It isn’t often the Supreme Court makes everybody happy, but the court’s decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County will please liberals, conservatives, and libertarians alike.
“The case centered on Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old Minnesota woman whose home was taken by Hennepin County after she failed to pay $15,000 in property taxes and other fees. The county then sold her home for $40,000 in 2016 [and] kept the extra $25,000,” Mother Jones said (here). Ugh. Robbing a 94-year-old of her life savings makes everybody except tax collectors want to puke.
“This decision affirms that property rights are fundamental and don’t depend solely on state law,” NBC News quoted her lawyer as saying (here).
Intrigued, I read the decision (here), because property rights are a creation of the state. You own your home or farm because the government says you do and will uphold your claim to it. Without government protection, “property” is what you can carry on your person and defend from would-be takers. (Think about that, anti-government fanatics.)
And if the state (in its broadest meaning) creates property rights, it can define and limit them, right? Well, limiting property rights doesn’t seem to be much in question; you can’t do whatever you want with your property. As for defining property rights, first-year law students are taught “property” is a “bundle of rights,” and the law defines what those rights are.
But our political and legal system is based on limited government, albeit self-limiting, so I was curious to see if the court went beyond the practical notion that property rights come from and depend on the state, and trod in the realm of God-given, inalienable, or other non-state fountainheads. Given the theocratic leanings of the current majority of justices, I felt a little concerned.
They didn’t. The opinion is about arcane as they come. The bottom line is they said the 5th Amendment, a self-imposed limitation on government whereby it chooses not to grab property from private owners without paying them for it, means what it says.
That, too, is a right granted by the state. The 5th Amendment’s “takings clause” wasn’t bestowed by God, Moses, holy writ, a voice from the heavens (or from below), a shaman’s vision, an artesian well, or a gnome under a forestland toadstool. It’s embedded in our system of government, and I found no language in the court’s opinion suggesting it came from anywhere else.
So, property rights are still what Congress, legislatures, and courts decide they are, and they still come from constitutions, statutes, and court rulings. As we saw in the Supreme Court’s recent abortion ruling, our government most certainly can promise rights, and then break the promise and take them away. This time, it didn’t.
The lower courts dismissed Mrs. Tyler’s lawsuit. This decision sends it back for trial, but there won’t be a trial. Minnesota’s statutory scheme that allows it to confiscate property sold for taxes is struck down.
It can still seize and sell property for back taxes, but can only keep the taxes, penalties, and interest owed, and she’ll get her $25,000 now that the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that it belongs to her and never belonged to the state. Laws that say otherwise violate the 5th Amendment.