1978 Marquette Case Unleashes Usury

For much of U.S. history, most states treated credit card interest rates above roughly 18 percent as illegal usury, but that changed after a single 1978 Supreme Court case, Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. The Court ruled that nationally chartered banks could charge interest based on the laws of the state where they were located, not the borrower’s state, which let banks “export” high rates from permissive states like Nebraska to the rest of the country.

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