Courts

It Turns Out You Can't Steal $25K From Old Ladies According To Supreme Court

Hiding behind the elderly grandmother were some mischievous legal theories.

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grandma laptopA 94-year-old grandmother who lost her condo to a bunch of bureaucrats makes for a pretty good client. When the county government then tries to steal $25,000 from her, she becomes a great client. This morning, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with Geraldine Tyler that when the Hennepin County government seized and sold her property for $40,000 to satisfy a $15,000 tax debt, it wasn’t entitled to keep the remaining $25K.

The non-lawyerly media will focus on the opinion protecting literal and proverbial “widows and orphans.” As public trust in the Supreme Court sinks amid ongoing ethical scandals, this opinion will feed more than one cloying “maybe the Supreme Court really is trying its best to do the right thing” editorial glossing over the incessant swipes the Court takes at constitutional order.

Minnesota argued that Tyler was free to sell the property to pay her delinquent taxes at any time, but after refusing to do so for years and forcing the government to go through the time and effort of acting as her real estate agent, it can keep whatever remains. The risk of losing excess value is the incentive to get owners to sell their own property and keep the government out of it. Which makes some sense.

But the Supreme Court didn’t buy the idea that this allows a government to escape the Takings Clause:

The Takings Clause “was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.” Armstrong, 364 U. S., at 49. 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. The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.

Which is probably right.

At oral argument, the justices posed slippery slope hypotheticals about whether the government could sell a $5M house to satisfy a $5,000 debt and pocket the remainder. While one would assume that someone with a $5M house would be invested enough to avoid this scenario, that didn’t really enter into the conversation. Minnesota probably should impose some sort of commission on foreclosure sales to cover their costs instead of trying to keep the leftover remedy. One for the next legislative session!

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Neal Katyal argued this case for Hennepin County and got no end of flack for it. Far-right outlets bemoaned “Al Qaeda Lawyer Defends Seizure of House From Elderly Lady,” but did a good enough job leaning into that narrative that the broader public joined in (up to and including one of his favorite bands). He did just successfully save democracy for a couple more years, but these cases with sympathetic plaintiffs — along with the Alien Tort Statute case over whether U.S. courts could hear a complaint from foreign child slavery victims on whether they could sue a foreign company for actions that happened in yet another country — keep generating outsized chatter.

Which is extra weird in this instance because beyond the superficial level, Tyler’s case isn’t nearly as sympathetic as the grandmotherly elevator pitch.

She didn’t lose her home — she lost a property that she’d abandoned while refusing to pay taxes on it. Would the county have actually taken a grandmother’s home if it were literally the roof over her head? It seems unlikely because if that actually happened to someone… that woman’s name would be on this case.

Her attorneys were from the Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization that mostly attacks Title IX protections and environmental regulations (in a case they also won today). She drew amici from the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not exactly an advocacy group for widows and orphans. One can imagine how expanding the concept of Takings to implicate regulatory action would fit a broader philosophical goal.

But just because this ruling opens the door to mischief doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The Constitution is pretty clear that governments can’t just take someone’s property without paying for it. Today that means Tyler should get her $25K back. We’ll have the fight over whether banning poison death clouds constitutes a Taking next time around.

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(Full opinion on the next page…)

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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