Court Opinion

ID: 9707549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:15:31.010847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:35.122667
License: Public Domain

FOLEY, P.J.
(dissenting). The comprehensive provisions of ch. 215, Stats., preempt regulation of the loan practices of savings and loan associations. Chapter 215 demonstrates an intent to have uniform and experienced regulation and enforcement, which would be impossible if every city was allowed to separately regulate. For some of the same reasons that Madison cannot set utility rates, or require banks to make specific investments in the city, or require insurance companies to take improvident local risks, it should not be allowed to regulate Anchor’s loan practices. Regardless of the purpose of Madison’s ordinance, because its effect is to regulate loan practices, I would reverse the judgment.
*678Also, even if Madison was entitled to regulate Anchor’s loan practices, it was reasonable for Anchor to treat Schenk’s support obligation differently from the support obligation of a married person. Unlike a married person’s support obligation, Schenk’s court-ordered obligation is fixed. While a married person may reduce or temporarily defer family expenses without fear of being put in jail, Schenk must make his support payments regardless of what other debts he may have voluntarily incurred since his divorce. Schenk must also feed and shelter himself in separate quarters, and he may marry again and create an equal obligation to a second family. While I agree that discrimination in lending based solely on marital status is wrong and should not be tolerated, I consider it equally wrong for the law to require a lender to ignore relevant factual distinctions that exist as a consequence of divorce.