Guest Blogger Arone Silverman

We've been hearing stories of how Bank of America has been gauging consumersto make up for it's financial loses, but this is just immoral.

The California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that banks can collect overdraft fees from accounts in which government benefits intended for subsistence are directly deposited. The ruling threw out a 2004 verdict by a San Francisco jury that found the bank violated state law by taking fees for insufficient funds from accounts set up to receive Social Security benefits.

The bank customers who had stood to benefit from the award included 1.1 million California residents receiving government assistance. James C. Sturdevant, who represented the Social Security recipients, said the award, with interest, would have cost Bank of America more than $2 billion.

He said banks earn about $40 million a year from overdraft charges and that some of the Social Security recipients in the suit lost 20% of their monthly income in a single day because of bank fees.