COURTESY PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION
Geraldine Tyler, a retired county worker living in Minnesota, had moved into a senior community before selling a condo she owned in Minneapolis. Keeping up with both residences proved financially difficult, and by 2015 she had accrued $2,311 in unpaid property taxes on the condo plus interest, costs, and penalties totaling nearly $13,000. Hennepin County eventually seized Tyler's condo and sold it for $40,000.
. In Minnesota alone, some 4,300 properties were taken and sold between 2014 and 2020, and homeowners who had their homes seized for debts lost $207,000 above the tax debt that was owed. As a result of her experience, Tyler took Hennepin County to court—and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments yesterday.. You will likely come away from it feeling a lot enlightened, a little enraged—and squarely in Tyler’s court.