ALL the High Courts judges rulled for a 94 year woman who got beat on the situation in Minnesota….
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that states that seize and sell private property to recoup unpaid taxes violate the Constitution’s takings clause if they retain more than what the taxpayer owed.
The case concerned a 94-year-old woman in Minnesota who had stopped paying property taxes on her condominium after moving into an assisted-living center.
By the time Hennepin County seized the property, the woman, Geraldine Tyler, owed about $2,000 in taxes and another $13,000 in penalties and interest. The county sold the condo at auction for $40,000, and it kept not only the $15,000 that all agreed it was due but also the remaining $25,000.
Retaining the entire value of a confiscated property, even when the debts owed amounted to a small portion of it, is authorized by Minnesota law…..
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Writing for the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that “history and precedent say otherwise.”
“The county had the power to sell Tyler’s home to recover the unpaid property taxes,” he wrote, but, he added, “it could not use the toehold of the tax debt to confiscate more property than was due.”
The county’s action, the chief justice wrote, was a classic violation of the takings clause, which says that property cannot “be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
History supported that view, Chief Justice Roberts wrote….