In August 2005, the New York State Legislature amended N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5206 to increase the state’s homestead exemption from $10,000 to $50,000. See 2005 N.Y. Laws Ch. 623. In addition to exempting a judgment debtor’s home “from application to the satisfaction of a money judgment,” N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5206(a), New York debtors are entitled to claim this exemption in bankruptcy proceedings. See N.Y. Debt. & Cred. Law § 282; see also 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(3)(A). This appeal requires us to determine whether the 2005 Amendment’s increased homestead exemption amount applies retroactively to debts incurred prior to the Amendment’s effective date. We hold that it does. Neither the statutory language nor its legislative history requires limiting the scope of the Amendment to debts incurred after the *257 Amendment’s effective date. The Contract Clause of the Constitution is likewise not offended by a retroactive application of the Amendment to pre-existing debts. Accordingly, New York debtors who file a bankruptcy petition after the Amendment’s effective date are entitled to invoke the greater homestead exemption amount of $50,000.
FACTS
On October 14, 2005, Jerald John Hayward, II and Lois Evelyn Hayward (collectively, “Debtors”) filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition. Debtors alleged that (1) Jerald owned real property with a market value of $95,294 encumbered by a $49,775.98 mortgage; (2) the property was exempt under N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5206; and (8) Appellant CFCU Community Credit Union (“CFCU”) held a claim for $11,291.63 (a May 2003 car loan), secured by an automobile valued at $7,185, leaving CFCU a general unsecured creditor for the balance ($4,106.63).
CFCU objected to the homestead exemption to the extent it exceeded the pre-2005 Amendment amount. CFCU argued that (1) the 2005 Amendment does not specifically provide that it applies to obligations or debts incurred prior to August 30, 2005 — the effective date of the Amendment; (2) in the absence of such a provision, the 2005 Amendment does not apply retroactively to any obligation or debt incurred prior to that date; and (3) even if the 2005 Amendment applied to pre-Au-gust 30, 2005 debts, that construction would impair the contract between Debtors and CFCU, thus violating the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution. See U.S. Const, art. I, § 10, cl. 1. In opposition, Debtors contended that the State Legislature clearly intended the $50,000 homestead exemption to apply because the law specifically provided that it “shall take effect immediately.” 2005 N.Y. Laws Ch. 623, § 2. Debtors also argued that, under 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(3)(A), they may exempt “any property that is exempt under ... State or local law that is applicable on the date of the filing of the petition .... ” Thus, because their petition was filed on October 14, 2005, after the effective date of the Amendment, the increased exemption amount applies.
The bankruptcy court (Ninfo,
J.)
denied CFCU’s motion, holding that Debtors were entitled to the $50,000 exemption even though they incurred their CFCU debt prior to the 2005 Amendment.
See In re Hayward,
The court concluded that limiting the reach of the law to prospective application only would “defeat the clearly evident intention of the New York State Legislature.”
Id.
The court also noted that CFCU had not reduced the Haywards’ debt to judgment before August 30, 2005.
Id.
The court concluded that such “creditors do not have the kind of vested rights that require a detailed constitutional anal
*258
ysis beyond that set forth in
Little.” Id.
The court concluded that “the Trustee-in-bankruptcy, who represents all the general unsecured creditors and is the ‘perfect lien creditor’ under Section 544,” would only be vested with rights that “came into existence when the debtors filed their bankruptcy petitions after August 30, 2005, the date when the [Amendment] became immediately and retroactively effective.”
Id.
at 46-47. The district court (Siragusa,
J.)
affirmed upon “the opinion of the court below.”
CFCU Cmty. Credit Union v. Hayward,
No. 06-CV-6290,
On appeal to this Court, CFCU reiterates its challenge to the retroactive application of the 005 Amendment as it relates to pre-existing debts, arguing that (1) neither the language of the Amendment nor its legislative history manifest a clear intent that the statute apply retroactively to pre-Amendment debts, and (2) retroactive application violates the Contract Clause. Debtors counter that we should employ the exemption in effect at the time of the filing of their petition because 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(3)(A) provides that the “State or local law that is applicable on the date of the filing of the petition” governs the available state bankruptcy exemptions. New York’s Attorney General has intervened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2403(b) in support of the statute. 2 While agreeing with Debtors that they should have the benefit of the increased exemption, the Attorney General rejects their reasoning and instead urges us to adopt the rationale articulated by the courts below — the 2005 Amendment is remedial and therefore applies to debts incurred prior to its effective date. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the order of the district court.
DISCUSSION
I. The State Law Question: Interpreting the Scope of the 2005 Amendment
A. Governing Bankruptcy Code Provisions and New York’s Homestead Exemption 3
Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 522(b), debtors may exempt certain property from the bankruptcy estate created by the petition, “allowing them to retain those assets rather than divide them among their creditors.”
