginald Kirtz obtained a direct rural-housing loan from the USDA Rural Housing Service (RHS) (the § 502 program). He repaid the loan in full by mid-2018, but USDA continued to report to the credit bureau TransUnion that the account was past due, damaging his credit score. After Kirtz notified both TransUnion and USDA of the error and USDA failed to correct it, he sued USDA under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). USDA moved to dismiss on sovereign immunity, arguing the FCRA does not make the federal government amenable to suit. (Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/22-846 , retrieved 2026-06-02; facts corroborated at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/601/22-846/ , retrieved 2026-06-02.)

Holding

The FCRA clearly and unequivocally waives the sovereign immunity of the United States. The statute authorizes a consumer to sue “any person” who willfully or negligently fails to comply with the Act, and it defines “person” to include any “government or governmental subdivision or agency.” Therefore a consumer may sue a federal agency — here USDA/RHS — for damages under the FCRA. (Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/22-846 , retrieved 2026-06-02.)

Reasoning

Justice Gorsuch, writing for a unanimous Court, applied the rule that a waiver of sovereign immunity must be unmistakably clear in the statutory text — and found that the FCRA’s authorization of suit against “any person,” combined with its definition of “person” to include governmental agencies, satisfied that standard. The Court rejected USDA’s argument that the immunity waiver had to appear in a separate, more explicit provision.

Practical impact

For the USDA § 502 direct-loan relationship, Kirtz is the Supreme Court’s most direct recent confirmation that federal RD borrowers can bring federal statutory damages claims against USDA arising out of the loan/servicing relationship — the government’s status as the lender does not categorically immunize it. It does not itself decide foreclosure, redemption, deficiency, or surplus questions, but it removes a sovereign-immunity barrier that USDA had asserted against borrower claims and signals that other clear federal immunity-waiving statutes reach USDA as a creditor/servicer. Relevant to usda-rural-foreclosure.

Good-law status

Still good law (unanimous Supreme Court decision, February 2024).

Applies in →

Federal — nationwide. See usda-rural-foreclosure.