Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell
Case Date: 05/19/2024
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Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398 (1934), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court holding that Minnesota's suspension of creditors' remedies was not in violation of the United States Constitution. Blaisdell was decided during the height of the Great Depression and has been criticized by modern conservative and libertarian commentators.[1][2][3] Nevertheless, Blaisdell has never been explicitly overruled.
In 1933, in response to a large number of home foreclosures, Minnesota, like many other states at the time,[4] extended the time available for mortgagors to redeem their mortgages from foreclosure. The extension had the effect of enlarging the mortgagor's estate contrary to the terms of the contract.
The Supreme Court upheld the statute, reasoning that the emergency conditions created by the Great Depression "may justify the exercise of [the State's] continuing and dominant protective power notwithstanding interference with contracts."[5] Blaisdell was the first time the court extended the emergency exception to purely economic emergencies.
While the Blaisdell judgment itself might have been held to apply only in limited instances of economic emergency, by the late 1930s the emergency exception doctrine had expanded dramatically.[6]
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