If you’ve ever had a rug pulled out from you, then you know how it feels to suddenly lose access to your own bank account. That’s what happened to me in 2022, when JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, abruptly canceled our newly opened account for the National Committee for Religious Freedom. I started NCRF after spending decades in public life, including three years in the first Trump administration serving as ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The group proactively defends the constitutional freedom of religion so that all Americans can peaceably live according to their faith. Our advisory board includes Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian leaders from a wide variety of mainstream denominations. Yet, when I tried to deposit a donation at a local Chase branch, I was informed the bank had closed our account — without giving me any reason why. The following week, we received an official letter stating that we were no longer Chase customers. Over the course of the next year, a stream of Chase employees offered up no fewer than four conflicting explanations for why it had canceled our account. The excuse-making culminated at the company’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting, where CEO Jamie Dimon incorrectly claimed — for the first time — that we had failed to properly fill out our initial paperwork. It was the fifth and final justification for why his bank had canceled our account. What his rationale lacked in creativity it more than made up for in obstinance. But I’m the son of a Kansas farmer, so I’m no stranger to dealing with stubbornness. By the time of that annual meeting, NCRF had already launched a national campaign to collect and tell the stories of those who, like us, had been canceled or punished by their banks, payment processors or even insurance companies. We found that most debanking victims have two things in common: Their finances are in order, and they’re conservative or religious. We also learned that even before NCRF opened its short-lived Chase account, the bank had already established a disturbing track record of targeting conservatives. Donald Trump Jr. and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Jr., two others closely associated with the first Trump administration, also faced debanking by Chase. In both cases, the bank cited vague terms of service, including “possible reputational risk to our company,” only to reverse course after swift public backlash. Meanwhile, other banks followed Chase’s lead. Most notably, Bank of America canceled accounts of Christian ministries like Timothy Two Project International and Indigenous Advance Ministries, a charity that serves hurting widows and orphans in Uganda. Indigenous Advance’s case was uniquely egregious, according to Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal organization that represented the group. In addition to closing the ministry’s account, Bank of America shuttered the account of a local supporting church as well. Those of us raising the concern in the public square — which came to include then-candidate Donald Trump, whose wife and youngest son were also denied bank accounts — were laughed off by the likes of “Saturday Night Live,” which mocked our experiences as fictional. But representatives at Chase began to take our concerns seriously. We notched our first victory in late 2023, when Chase’s payment-processing arm WePay quietly dropped a “social risk” policy that included subjective terms like “hate” and “intolerance.” In practice, that allowed bank employees to cancel or punish customers based on their viewpoints. Now a true sea-change at Chase is on the horizon: In response to conversations with ADF attorneys and shareholders, Chase has agreed to adopt language in its corporate code of conduct to protect customers against any future instances of political and religious debanking. It’s the first major US bank to make such a course correction. The new policy specifies that Chase will “not tolerate discrimination” against customers, suppliers, contractors, employees or others affiliated with Chase “based on … religion, religious affiliation, or religious views … [or] political opinions, speech or affiliations.” For those of us who’ve had the fiscal rug pulled out from under us, Chase’s new commitments mark a crucial milestone in the fight against politicized debanking. But the battle is far from over: Ending this discriminatory practice across the industry remains a long haul, requiring sustained pressure and vigilance. No one should fear that their bank could punish them for their religious or political views — and we’ll keep fighting until every American is free from that threat. Sam Brownback, chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom, served as US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom from 2018 to 2021.