The Supreme Court has asked the federal government to tell it whether national banks can ignore state laws requiring them to pay interest on mortgage escrow accounts β a question that touches the escrow balances of most American homeowners with a mortgage.
In its order list issued Oct. 5, 2026, the Court invited the solicitor general “to file briefs in these cases expressing the views of the United States” in several petitions. Three of them are banking cases that turn on the same conflict. None was granted and none was denied; they simply wait while the government answers.
Such an invitation β known in the Court’s shorthand as a CVSG β is not a ruling, and it slows a case by months. It is also one of the stronger signals the Court takes a petition seriously, and it is typically reserved for cases where the justices want the United States to say whether a split among the federal appeals courts is real and worth resolving.
The three cases, and the split behind them
The petitions come from three different circuits, and the captions alone show the split, because in each case the loser below became the petitioner.
In Cantero v. Bank of America, N.A., No. 25-1313, the borrowers are petitioning. The Second Circuit ruled for the bank on May 5, 2026, and Alex Cantero and his co-plaintiffs β suing on behalf of a proposed class β asked the Supreme Court to take the case on May 22. Bank of America filed its brief in opposition on Aug. 10.
In Flagstar Bank, N.A. v. Kivett, No. 25-1350, the bank is petitioning. The Ninth Circuit decided against Flagstar on Oct. 2, 2025 and denied rehearing on March 26, 2026. And in Citizens Bank, N.A. v. Conti, No. 25-1004, the bank is again the petitioner, after losing in the First Circuit on Sept. 22, 2025.
The Conti docket carries an unusual wrinkle. The Supreme Court denied that petition on April 20, 2026. Citizens Bank filed for rehearing on May 11, the Court requested a response, and the case has now drawn a CVSG alongside the other two β an uncommon second life for a petition already turned away once.
This is also not the Court’s first pass at the question. In Cantero v. Bank of America, decided May 30, 2024, a unanimous Court in an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh vacated the Second Circuit’s earlier judgment and sent the case back, holding that the lower court had not applied the preemption standard from Barnett Bank of Marion County that Congress wrote into the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. The Court did not decide whether New York’s escrow-interest law survives. On remand, the Second Circuit reached the same destination by a different route, which is how the case returned.
Why escrow interest is worth fighting over
Escrow accounts are mundane and nearly universal: the lender collects property taxes and insurance premiums monthly along with the mortgage payment and holds the money until the bills come due. Roughly 80% of U.S. mortgages carry one, according to figures the escrow servicer Lereta has published. A handful of states β New York, California and Rhode Island among them β require lenders to pay the borrower interest on those balances. National banks have argued for decades that the National Bank Act displaces those state commands.
The money at stake per household is small; the money in aggregate is not, which is why the briefing has drawn institutional heavyweights on both sides. The Conference of State Bank Supervisors and a group of states led by New York filed amicus briefs supporting the borrowers in Cantero. The Bank Policy Institute, the large-bank trade group, filed in support of the banks in both Conti and Kivett.
The invitation also lands while the executive branch is already acting on the same question from the other direction. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued rules in May 2026 allowing national banks to disregard state interest-on-escrow laws, and ten states sued in August to block them β a case RealtyWire covered when Oregon and New York led the challenge in federal court in Portland. The solicitor general now has to state a position for the United States in the Supreme Court on an issue the administration’s own bank regulator has already answered by rule.
For lenders and servicers, the practical stakes are a uniform national rule versus a patchwork that varies by where the house sits. For borrowers in the states with interest requirements, it is whether those statutes still bind the largest banks. There is no deadline for the solicitor general to respond, and the Court sets none; such briefs typically arrive months later, which makes a decision on whether to hear the cases unlikely before 2027.
Three related petitions moving together is itself a measure of how unsettled this corner of mortgage law has become. The Court also recently declined to disturb a certified investor class against Zillow over its former home-buying arm. Further mortgage coverage is on our mortgage page.
