Fifth Circuit: Bureaus Need Not Decide Debt Validity

Case: Reyes v. Equifax Information Services, L.L.C.
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Citation: 140 F.4th 279 (5th Cir. 2025) (No. 24-40415)
Decided: June 13, 2025
Bottom line: In the Fifth Circuit, a dispute that a debt is not legally owed is generally a fight with the creditor, not one a credit bureau must resolve.

Background

Mary Reyes noticed unauthorized charges on her Citibank credit card in 2019. She believed the card had been skimmed. Citibank closed the card and moved the balance, including the disputed charges, to a new account. Citibank investigated and declined to remove the charges, explaining that they were processed using the card’s chip. Reyes stopped paying, and Citibank charged off the account and reported the balance.

Reyes’s attorney sent Equifax a dispute letter stating that she was an identity theft victim, but the letter identified the old account number, which no longer appeared in her file. Equifax later forwarded a fraud referral on the new account to Citibank through the automated dispute system, and Citibank verified the reporting. Reyes sued Equifax under the FCRA. The district court granted summary judgment to Equifax. On appeal Reyes pursued only her reinvestigation claim under § 1681i; the opinion notes she abandoned her § 1681e(b) claim.

What the court held

The Fifth Circuit affirmed in a published opinion by Judge Ramirez, joined by Chief Judge Elrod and Judge Clement. It addressed two questions.

First, the court had not previously decided whether inaccuracy is an element of a § 1681i claim. It joined other circuits in holding that it is. It then found the reporting accurate: the account was Reyes’s, the charges were incurred before she reported them, she did not pay, the balance was charged off, and Citibank reported exactly that.

Second, Reyes argued the reporting was inaccurate because she was not legally liable for fraudulent charges. The court rejected that theory, joining what it called the “Collateral Attack Cases” from other circuits and holding that “consumer reporting agencies are not required to investigate the legal validity of disputed debts under the FCRA.” It also rejected her argument that § 1681i(a)(5)(A), which requires deletion of information that “cannot be verified,” required Equifax to delete the debt until her legal dispute with Citibank was resolved. In a footnote, the court described the Third Circuit’s non-precedential Ritz v. Equifax decision as concerning furnisher duties under § 1681s-2 and not relevant to the bureau’s duties.

Our take

We read Reyes as a decision about who must resolve what. The court’s view is that a credit bureau is a compiler of data, not a tribunal, and that the furnisher is better positioned to investigate whether a debt is valid. That allocation has support in the case law, and the facts here were difficult for the consumer: chip transactions, a creditor that had already investigated, and a dispute letter that referenced the wrong account.

Our concern is with how defendants will use the holding. Many identity theft disputes are, at bottom, factual: did this person make these charges? Framing them as a “legal validity” question risks moving true fraud cases outside the reinvestigation duty. Consumer-side commentators have made that criticism, and we think courts should be careful to keep the Reyes rule confined to disputes that genuinely require deciding a legal question.

Reyes also sits in tension with the Fourth Circuit’s March 2025 decision in Roberts v. Carter-Young, which held that a furnisher’s duty under § 1681s-2(b) can extend to legal disputes that are objectively and readily verifiable. The two cases involve different defendants and different statutory sections, so they are not a direct conflict, but together they show courts struggling with the legal-versus-factual line.

What it means if your report is wrong

If a creditor is reporting a balance you say you do not owe because of fraud, dispute with both the credit bureaus and the creditor, and make sure your dispute identifies the account as it currently appears on your report. Include police reports, an FTC identity theft report, and any evidence that the transactions were not yours. Under Reyes, a claim against a bureau in the Fifth Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) may depend on showing a factual error the bureau could have caught, while a claim against the creditor as furnisher may be the stronger path. The FCRA’s identity theft blocking provision, § 1681c-2, is a separate tool worth considering.

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Sources

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Commentary we reviewed

Updated November 1, 2026. "Our take" is the firm's opinion. This page is general information, not legal advice, and later decisions may change the law.