The Consumerist notes:

For a decade now, all the major auto insurers have used a customer's credit rating to some degree in determining premiums. They claim that it results in lower rates for "most" customers, and that the data prove that people with lower credit scores make more claims and for higher amounts. The FTC released a report this summer that validated the practice—but also confirmed an unpleasant truth critics have been saying for years: because a higher percentage of Hispanics and African-Americans have low credit scores, there's a good chance they're disproportionately affected.

Another article uses a side-by-side comparison that really shows the disparity: "Using credit scores is likely to mean that 64 percent of African Americans, 53 percent of Hispanics, 38 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 34 percent of Asians would pay higher premiums the FTC said."

It's also become fairly common to use credit ratings when looking at job applicants. Below a certain rating? No job for you!

This sort of stuff tends to rise to the level of statistical significance - people with high credit ratings, on average, are less likely to leave the job in 6 months, steal from their employers, and so on. People with low credit ratings are poorer on average and are less likely to keep their auto in good repair, thus are likely to have more accidents.

More After the Jump

But everyone, or almost everyone, in this society, needs both a job and a car. And "on average" always contains a multitude of sins, because what works on a statistical basis is bound to create huge injustices to large numbers of individuals. Tons of people with low credit ratings are excellent drivers who take good care of their cars. And tons of people who have low credit ratings would be good workers.

And since the society all but requires you to have both a job and a car (and having a car means you must buy insurnace), making it harder, or impossible, to get either based on statistical reasoning is something which shouldn't be allowed, because it is fundamentally unjust to judge people by group rather than individual characteristics when it comes to providing the basic necessities of life and opportunity.

Which, as an aside, is why insurance that is mandatory should be simply provided by the government out of tax revenues (for example, a gasoline tax, in the case of auto insurance) and everyone should be covered. Individual mandates; requiring insurance of people; is just a tax by another name and it should be treated as such. It would be cheaper and it would be more just.