Global Courant 2023-04-26 16:40:48
Geraldine Tyler, now 94, lost her one-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis for more than $2,300 in unpaid taxes, plus interest and penalties. Hennepin County sold the condo for $40,000 and kept every penny.
Tyler’s lawyers say the county violated constitutional protections against property seizure without “just compensation” and excessive fines. The Supreme Court, which will hear the pleas on Wednesday, will decide.
Minnesota is one of about a dozen states and the District of Columbia that allow local jurisdictions to keep the excess money, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents Tyler on the Supreme Court.
According to Pacific Legal, a nonprofit law firm focused on property rights, at least 8,950 homes were sold between 2014 and 2021 because of unpaid taxes and the former owners received little or nothing in those states.
Other states include: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and South Dakota, the group said.
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There is no explanation why Tyler stopped paying her property taxes when she moved in 2010 from the apartment she had lived in since 1999 to an apartment building for the elderly. She moved for “health and safety reasons,” Pacific Legal said. .
The county said in court filings that Tyler could have sold the property and kept what was left after paying the mortgage and taxes, refinanced her mortgage to pay the tax bill, or signed up for a tax payment plan.
The Supreme Court is seen on April 21, 2023 in Washington. The Supreme Court will hear the case of a 94-year-old woman who lost her one-bedroom apartment due to unpaid taxes on April 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Instead, she did nothing for five years, the county said, until authorities followed state law and sold the apartment. The county wrote: Tyler believes that “the constitution requires the state to act as its real estate broker, sell the property on its behalf and issue a check for the difference between the tax liability and fair market value.”
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Lower courts sided with the county before the judges agreed to intervene.
Minnesota and a handful of states and government associations support the county, warning that a Supreme Court ruling could tie the hands of local governments dependent on property taxes.
But most of the litigation support is with Tyler, including AARP, corporate groups, real estate interests, and other people who have gone through experiences similar to hers.
A Massachusetts man described his ongoing battle with authorities over a $900 tax bill on a property he says is worth at least $330,000 in a beach town on Cape Cod Bay. In a filing from New York, attorney David Wilkes and legal service providers wrote that New York’s rules are “excessively beyond what is due to the government and go far beyond an appropriate deterrent to homeowners who would ignore a tax arrears.”
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The Biden administration told the court that Tyler’s claim that her property was taken without just compensation, in violation of the 5th Amendment, is the strongest of its arguments. The judges should reject the claim that Minnesota law violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines, Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the Supreme Court ruled that the “excessive fines” clause applied to both the states and the federal government.
A decision in Minnesota’s Tyler v. Hennepin County, 22-166, is expected in late June.
