Banks and credit card companies may not force customers to sign away their legal rights to take part in class-action lawsuits, under an early-stage U.S. government proposal that is likely to draw ire from Wall Street, Reuters reported. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said today that the proposal marked the first step in the process of potentially drafting regulations to ban certain “free pass” arbitration clauses, often buried in fine print, that consumers must sign off on when opening financial accounts. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gave both the CFPB and the Securities and Exchange Commission the power to restrict or ban arbitration clauses, and it also required the CFPB to study pre-dispute arbitration clauses.