TransUnion Rental Screening Lawsuit: Two Settlements Explained

The TransUnion rental screening lawsuit ended in two separate settlements: a $15 million federal enforcement action brought jointly by the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in October 2023, and an $11.5 million private class action settlement in federal court in Georgia. Both cases accused TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions (TURSS) and its parent Trans Union LLC of selling inaccurate eviction and criminal records to landlords, in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Individual class members were expected to receive between $40 and $800, depending on the type of error in their report.¹

Two Separate Settlements, Often Confused

The headline “$23 million” number covers two different federal actions announced the same day. Only one of them is about rental screening.

The rental screening portion is $15 million. Of that, $11 million goes to compensate consumers harmed by inaccurate tenant reports, and $4 million goes to the CFPB’s civil penalty fund.² It was filed October 12, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, and a judge entered the stipulated order on October 18, 2023.³ The remaining $8 million from the combined figure came from a separate CFPB action about security freezes and pre-screened solicitation lists on TransUnion’s main credit-reporting side — unrelated to rental screening.⁴

Alongside the federal case, private renters had been suing TURSS since 2020. Six class actions were consolidated as MDL No. 2933 in the Northern District of Georgia and eventually grew to encompass thirteen matters.⁵ After four full-day mediation sessions, the parties reached the $11.5 million class settlement in April 2022, filed as Beard v. TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions, Inc. (No. 7:21-cv-00201). The court granted final approval of the policy-change portion on September 21, 2023.⁶

TransUnion did not admit wrongdoing in either settlement.⁷

What TURSS Was Accused of Doing

The federal complaint described a screening company that treated accuracy as someone else’s responsibility. TURSS bought eviction data from LexisNexis Risk and Information Analytics Group “AS IS,” under a contract that placed no verification obligations on the supplier.⁸ The private class action added a second core allegation: TURSS matched consumers to criminal and eviction records using name alone, without checking date of birth or Social Security number, so records routinely landed on the wrong person’s report.⁹

The specific practices identified in the federal complaint were:

Listing each step of a single eviction case (filing, hearing, judgment) as a separate line item on a report until April 2021, making one case look like multiple evictions.⁸
Failing to update case outcomes, so dismissed evictions could appear as active cases or as landlord wins, sometimes for months or years after the public record was corrected.⁸
Showing a “Judgment Amount” field that often reflected only what a landlord alleged was owed at filing, not a court-ordered judgment, even in dismissed cases.⁸
Reporting sealed or restricted eviction records because, until November 2021, TURSS had no system to remove them after LexisNexis initially supplied them.⁸
Hiding the true data source from consumers who requested their files. TURSS listed only the court jurisdiction, not LexisNexis, until June 2021 for eviction records and June 2022 for criminal records — and only after the FTC issued civil investigative demands.⁸

According to the complaint, TURSS received “tens of thousands of consumer disputes” about these errors and kept operating the same way. The agencies characterized the conduct as “knowing and reckless.”⁸

How Renters Were Hurt

The consequences fell entirely on renters. The federal complaint documented consumers who were denied housing, paid extra application fees after being rejected from one property after another, ended up paying higher rent, and had to cover temporary housing while they tried to untangle reports they had never seen.³ Many spent significant time and money trying to fix false background data.²

The screening market moves fast. Reports can generate in minutes, and by the time a renter discovers an error, the apartment is usually gone. When a landlord fails to send the legally required adverse action notice, an applicant may never learn which screening company produced the damaging report.¹⁰

Who Got Paid and How Much

The $11.5 million class settlement fund covered consumers whose records TURSS misreported. Plaintiffs’ attorneys estimated individual payouts between $40 and $800, scaled to the severity of the error. Felony or sex-offense misidentifications sat at the higher end; eviction-record mistakes sat at the lower end.¹

Most class members received payments automatically. Two subgroups had to file a claim through the settlement website at rentalscreeningsettlement.com: the “state criminal group” covering California, Florida, Texas, and Utah records, and some members of the “age mismatch” group.¹

Separately, the $11 million consumer-redress pool from the federal settlement was set aside for renters harmed by inaccurate reports; distribution runs through the regulators rather than through the private class administrator.²

What TransUnion Must Change Going Forward

The two settlements together forced concrete changes to how TURSS builds tenant reports. Under the federal consent order, TURSS and Trans Union LLC must:

Implement procedures to prevent inclusion of sealed records, unresolved cases, duplicate filings for a single eviction, and monetary amounts that are not actual final judgments.²
Identify the third-party vendors behind criminal and eviction data when providing file disclosures to consumers.³
Establish ongoing monitoring to catch and correct problems with criminal and eviction reporting.²
Give consumers free access to all information in their file on request, including what TURSS would share with landlords.²
Publish a sample adverse action notice on the TURSS website that landlords can use to explain denials and direct applicants to their report.²

The private class action added its own operational fixes. TURSS agreed not to link consumers to criminal records without matching on name plus at least one additional identifier, to stop using eviction data from sources not verified at least every 60 days, and to reformat reports so that records from a single legal proceeding are grouped rather than scattered as if they were separate cases.¹

Your Rights If a Screening Report Blocks You Today

The FCRA treats tenant screening companies as consumer reporting agencies. That gives you specific rights when a report contains errors. Screening companies must follow “reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy,” which per the FTC means they cannot list criminal convictions belonging to someone else, include duplicate entries for a single offense, report expunged or sealed records, or list eviction cases without documenting the final outcome.¹⁰

If you dispute information, the company must conduct a reasonable investigation and give you its findings in writing. You are entitled to see everything in your file and to a free copy of your report within 60 days of an adverse action. And a landlord who denies your application based on a screening report must send you a written notice identifying the screening company and telling you about your right to dispute.¹¹

The FCRA lets consumers sue in federal court and recover court costs and attorney fees. Punitive damages are available for deliberate violations, and federal and state agencies can also impose civil penalties.¹¹ If a landlord’s denial letter names TURSS, request your file directly from the company at no charge, dispute anything wrong in writing, and keep every response — those records are the foundation of any FCRA claim you might later bring.

1
ClassAction.org. Class Action Alleges TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions Submitted Grossly Inaccurate Report
2
Federal Trade Commission. FTC, CFPB Settlement Require Trans Union To Pay $15 Million
3
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions, Inc. and Trans Union LLC
4
CNBC. TransUnion Settles With FTC, CFPB for $23 Million in Housing Case
5
ClassAction.org. In Re TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions Preliminary Approval Motion
6
ClaimDepot. TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions Settlement
7
Multifamily Dive. TransUnion Federal Charges Settlement
8
Federal Trade Commission. TransUnion Rental Screening Complaint
9
U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. MDL-2933 Transfer Order
10
Federal Trade Commission. What Tenant Background Screening Companies Need To Know About the Fair Credit Reporting Act
11
Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Landlords Need To Know