Posted on 04/27/2023 6:20:11 PM PDT by george76
Anybody fighting City Hall is outgunned and outnumbered. It is just a fact of life. If anything can be said to have deep pockets, it is government–because their pockets include everybody else’s.
That’s why it is so important to have independent groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation, which along with a few other nonprofits like the Institute for Justice, can beef up the power of the little guy. They can’t fight every battle, but they can rack up some important victories which make everybody’s lives a bit better.
...
I am a big fan of the PLF and what they have accomplished and am particularly interested in a case they just argued before the Supreme Court, Tyler v. Hennepin County. I happen to live in Hennepin County.
The case is pretty simple. A 94-year-old woman was driven by crime out of her condo in Minneapolis, eventually finding a home at a Senior Center. She fell behind a bit on her property taxes, and the county started piling on fees and fines that ran up from a couple thousand in delinquent taxes to a $15,000 bill.
This is the first injustice. The second is much worse: they seized her condo, sold the property for a pittance, and kept the profits.
Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed inclined to side with a 94-year-old woman who said a Minnesota county unfairly pocketed the surplus when it seized and sold her condominium after she failed to pay property taxes.
Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, foreclosed on Geraldine Tyler’s one-bedroom condo after she moved into an apartment building for the elderly and stopped paying property taxes for five years.
She owed about $15,000 in taxes and penalties. The county sold her condo for $40,000 and kept the surplus, as the law allows in Minnesota, the District of Columbia and about a dozen other states.
The Supreme Court is considering Tyler’s claim that keeping the excess money violates the Constitution’s prohibition on the taking of private property without fair compensation by the government, as well as protection against excessive fines. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group representing Tyler, calls what Hennepin County did “equity-stealing.”
Talk about adding insult to injury. They just up and stole her property, keeping an extra $25,000 for themselves.
This is hardly unique, as you can see. Over a dozen states do this, and if the Pacific Legal Foundation wins its case the practice will be stopped.
The questioning by the justices in oral arguments was pretty hostile to Hennepin County, but it is always dangerous to read too much into that. Supreme Court justices are always probing to find weaknesses in arguments without necessarily endorsing their implied objections.
Still, some of the questions were pretty obvious, with Justice Kagan seeming very skeptical.
“At bottom, she’s saying the county took her property, made a profit on it with the surplus equity, and it belongs to her,” Justice Clarence Thomas said. He asked Washington lawyer Neal K. Katyal, representing Hennepin County, whether he could think of “any instance in which a creditor can . . . seize property and keep the excess profit or the excess amount over the debt that’s actually owed?”
Justice Elena Kagan similarly pushed Katyal. “Are there any limits?” she asked. “I mean, $5,000 tax debt, $5 million house. Take the house, don’t give back the rest?”
She added: “If the mind rebels at the notion that the government can seize your $100,000 bank account and not give you back the $90,000 that you don’t owe, if the mind rebels at that, you know, why should . . . what was going on in 1200 or what was going on in 1776 change anything?”
One thing is certain: a 94-year-old woman is not in a position to fight back against a county government with billions in revenue every year. It takes a champion with deeper pockets and more stamina to carry the fight against government injustice.
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Geraldine’s case is only one of over a hundred cases the Foundation is fighting at the moment, and they have 15 victories at the Supreme Court.
With a mission to protect liberty and a record like that, I’m glad to have them on our side. It’s not like the forces of liberty are overburdened with allies at the moment.
Let’s hope Geraldine’s case is victory #16.
Would be really good for the PLF to go all in on stopping people from RIGGING ELECTIONS. Then we wouldn’t have judges who let crap like this happen to grandma... How bout you go back to the point and the actual friction point that will save our Republic. Your votes in CA for every statewide office are RIGGED. PLF, there is no accountability in the current system because the elections are Rigged... thank for throwing a bone to the legal systems legitimacy... its not currently legitimate because the chief magistrate is in office through industrial scale voter fraud.
If the government or a bank forecloses on a property and sells it, they can only keep the amount owed by the debtor plus the administrative costs of processing the foreclosure.
The relevant Minnesota law has an unusual aspect to it when it comes to government seizures. In this case, the property was considered abandoned after a lengthy process to try to collect the outstanding taxes. Because it was an abandonment and not a foreclosure, there is a legitimate question about whether the debtor was owed anything at all. The courts ruled that she had effectively relinquished any claim to the property by allowing the process to go on for so long.
This is why she hasn't prevailed in any court during the trial and appeal process.
And now less than $630 to reach 30% in our freepathon!
04/27/23 | Jim Robinson
Posted on 4/27/2023, 3:26:37 PM by Jim Robinson
Let’s get ‘er done!
NO RESPONSES YET! SHAME!
I question whether the county provided upfront and plain English explanations of the process. Or even if all notices were actually sent.
Bureaucrats consistently do what is easiest and even that, they do poorly.
I lack faith in the process and the system.
1. Would they even bother to go through all that for a property that sold for only $40,000?
2. How competent is the plaintiff in this case, if she ended up losing her property over a $2,300 tax liability?
I suppose it depends on where the extra 25K goes... is it tacked onto bonuses or a party fund.
Minneapolis is the home of one of the largest Covid fund scams yet discovered. Do not misunderestimate the venality of its bureaucrats.
Years ago the PLF filed an amicus brief on our behalf in a water rights case against the government. Unbelievably it took 20 but we finally won. We’re still the only people to ever win a water case against the government in the state. They are indeed the good guys fighting the good fight for the little guys.
have funded them in the past. time for another check.
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