In oral arguments Wednesday, Gorsuch scoffed at Trump impeachment author’s reliance on 13th century legislation on feudal lands to defend “home equity theft.” Land ownership “essential to preservation of liberty,” said Roberts.
AGeorgetown University law professor who wrote a book arguing for then-President Trump’s impeachment believes that states can legally confiscate a million-dollar home and keep the full sale proceeds to pay $5 in back taxes. Some members of the Supreme Court found that a stretch.
Justices across the ideological spectrum gave Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, a hard time in oral arguments Wednesday in a case with far-reaching consequences for property rights in America, perhaps as consequential as its 2005 Kelo decision that set off a wave of eminent-domain reform across the country.
Minnesota’s Hennepin County, represented by Katyal, seized 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler’s condo as payment for $2,300 in back property taxes and $13,000 in penalties, interest, and costs, then sold it for $40,000 and kept the profit as allowed by law in Minnesota and a dozen other states including D.C. Others return the surplus from the sale to the owner.
Tyler had moved out of the Minneapolis condo, valued at $93,000, for a safer neighborhood but struggled to pay both rent and property taxes, according to a profile in Reason, which said the laws tend to hit elderly homeowners without mortgages.
Other states have reaped even bigger windfalls from what critics call “home equity theft”: $197,000 kept by D.C. for $134 owed and $286,000 kept by Michigan to pay an initial $900 tax bill, though a federal appeals court struck down Michigan’s statute.