* * * * * * TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXV NO. 152 WSJ.com HHHH $4 .00

DJIA 25595.80 À 580.25 2.3% NASDAQ 9874.15 À 1.2% STOXX600 359.89 À 0.4% 10-YR. TREAS. unch., yield 0.636% OIL $39.70 À $1.21 GOLD $1,774.80 À $1.50 EURO $1.1244 YEN 107.57

Gunmen Attack Pakistan Stock Exchange

DEADLY SHOOTOUT: Two security guards and a police officer were killed when gunmenstormed the Pakistan Stock Exchange building in Karachi on Monday. All four attackers diedin a shootout with the guards. The body of a gunman was taken away, above. A separatistgroup said it targeted the exchange because it is partly owned by a Chinese group. A8

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Americans Ponder How to ThrowA Party in Real Life

i i i

Many try to celebrate while minimizingrisks; hand-sanitizer centerpiece

Throwing a party—a real,in-person party—during apandemic means ponderingquestions rarely covered inbooks of etiquette.

Which guestsshould be crossedoff the list as toorisky or too muchat risk? How todeal with huggerswho fail to sup-press their in-stincts? Will therebe access to abathroom? And isit appropriate to use a bottleof hand sanitizer as a tablecenterpiece?

Americans are craving so-cial contact after months inlockdown and drive-by pa-rades to mark graduations andbirthdays. With lockdowns

lifting or loosening in manyplaces, some are beginning toexperiment with small gather-ings to play games or cele-brate weddings, while tryingto minimize risk.

Shirley McElhattan plannedcarefully for a smallmid-June gathering offriends to mark thehigh school graduationof her son Will andseveral of his friendsin a suburb of Pitts-burgh. Dr. McElhattan,a physician, decided tokeep the guests in heryard. Each of the fivefamilies present would

have its own table. Guestswould bring their own coolerswith drinks.

She considered renting aportable toilet but then de-cided guests wouldn’t need abathroom break or could

PleaseturntopageA10

BY HEATHER HADDONAND JAMES R. HAGERTY

A littletreat

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated ayearslong shift in bargaining power away fromcolleges and toward families, which are quiteprepared to treat tuition as they would a car’sprice: something to haggle over.

When a college accepted Frances Marcel’ssecond child several years ago, she pleaded fora discount. It wouldn’t budge, she said, so she

dipped deeper into her savings.After her third child Ian was accepted by his

top three choices for this fall, she urged him towrite them in early March asking that they golower. In April, each offered him further dis-counts. One offered about 41% off.

Ms. Marcel, of Rockland, Mass., told Ian toappeal again to the other two. “Mom, thatsounds too aggressive,” Ian told her. She an-

PleaseturntopageA10

BY JOSH MITCHELL

HONG KONG—China’s legisla-ture approved Tuesday a sweep-ing law aimed at quashingthreats to national security inHong Kong, rejecting Westerncriticism that Beijing’s effortswill curb people’s freedoms inthe protest-torn city.

Consumer Financial ProtectionBureau for any reason. Thecourt rejected broader legalarguments that it shouldstrike down the bureau—which was designed to protectconsumers from abusive finan-cial-industry practices onproducts like mortgages, stu-dent loans and credit cards—altogether.

The CFPB has been politi-cally polarizing since its in-ception, when then-PresidentObama tapped then-Harvard

PleaseturntopageA6

WASHINGTON—The Su-preme Court ordered changesto a government consumer-fi-nance watchdog created in thewake of the 2008 financial cri-sis, capping a 10-year battleover the agency by ruling itsstructure was unconstitutionalbecause the director held toomuch unchecked power.

To address the problem, thecourt held that the presidentcan remove the director of the

BY BRENT KENDALLAND ANDREW ACKERMAN

Consumer AgencyOrdered to Revamp

WASHINGTON—The Su-preme Court struck down aLouisiana law that could haveclosed two of the state’s threeabortion clinics, ruling in a 5-4vote that it was virtually iden-tical to a Texas measure thatthe court had invalidated fouryears ago.

In an opinion by Justice Ste-phen Breyer, four liberal jus-tices reaffirmed their 2016 de-cision that the key feature inboth the Texas and Louisiana

laws—that abortions could beperformed only by doctorsgranted permission by a localhospital to admit a patientshould something go wrong—has no medical benefits andthus interferes with a woman’sconstitutional right to end apregnancy.

The fifth vote, however,came from Chief Justice JohnRoberts, who wrote separatelyon narrower grounds to saythat precedent required thesame result. The chief justice

PleaseturntopageA6

BY JESS BRAVIN

Supreme CourtStrikes DownAbortion Curb

The legislation was passed bysenior Chinese lawmakers, ac-cording to Lau Siu-kai, a senioradviser to Beijing on Hong Kongpolicy.

Drafted and approved in anunusually rapid and opaque pro-cess, the law has stirred fearsacross pro-democracy groups,businesses, schools and mediaover its potential impact.

The law is meant to preventand punish subversive, seces-sionist and terrorist activities inthe former British colony as wellas collusion with foreign forces.

Its full text was expected tobe released later Tuesday andthe law may take effect as soonasWednesday, the 23rd anniver-sary of Hong Kong’s return toChinese rule.

