A federal judge, accusing Equifax of gamesmanship in an antitrust suit, has ordered the company to revise agreements with customers of its electronic verification of income and employment business, The Work Number. 

U.S. District Judge John F. Murphy published his order Tuesday, dealing a blow to the credit reporting agency fighting a lawsuit over The Work Number. Two mortgage brokerages sued Equifax in June 2024, painting its acquisitions of VOIE competitors and revenue sharing with exclusive users as a monopoly. 

Equifax in recent months attempted to force Greystone Mortgage and First Financial Lending into arbitration, which could've squashed the class action claims. The judge denied that move, citing the company's insertion of an arbitration clause into its The Work Number user agreements in August 2024, two months after the antitrust case was filed. 

Greystone and First Financial agreed to the new arbitration clause in 2025, and unsuccessfully argued to the judge that they were unaware of what they had signed.

Murphy however still sided with the lenders because he found Equifax, in litigating the case for months while not mentioning the clause, waived its right to arbitration. The company attempted to compel arbitration last July, almost a year after it updated its agreements in 2024. 

The judge stopped short of reprimanding the firm, and even likened its behavior to "cooking up a great legal tactic," but described the moves as "tactical, if not cynical." 

"Like any contest, there are rules, and it is our job to say when a tactic is too clever by half," wrote Murphy. "So it is here."

The court said it won't enforce any updated TWN membership agreements in their present form. It will also require Equifax to revise the arbitration provision and notify users, who are potential class members, of the class action litigation. 

A spokesperson for Equifax in an email Wednesday said the company is aware of the judge's ruling, and it will continue to fight the claims. The representative did not respond to a question regarding the number of customers who Equifax may have to notify.

Attorneys for the parties didn't respond to requests for comment.

The case against Equifax continues

This week's order did not affect the lawsuit's progress. Equifax lost a motion to dismiss the case last February. 

First Financial and Greystone agreed to the new terms in March and June of last year, before Equifax's motion to compel arbitration in July, because they had to conduct business with companies that had no other VOIE provider available. 

Since instituting its arbitration clause, Equifax had produced over 94,000 documents in the case, appeared in oral arguments, and even discussed mediation without mentioning the arbitration issue, Murphy explained. 

The lawsuit, which has not yet approached a potential class certification, seeks to include anyone who bought TWN from May 28, 2020 to the present. 

The dispute over widely-used VOIE services is separate from Equifax's role in the credit score wars. Equifax most recently counterpunched rival FICO last October in offering Vantagescore 4.0 for $4.50 through 2027, as players in the space have battled over pricing.