Chalk one up for the good guys.
Back in 2015, the State of Minnesota foreclosed on the North Minneapolis condominium of a elderly woman named Geraldine Tyler.
It seems Tyler had fallen behind on her property taxes by $2,300. Interest, fines and penalties pushed her debt up to just over $15,000. She couldn't pay.
The state sold her condo for $40,000. That satisfied Tyler's debt with about $25,000 left over.
One might expect the woman tyo get that 25K. Not under Minnesota law. The state kept it.
So Tyler, now 94, took them to court. She lost in lower courts, but this week the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in her favor.
The court found Minnesota violated the excessive takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says a citizen cannot "be obliged to relinquish his property, where it may be necessary for public use, without just compensation."
The court found that while Minnesota law required a property owner be given the surplus of a forced sale by a mortgage company or a bank to satisfy a debt, it unfairly allowed the state to keep such funds.
"The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but no more," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
We couldn't agree more.