SCOTUS appears to back a 94 year old widowed grandmother.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard its last scheduled argument of the term — a case brought by a 94-year-old widowed grandmother in Minneapolis whose condominium was seized for failure to pay property taxes. Unsurprisingly, it looked like grandma will win. The case is important because Minnesota is one of 20 states that handle the sale of such defaulted properties without sharing the proceeds with the previous owner when the property is sold. Geraldine Tyler bought her condo in 1999 and lived there until 2010 when, at age 81, she moved to a senior living center at the urging of her children. It is undisputed that she failed to pay property taxes on the condo for five years, despite being repeatedly notified that she risked losing it if she didn't pay up. By 2015, she owed $15,000 in unpaid taxes, interest and fees. Finally, the county, after offering her a tax payment plan for seniors and other options, seized the condo and sold it at public auction for $40,000.

At the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Tyler's lawyer argued that the county unconstitutionally took the property by keeping the $25,000 surplus over the amount owed in back taxes. Lawyer Christina Martin said that amounts to a taking without just compensation, something that the Constitution explicitly forbids. Chief Justice John Roberts noted that traditionally such matters are left to state laws, and that, at the founding, some states did have laws like Minnesota's.
[Neal] Katyal opened and spent a good deal of time trying to persuade the court that Tyler had no legal standing to sue because, at the time her condo was sold, she had no equity in the house. Under state law, the seizure automatically cancelled her debts on it — debts totaling $59,000 in mortgage payments and unpaid condo fees. Katyal got nowhere and only seemed to irritate the court, even when he referred to states that had laws like Minnesota's at the time of the founding. And when he cited the Statute of Gloucester in 1278, Justice Neil Gorsuch could contain himself no longer. "Tyler was not a vassal owing fealty to her lord but a modern-day simple owner of real property," he intoned. "I just don't understand what on Earth any of that history has to do with this case."
"What's the point of the takings clause?" Chief Justice Roberts asked. "I mean that was something that was pretty important to the framers. Why did they put that in there?" Justice Brett Kavanaugh made a similar observation: "Why would we read the Constitution to disfavor real property though? That seems very counterintuitive." Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that while 19 states may have laws like Minnesota's, the majority do not. "Most states allow for some sort of surplus or have some sort of mechanism to give the money back to homeowners," Jackson said. "So what is the big practical problem that we would face?"
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/26/11722533 ... ondo-taxes

Neal Katyal who represented the county is a former DOJ official in the Obama administration. This could be another unanimous decision that could invalidate similar laws in the 19 states with similar laws.
Last edited by highdesert on Thu Apr 27, 2023 7:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: SCOTUS appears to back a 94 year old widowed grandmother.

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The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously sided with a 94-year-old grandmother who lost her home to foreclosure and then lost the equity she had in the property when the county sold it and kept the profit. A Minnesota County sold Geraldine Tyler’s condo for $40,000. Instead of returning the $25,000 difference between the sales price and what she owed in back taxes, the county pocketed the balance and used the extra money for forest development, county parks, and recreation programs. In a unanimous opinion handed down less than a month after the justices heard arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts held that the Tyler had a plausible case that the county violated the Constitution's takings clause. "The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but not more," Roberts wrote.
Tyler's attorneys said about a dozen states have laws similar to Minnesota's – including New York, Arizona and Illinois – and that those laws can have a big impact on seniors struggling to pay property taxes after retirement. Tyler argued the county's handling of the property represented a government "taking" that she says violates the Fifth Amendment. The takings clause says that "private property" cannot be "taken for public use, without just compensation." But the court rejected the idea that Tyler had abandoned the property. While a government may collect taxes and impose interest and late fees when those taxes are not paid, Roberts wrote that the principle that a government can take no more than it is owed dates back centuries. A federal district court sided with the county in the dispute and the St. Louis-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit affirmed that decision.
The decision wasn't a surprise. A majority of the justices – conservatives and liberals – signaled during oral argument last month that they were concerned with the state law at issue in Tyler's case. Tyler also argued that the fines assessed by the county are excessive in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Tyler owed about $2,300 in back taxes but with penalties and interest, her obligation grew to $15,000. The court declined to address that issue but Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote separately to raise concerns about how the lower courts had decided the fines were not excessive. The case is Tyler v. Hennepin County.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 201914007/

That's a unanimous slap down to the US District Court in MN and the 8th Circuit in St Louis. Congrats to 94 yr old Geraldine Tyler.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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