The Supreme Court agreed to consider a lawsuit over whether the federal government waived its legal immunity for money damages over errors related to credit reports in a case between a Pennsylvania man and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The justices will review a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruling that Reginald Kirtz could sue the USDA for incorrectly stating on his credit report that his Rural Housing Service loans were overdue.

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Kirtz sued a pair of public lenders including the RHS, an agency under USDA that furnishes loans to help lower-income U.S. residents obtain housing in rural parts of the nation, and a Pennsylvania-based lender that gave him a student loan.

Kirtz is seeking unspecified damages.

Kirtz contends that the loans were repaid in full but that lenders continued to report incorrectly that his accounts were overdue even after issuing a complaint. The incorrect reports were later given to the credit reporting agency TransUnion, causing damage to Kirtz's creditworthiness.

The 3rd Circuit held that Congress waived the government's legal immunity when it amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act in 1996 to impose new requirements on lenders.

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In response to Kirtz's appeal, USDA told the justices that the appeals court's interpretation of the FCRA "could expose the United States to substantial liability" over its lending and credit reporting procedures.

“That conclusion cannot be reconciled with this Court’s precedents requiring waivers of sovereign immunity to be unequivocal and unambiguous,” lawyers for the Biden administration wrote.