That this has to go to SCOTUS is sick.
The legal system totally sucks.
I just read some details of the Eighth Circuit Court’s opinion in favor of the municipal government. Their decision is based on a more nuanced but very concrete legal analysis than a simple foreclosure.It seems that a government foreclosure process under Minnesota law is unique. There are many points during the foreclosure process when the property owner can intervene on his or her behalf to remedy their default - and they are even given an opportunity to pay off the debt under a 5 or 10 year period.
At one specific point in the process - after the debtor has refused to avail herself of any of these remedies - it ceases to be a “foreclosure” and effectively becomes a property abandonment process. The Minnesota statutes governing the abandonment process date back to the 1880s when it was apparently common for farmers to abandon their Minnesota farms and move west to the Dakota territories and settle on new land given to them under the Homestead Act. The property was considered abandoned because the Minnesota courts and government authorities had no recourse and no mechanism for even contacting these people.
In this case, the Federal courts simply ruled that the foreclosure/abandonment process was governed by Minnesota law. Importantly, the courts ruled that the sale of the condo was not a violation of the “Takings Clause” for a clear legal/technical reason - in that the debtor no longer had any ownership claim on the property after they passed the specific point in the Minnesota process where it went from a “foreclosure” to an “abandonment.”