Since Beijing announcedplans for enacting national-se-curity legislation for HongKong in late May, Chinese offi-cials have repeatedly rebuffedcriticism from opposition poli-ticians and rights activists inthe city, as well as the U.S. andother Western powers, whohave decried the law as a toolfor suppressing civil liberties in

the Asian financial center andundercutting its promised au-tonomy from Beijing.

Chinese state media and legalexperts have offered assurancesthat the law would affect just “avery small number” of people inHong Kong and help restorepeace and prosperity to a cityrocked by antigovernment pro-

PleaseturntopageA9

BY CHUN HAN WONGAND WENXIN FAN

China Approves Hong Kong Security Law

Banks LeftTo GuessOn CreditDecisions

Banks have pulled backsharply on lending to U.S. con-sumers during the coronaviruscrisis. One reason: They can’ttell who is creditworthy any-more.

Millions of people are out ofwork and behind on their debts.But, in many cases, the missedpayments aren’t reflected intheir credit scores, nor are theyuniformly recorded on borrow-ers’ credit reports.

The confusion stems from aprovision in the government’scoronavirus stimulus package.The law says lenders that al-low borrowers to defer theirdebt payments can’t reportthese payments as late tocredit-reporting companies.From March 1 through the endof May, people deferred debtpayments on more than 100million accounts, according tocredit-reporting firm Trans-Union, a sign of widespread fi-nancial distress.

The credit blind spot hasfurther clouded the outlook forlenders. For years, strong con-sumer spending and borrowinghelped propel them to recordprofits. Now the economy is inshambles, and they are tryingto figure out what is going tohappen to all of the debt peo-ple racked up in better times.

Lenders that are having atough time spotting risky loanapplicants are approving fewerborrowers for credit cards, autoloans and other consumer debt.They are also hunting for newdata sets that could indicatewho is in financial trouble and

PleaseturntopageA2

BY ANNAMARIA ANDRIOTIS

INSIDE Families Are Bargaining OverCollege Costs—andWinningThe pandemic has accelerated a yearslong shift in financial power

toward students, away from schools; ‘It is a buyer’s market’

SPORTSTennis aims to putplayers in a bubble toget back on court forthe U.S. Open. A14

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CONTENTSBanking & Finance B9Business News.. B3,5Capital Journal...... A4Crossword.............. A12Heard on Street.. B11Life & Arts....... A11-13

Markets................... B10Opinion.............. A15-17Sports....................... A14Technology............... B4U.S. News............. A2-6Weather................... A12World News........ A7-9

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What’sNews

The SupremeCourt struckdown a Louisiana law thatcould have closed two of thestate’s three abortion clinics,ruling in a 5-4 vote that itwas virtually identical to aTexas measure the court hadinvalidated four years ago.A1 The high court, in a 5-4decision, ordered changes tothe CFPB, ruling the agency’sstructure unconstitutionalbecause the director held toomuch unchecked power. A1 China’s legislature ap-proved a sweeping newlaw aimed at quashingthreats to national secu-rity in Hong Kong, reject-ing Western criticism. A1 India has banned dozensof Chinese mobile apps inthe wake of a border clashbetween troops from the twocountries that left 20 Indiansoldiers dead this month. A8A surge in coronaviruscases in parts of the U.S.continued to prompt pausesor rollbacks of reopenings,as some hospital systemsbegan feeling the strain.A6RepublicanandDemocraticlawmakers united around de-mands that the White Housedetail intelligence indicatingRussia had paid bounties toinsurgents to have U.S. troopskilled in Afghanistan. A8 Iran issued a warrant toarrest Trump and 35 oth-ers over the killing of a topIranian general this year,which Tehran has labeledan act of terrorism. A8A French court convictedformer PrimeMinister Fillonon corruption charges andsentenced him to prison. A7

Banks have pulled backsharply on lending to

U.S. consumers during thecoronavirus crisis, in part be-cause they can’t gauge ap-plicants’ creditworthiness.A1 NPC International, theowner of more than 1,200PizzaHut restaurants and 385Wendy’s stores, is prepar-ing to file for chapter 11. B1 Uber is in talks to buyPostmates for about $2.6 bil-lion, the latest in a series ofmoves to consolidate thefood-delivery industry. B1 BP agreed to sell itspetrochemicals business toBritish chemical companyIneos for $5 billion. B1Reddit andAmazon-ownedTwitch suspended channelsused by Trump and his sup-porters, saying content thereviolated the firms’ policies.B3 Ford, Clorox andDenny’s joined an ad boy-cott against Facebook overthe company’s handling ofspeech on its platforms. B3 The Fed’s Powell, in pre-pared remarks, said the econ-omy reopened sooner thanexpectedbut that thepushhasbrought new challenges. A4 U.S. stocks climbed,with the Dow, S&P 500 andNasdaq gaining 2.3%, 1.5%and 1.2%, respectively. B10 Gilead detailed its pric-ing plans for Covid-19 drugremdesivir, saying it willcharge U.S. hospitals $3,120for a typical patient. A6 Las Vegas Strip hospital-ity workers sued casino op-erators, accusing the com-panies of failing to protectemployees from Covid-19. B1

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