The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously in favor of a 94-year-old woman who argued that she was entitled to some of the profits from the sale of a condominium for which she owed taxes and penalties — a decision likely to result in changes to state's property forfeiture laws.
Geraldine Tyler filed a putative class-action suit against Hennepin County saying that officials unconstitutionally kept profits from the sale of her home, which the county seized to cover her tax debt. A District Court judge dismissed that suit for lack of cause and the Eighth Circuit affirmed, but Supreme Court justices who heard Tyler's case ruled that Hennepin County violated a constitutional clause which says the government must give people "just compensation" when seizing their property.
"A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the State to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion, which noted that the principle that a government may not take from a taxpayer more than is owed dates back at least as far back as the Magna Carta. "The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but no more."
