Commonwealth Servicing Group, LLC v. Dept. of Banking

Summary

The court held that the plaintiffs could seek declaratory and injunctive relief without first exhausting the pending administrative enforcement proceeding because the challenged issue was whether the Department of Banking had statutory authority to regulate conduct governed by the practice-of-law exception. Exhaustion is unnecessary when an agency lacks expertise to decide the threshold authority question, and determining whether the Persels presumption applies requires expertise concerning the practice of law rather than debt-negotiation regulation. The denial of the motion to dismiss was affirmed, while the court left the ultimate merits of the presumption and its rebuttal unresolved.