Fidelity asks for summary judgment in suit against FinCEN, Bessent

With the implementation date for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) Anti-Money Laundering Regulations for Residential Real Estate Transfers fast approaching, Fidelity National Financial (FNF) and its subsidiaries are asking the court to take action in its lawsuit over the rule. 

Filed in May 2025, the suit challenges FinCEN’s anti-money laundering rule, which requires title firms to report specific details on all-cash home purchase transactions. These include the names, addresses, dates of birth, citizenship status and ID numbers of all people involved — including minors, payment details and information about trusts and entities that are purchasing the property. The rule was promulgated under the Biden administration and is set to go into effect in December 2025. 

In addition to FinCEN, the suit also names the  Department of the Treasury and its secretary, Scott Bessent, as well as FinCEN director Andrea Gacki as defendants.

On Monday, FNF filed a motion for summary judgment and a motion for a stay or a preliminary injunction. 

In the motion for summary judgment, FNF claims that the case presents a “stark example of regulatory overreach.” As the plaintiffs see it, Congress has only given FinCEN the authority to enact mandatory reporting rules for only “suspicious“ transactions that are deemed to be “relevant to potential legal violations,” and that the mandatory reports must be “streamlined.” Instead, FNF argues that FinCEN has “completely ignored those limits and instead issued a rule demanding blanket and intrusive reporting on virtually every non-financed transfer of residential real estate to a legal entity across the country — more than 800,000 transactions a year.”

In addition, FNF calls the mandatory reporting rule “arbitrary and capricious,” claims that FinCEN “failed to provide any rationale showing that the Rule met the requirement — or that FinCEN had even seriously considered the requirement — that the agency must ‘ensure’ that its reporting rules reach only ‘transactions relevant to potential violations of law.’”

The title insurer also claims that FinCEN failed to address “significant comments” made during the proposed rulemaking process, including those calling for a monetary threshold and the inclusion of trusts within the rule. 

FNF also argues that FinCEN failed to conduct the required cost-benefit analysis, claiming that the rule will impose a cost of over $500 million a year on residential real estate. 

Additionally, FNF argues that the rule violates the Fourth and First Amendments “by demanding intrusive reporting on a blanket basis untethered to a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity,” and “by compelling speech across a swath of legitimate transactions without any tailoring to reach an important government interest.”

Based upon these arguments FNF and its lawyers feel that the court should grant them summary judgment. 

FNF asks the court to issue a stay

Due to the possibility that the court considers this motion, FNF also asked the court to issue either a stay against the effective date of FinCEN’s new rule or issue a preliminary injunction enjoining the enforcement of the rule against FNF. 

“Enforcement of the Rule will cost Fidelity hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs. Fidelity has already begun to incur such costs in research and development of systems designed to gather the required information and report it to the government; implementation of the Rule will cause these costs to mushroom,” the filing states. “These costs constitute irreparable harm, as they cannot be recovered from the government.”

Ultimately, FNF argues that issuing a stay or preliminary injunction that maintains the “longstanding status quo while the parties resolve the merits will not harm FinCEN or the public but will protect Fidelity and the public from irreparable injury.”

A hearing for FNF’s motion for a stay or preliminary injunction is scheduled for Friday morning.