Page:Dennis Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP.pdf/19

2 indirectly,” §1692a(6). That may be because a house can be sold–thus satisfying the debt with the proceeds–but it may also be because the initiation of a foreclosure itself sends a clear message: “[P]ay up or lose your house.” Brief for Petitioner 17; see Alaska Trustee, LLC v. Ambridge, 372 P. 3d 207, 217–218 (Alaska 2016); Glazer v. Chase Home Finance LLC, 704 F. 3d 453, 461 (CA6 2013).

The problem for Obduskey’s reading, as the Court explains, is the second sentence, which then becomes superfluous if all security-interest enforcement is already covered by sentence one. See ante, at 8–9. To be clear, there is a reasonable argument that the second sentence covers security-interest enforcers who are not already covered by the first sentence: Under this argument, those additional security-interest enforcers are “people who engage in the business of repossessing property, whose business does not primarily involve communicating with debtors in an effort to secure payment of debts,” Piper v. Portnoff Law Assoc., Ltd., 396 F. 3d 227, 236 (CA3 2005); see also Alaska Trustee, 372 P. 3d, at 219–220; Glazer, 704 F. 3d, at 463–464, such as “the repo man [who] sneaks up and ‘tows a car in the middle of the night,’ ” ante, at 11. But, as the Court explains, that reading does not resolve the surplusage problem, because even such repossession agencies engage in a means of collecting debts “indirectly”–which means that they are similarly situated to entities pursuing nonjudicial foreclosures after all. See ante, at 10–12.

All the same, this is too close a case for me to feel certain that Congress recognized that this complex statute would be interpreted the way that the Court does today. While States do regulate nonjudicial foreclosures, see ante, at 9, the extent and method of those protections can vary widely, and the FDCPA was enacted not only “to eliminate abusive debt collection practices” but also “to promote consistent State action to protect consumers against debt collection abuses,” §1692(e); see also §1692n (pre-empting