Rousey v. Jacoway,
New York’s exemptions are set forth in Debtor
&
Creditor Law §
282. See In re Onyan,
Debtors contend that 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(3)(A) requires that all bankruptcy petitions filed in New York after the Amendment’s enactment date employ the increased homestead exemption. One New York bankruptcy court has adopted this view.
See Rupp v. Elmasri (In re Elmasri),
Debtors also argue that
Owen v. Owen,
B. New York Homestead Exemption Background
New York law has provided a homestead exemption since 1850.
See
Homestead Act of 50, ch. 260 (1850) N.Y. Laws 499 (replaced by the Code of Civil Procedure 1876);
John T. Mather Mem.’l Hosp., Inc. v. Pearl,
The statute is founded upon considerations of public policy, and has introduced a new rule in regard to the extent of property which shall be liable for a man’s debts. The legislature were of opinion, looking to the advantages belonging to the family state in the preservation of morals, the education of children, and possibly even, in the encouragement of hope in unfortunate debtors, that this degree of exemption would promote the public welfare, and perhaps in the end, benefit the creditor.
Robinson v. Wiley,
Since the homestead statute was incorporated into the N.Y. C.P.L.R. in 1962 it
*261
has been amended several times to increase the exemption.
See
1962 N.Y. Laws Ch. 308. In 1969, the Legislature increased the exemption from $1,000 to $2,000.
See
1969 N.Y. Laws Ch. 961; see
also Roosevelt Hardware v. Green,
Prior to the enactment of the 2006 Amendment, the last time the State Legislature increased the homestead exemption was in 1977. In addition to raising the homestead exemption amount from $2,000 to $10,000, the 1977 amendments “modernized” the statute “by specifying three distinct and enumerated types of property which qualify for the exemption ... and by deleting the provisions requiring a judgment debtor to file a notice or conveyance with the county clerk in order to claim the exemption.”
Wyoming County Bank & Trust Co. v. Kiley,
C. The 2005 Amendment to the Homestead Exemption
The 2005 Amendment does not contain language addressing whether the new exemption amount should be applied to debts contracted prior to the Amendment’s enactment date. Instead, the Amendment merely directs that “[t]his act shall take effect immediately.” 2005 N.Y. Laws Ch. 623, § 2. A statute’s command that it take effect “immediately” does not resolve the question of whether, under New York law, the amendment should be applied retroactively to pre-existing debts.
See Majewski v. Broadalbin-Perth Cent. Sch. Dist.,
D. Retroactive or Prospective?
It should come as no surprise that “retroactive operation is not favored by [New York] courts and statutes will not be given such construction unless the language expressly or by necessary implication requires it.”
Majewski,
Remedial legislation, however, “should be applied retroactively.”
Majewski,
New York’s Court of Appeals has cautioned, however, that while the “maxims of statutory construction” described above “provide helpful guideposts, the reach of the statute ultimately becomes a matter of judgment made upon review of the legislative goal.”
Duell v. Condon,
*263 E. Legislative Intent
There are several key legislative documents which shed light on the statute’s purpose. The memoranda submitted by the Amendment’s sponsors in the Senate and Assembly are helpful in that regard. In New York, while not determinative, a legislator’s sponsor memo submitted contemporaneously with the legislation “is entitled to considerable weight in discerning legislative intent.”
Vatore v. Comm’r of Consumer
Affairs,
The idea of the homestead exemption to civil judgments seems to have been that no civil judgment against any person should result in that person forfeiting his or her having a right to a place to live. To that end, Chapter 181 of the Laws of 1977 made the value of a person’s homestead up to $10,000 exempt from civil judgments against that person.
Later on, Section 282 of the Debtor and Creditor Law extended this exemption to assessments of the value of a person’s estate when Bankruptcy is declared. When laws mention specific dollar amounts, it is prudent to periodically review and update those amounts. Current law sets the homestead exemptions at $10,000. That amount was set when the exemption was first enacted in 1977, and has not been updated since. In 1998, the value of that amount of money had declined to about $3570 in 1977 dollars.
This bill proposes to increase the homestead exemption to $50,000, a much more realistic figure. The current amount, which is 22 years old, is not at all realistic in today’s economy. To have the figure so low is tantamount to having no exemption at all.
N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 S.B. S4582; N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 A.B. A8479. The Assembly memo additionally noted, “[t]his bill will help to provide some relief from the stringent bankruptcy laws recently passed by Congress.” N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 A.B. A8479.
