The federal rule that was meant to hold overdraft fees at the largest banks to $5 never took effect, and a copy of its text is still printed in the nation’s regulations. Congress wiped the rule out in 2025, but the section that carried it is still on the books of the Code of Federal Regulations. A reader who finds that section, or an older news story about it, could easily conclude that the limit is live. The legal record says otherwise.
Public Law 119-10 and the Congressional Review Act vote
The repeal is Public Law 119-10, approved May 9, 2025, as Senate Joint Resolution 18. Its title says it disapproves “the rule submitted by the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection relating to ‘Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions.’” The rule it names was published at 89 Fed. Reg. 106768 on December 30, 2024. The resolving clause says Congress disapproves the final rule, and the operative sentence says that “such rule shall have no force or effect.”
That is the whole text of the repeal. It does not amend the regulation line by line. It acts on the rule as a whole, which is how Congressional Review Act resolutions work.
What the rule promised before Congress disapproved it
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced the rule on December 12, 2024. Under then-Director Rohit Chopra, the bureau said, “For far too long, the largest banks have exploited a legal loophole that has drained billions of dollars from Americans’ deposit accounts.” According to that announcement, now filed under the bureau’s archive, the rule would have saved consumers up to $5 billion a year, or about $225 per household that pays overdraft fees. Those figures are the bureau’s own projections for a rule that never operated, and the $225 is an average across households that pay overdraft fees, not across all households.
The rule reached banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets. It was not a flat $5 limit on every institution. It offered those banks three ways to comply: cap the overdraft fee at $5, charge only what covers their costs and losses, or treat overdrafts as loans subject to the usual lending disclosures. The $5 option got the headlines. The compliance date was October 1, 2025, and that date passed with the rule already disapproved.
The archived announcement carries a banner saying the information may be outdated. That banner is the bureau’s own admission that the page describes a policy that is no longer the law.
Why the rule never took effect and cannot simply be rewritten
The legal effect of a Congressional Review Act resolution is set out in 5 U.S.C. 801(b). Under subsection (b)(1), a disapproved rule “shall not take effect (or continue).” For this rule, that means it was never in force at any point, including on the October 1, 2025 date the bureau had announced. Overdraft limits at the largest banks have therefore stayed whatever each bank’s own fee schedule says.
Subsection (b)(2) adds a second restriction that matters as much as the first. A disapproved rule “may not be reissued in substantially the same form,” and a new rule that is substantially the same as the disapproved one may not be issued, unless Congress later authorizes it by law. So the bureau cannot restore the $5 limit by publishing the same rule again. A materially different rule on overdraft credit would be a separate question, and no such proposal appears in the record read for this article.
The bureau’s newsroom shows the same quiet. Its most recent items, the latest dated August 14, 2026, concern complaint narratives, financial literacy, data reporting and mortgage data. None concerns overdraft fees or a revived overdraft rule.
The text that still sits in 12 CFR 1026.62
The second half of the claim is the part that surprises most readers. The electronic Code of Federal Regulations still carries section 1026.62, titled “Overdraft credit.” The page, marked up to date as of September 30, 2026, shows a source note pointing to 89 FR 106837, the December 30, 2024 publication, and the regulation’s text, including the $5 benchmark fee and the requirement that covered overdraft credit be structured so that it is not simply a negative balance. The page read for this article carries no note about the disapproval.
A regulation’s presence in the CFR is not proof that it binds anyone. The CFR is a codification of rules that agencies have published. Public Law 119-10 says the rule has “no force or effect,” and the statute says a disapproved rule does not take effect. Where the two conflict, the law controls, which means the section sits in the rulebook as dead text. Anyone relying on the CFR page alone for a fee limit would be relying on language Congress disarmed.
What governs overdraft fees at large banks today
With the rule gone, the amount a large bank charges for an overdraft is set by that bank’s own published fee schedule. The $5 figure is not a federal ceiling, a bank commitment or a deadline, and nothing in Public Law 119-10 or the CFPB newsroom sets a new one. A fee on a statement could be $5, or it could be a different amount, and the account agreement is the document that says.
The corrected record is short. Congress disapproved the rule through Public Law 119-10 on May 9, 2025. Under 5 U.S.C. 801(b), the rule never took effect and cannot be reissued in substantially the same form without a later act of Congress. The eCFR still prints section 1026.62 as of September 30, 2026. The $225 and $5 billion estimates belong to a December 2024 announcement about a rule that Congress ended before it applied to a single account.
Overdraft fees with no federal ceiling
The overdraft rule that Congress disapproved leaves each large bank’s own fee schedule as the only limit on what an overdraft costs, and the regulation text still printed in the rulebook does not change that. The costly gap the news leaves is simple: a fee can land on an account, and the person charged is left to document it and dispute it with the bank.
The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit includes a protected-funds and dispute log, which gives a household one place to record fees, dates and bank responses, along with the debt-validation steps for collector letters that follow unpaid balances.
Get The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit and start a fee dispute log →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the legal points were checked against Public Law 119-10, 5 U.S.C. 801 and the eCFR, and the estimates against the CFPB’s archived 2024 announcement.
