In a 407-0 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved the NSBA-supported Credit and Debit Card Receipt Clarification Act of 2007 (H.R. 4008).

Introduced by Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) and 52 co-sponsors, H.R. 4008 would eliminate hundreds of class actions lawsuits filed by consumers against merchants by making “technical corrections” to the definition of willful noncompliance with respect to violations involving the printing of an expiration date on certain credit and debit card receipts in the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act

The FACT Act mandated that businesses not print more than the last five digits of a card number or the expiration date on any receipt to the card holder at the point of sale or transaction. Many merchants simply truncated the visible card number to five digits. Almost immediately after the deadline for compliance, hundreds of lawsuits were filed alleging that merchants’ failure to also remove the expiration date will a willful violation of the Act.

According to the findings of H.R. 4008, however, none of the filed lawsuits contained an allegation of harm to any costumer. The bill also found that “despite repeatedly being denied class certification, the continued appealing and filing of these lawsuits represents a significant burden on the hundreds of companies that have been sued and could well raise prices to consumers without corresponding consumer protection benefit.”

To combat this, the bill states that any person who printed an expiration date on any receipt provided to a consumer cardholder between Dec. 4, 2004 and the date of enactment of H.R. 4008, but otherwise complied with the requirements of the FACT Act shall not be in willful noncompliance.

The bill does not affect the ability of consumers, alleging actual harm, to file individual claims under FACT Act.