This legislative history clearly reflects an intent on the part of the Legislature to adjust the homestead exemption to account for inflation and to bring it in line with current economic conditions. The law’s sponsors specifically noted that the $10,000 amount had not been updated since 1977 and was “not at all realistic in today’s economy.” N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 S.B. S4582; N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 A.B. A8479. The sponsors further explained that “[t]o have the figure so low is tantamount to having no exemption at all.”
Id.
Viewing the $10,000 exemption as insufficient, the Legislature increased the dollar value to a level that furthers the policy of reducing the number of debtors who lose their homes as a result of bankruptcy or a civil judgment, a longstanding goal of the homestead exemption in New York.
See, e.g., Leonardo,
Based on the absence of language barring the application of the Amendment to pre-enactment debts, and the legislative intent to provide for an immediate increased exemption, we cannot infer that the Legislature intended the Amendment to apply only prospectively. CFCU points to nothing in the statute or legislative history that would require limiting the scope of the Amendment in such a fashion. Unlike the language of the 1977 Amendment,
see Perry v. Zarcone,
No such legislative history exists here. In this case, the Legislature’s decision not to include something akin to the anti-retro-activity provision of the 1977 Amendment in the 2005 Amendment suggests an intent to apply the law to pre-enactment contract debts. Legislative concern with pre-exist-ing debts expressed in the 1977 Amendment is simply not present in the 005 legislation. Rather, the Legislature explicitly commanded that it was to take effect “immediately.” 2005 N.Y. Laws Ch. 623, § 2. Although such a directive alone does not mandate retroactive application,
see Majewski,
We also agree with New York’s Attorney General that the 2005 Amendment is remedial in nature.
See, e.g., Macumber v. Shafer,
In addition, the State Legislature’s action on the homestead exemption increase appears to have been partly precipitated by Congress’s passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. The Assembly sponsor memo explicitly provided that the Amendment “will help to provide some relief from the stringent bankruptcy laws recently passed by Congress.” N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 A.B. A8479. If, however, we concluded that the old exemption amount applied — the legislative sponsors believed that amount was “tantamount to having no exemption at all,” id.; N.Y. Spons. Memo., 2005 S.B. S4582 — no additional relief would be accorded to New York debtors, thus contravening the Amendment’s purpose.
In light of the legislative finding that the increased exemption amount was long overdue and that the old amount was unrealistic in today’s economy, it would defeat the intent of the Legislature to judicially engraft an anti-retroac-tivity provision (similar to that found in the 1977 Amendment) onto the statute where none exists. It is well settled that “[t]he Legislature is presumed to be aware of the law in existence at the time of an enactment.”
Matter of Amorosi v. S. Colonie Ind. Cent Sch. Dist.,
F. Certification
Before we depart from our state law analysis, we take a moment to explain why we decline to exercise our discretionary authority to certify the state law issue to the New York Court of Appeals. Although neither the parties nor the Attorney General as an intervenor advocated certification, we may certify a question where “an unsettled and significant question of state law ... will control the outcome of a case pending before this Court.” Second Cir. Local R. § 0.27;
see 2
N.Y.C.R.R. § 500.27. Certification may be appropriate “if with respect to the question asked ... there is a statute implicated [and] its plain language does not answer the question.”
City of N.Y. v. Smokes-Spirits.Com, Inc.,
We would note that the large majority of eases dealing with the homestead exemption have been litigated in bankruptcy court. Perhaps the issue does not present itself often outside of the context of a bankruptcy proceeding. In any event, the question of whether the 2005 Amendment applies to pre-existing debts is easily resolved using well-established principles of New York law that counsel courts in the task of determining the reach of a statute. However, the reach of the statute is but half the task. Once we have concluded that the statute affects pre-existing debts, we must then determine if it runs afoul of the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Thus, resolution of the state law question alone would not resolve the problem presented.
If we certified the issue of the scope of the 2005 Amendment to the New York high court, and that court agreed with our analysis, the New York court would have no choice but to determine if retroactive application violated the Contract Clause. Under New York law, “[a] statute is presumptively constitutional and should be construed in such a manner as to uphold its constitutionality.”
Eaton v. N.Y. City Conciliation & Appeals Bd.,
II. The Constitutional Challenge
The Contract Clause of the United States Constitution provides that “[n]o State shall ... pass any ... Law ... impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” U.S. Const, art. 1, § 10, cl. 1. “Although the language of the Contract Clause is facially absolute, its prohibition must be accommodated to the inherent police power of the State ‘to safeguard the vital interests of its people.’ ”
Energy Reserves Group, Inc. v. Kan. Power and Light Co.,
The first step in Contract Clause analysis asks “whether the state law has, in fact, operated as a substantial impairment of a contractual relationship.”
