Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis V. First of Omaha Service Corp.

Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp. (439 U.S. 299 (1978)), is a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that state anti-usury laws regulating interest rates cannot be enforced against nationally chartered banks based in other states. Justice William Brennan wrote that it was clearly the intent of Congress when it passed the National Banking Act that nationally chartered banks would be subject only to federal regulation by the Comptroller of Currency and the laws of the state in which they were chartered, and that only Congress or the appropriate state legislature could pass the laws regulating them.

The case has been called one of the most important of the late 20th century, since it freed nationally chartered banks to offer credit cards to anyone in the U.S. they deemed qualified, and more specifically because it allowed them to export interest rates to states with stricter regulations, opening up a race to the bottom between U.S. states in an effort to attract lending institutions to set up shop in their states. Over the next decade, the states accelerated a process that had already begun of repealing or loosening their anti-usury laws, allowing state-chartered banks to compete more equally with national ones. As a result, the use of credit cards has vastly increased, and since the mortgage industry soon followed suit, the issuance of subprime mortgages also increased drastically, facilitating the housing bubble that led to the 2008 housing crisis.