Energy Reserves,
We begin our analysis by observing that this Court previously viewed with skepticism a Contract Clause argument, such as the one CFCU makes here, noting that it was “unlikely that the retroactive application of New York’s homestead exemption would violate the Contracts Clause.”
Weber v. United States,
Here, CFCU provided Debtors with an automobile loan; the parties undisputedly had a contractual relationship. For our purposes, CFCU is a general unsecured creditor who has not reduced the debt to judgment. 14 There can be little doubt that the increased exemption impairs CFCU’s rights as a creditor; the higher exemption, if applicable, reduces the assets available for satisfaction of the debt. Thus, our analysis turns on whether that impairment is substantial.
Determining if a statute substantially impairs a contract requires an examination of “the extent to which reasonable expectations under the contract have been disrupted.”
Buffalo Teachers Fed’n v.
*268
Tobe,
In any event, even if we characterized the impairment of the contractual relationship as substantial, we would still conclude that application of the 2005 Amendment to pre-enactment debts serves the “significant and legitimate public purpose,”
Energy Reserves,
CFCU’s reliance on several of our older Contract Clause decisions is misplaced.
See, e.g., Wilson v. Relin,
The “impairment” presented here is far less substantial. The 2005 Amendment does not exempt an entire class of property previously available to creditors. New York’s homestead exemption has been part of that state’s legal and lending environment for more than a century and a half. Its latest incarnation increased the exemption in order to account for inflation. Moreover, our older cases may not apply with the same force today as they do not appear to fully employ current Contract Clause jurisprudence to the extent that they fail to accord sufficient deference to state legislative judgments concerning whether a statute advances a significant and legitimate public purpose.
See In re Seltzer,
CONCLUSION
In sum, the 2005 Amendment applies retroactively in post-enactment filings to contract-based debts that preceded its enactment. Furthermore, retroactive application of the exemption does not violate the constitutional rights of pre-enactment, contract-based creditors who have not reduced the debt owed to them to judgment. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Notes
. On February 4, 2008, we granted the State Attorney General’s motion to submit a brief as an intervenor.
. "An order of a district court functioning in its capacity as an appellate court in a bankruptcy case is subject to plenary review.”
Mazzeo v. Lenhart (In re Mazzeo),
. This provision was previously codified at 11 U.S.C. § 522(b)(2), but changed as a result of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention & Consumer Protection Act of 2005, Pub.L. No. 109-8, 119 Stat. 23.
. Other bankruptcy courts have similarly adopted the view that the exemption amount in effect on the date the petition was filed applies regardless of whether the state intended the statute to apply to pre-existing debts.
See, e.g., In re Evans,
. New York's first Homestead Act "provided that a lot of land with one or more buildings thereon not exceeding $1000 in value owned and occupied as a residence by a 'householder having a family’ could be exempted from an execution by recording a designation so specifying in the appropriate County Clerk's office.”
In re Feiss,
. The amendment took effect on January 1, 1970. See 1969 N.Y. Laws Ch. 961, § 2.
. The district court in Little, upon which the courts below heavily relied, interpreted this as a clear indication that the Legislature intended the 2005 Amendment to be remedial and thus applied retroactively. Little, 2007 WL *262 2791122, at *3. That view is inconsistent with Majewski.
. It is important to note that CFCU does not claim that it obtained a vested interest—a property interest—in Debtors' home prior to the Amendment’s enactment. While CFCU has a security interest in Debtors’ car it has not reduced the amount due on the loan to a judgment and filed the judgment in the county in which debtors reside. See N.Y. C.P.L.R. 5203(a). Thus, CFCU's only claim here is that the Amendment does not apply to their contract-based claim solely because the contract was executed prior to the Amendment’s effective date.
.Although the creditor in
Perry
obtained a judgment prior to the 1977 Amendment's effective date, see
. The New York Court of Appeals noted in
Majewski,
however, that "[although posten-actment statements of the Governor may be examined in an analysis of legislative intent and statutory purpose,” they must be viewed with caution.
See
. We reiterate that we are only asked to determine if contract-based debts that have *265 not been reduced to judgment prior to the effective date of the Amendment are subject to the increased exemption amount.
. In
Weber,
CFCU moved for leave to take a direct appeal to this Court from a bankruptcy court order retroactively applying the 2005 Amendment to the debtor’s property.
See
. CFCU does have a lien on Debtors’ automobile securing the loan, but the balance due on the loan exceeds the value of the vehicle. Thus, CFCU is a general unsecured creditor.
. In
Addiss v. Selig,
. In
Seltzer,
the Ninth Circuit determined that retroactive application of a Nevada statute permitting debtors to exempt Individual Retirement Accounts from the bankruptcy es
*269
tate did not violate the Contract Clause.