Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-166_8n59.pdf
Page Number: 2.0

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TYLER v. HENNEPIN COUNTY 

Syllabus 

Takings Clause by disavowing traditional property interests” in assets 
it wishes to appropriate.  Id., at 167.  History and precedent dictate
that, while the County had the power to sell Tyler’s home to recover 
the unpaid property taxes, it could not use the tax debt to confiscate 
more  property  than  was  due.    Doing  so  effected  a  “classic  taking  in 
which  the  government  directly  appropriates  private  property  for  its 
own use.”  Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional 
Planning Agency, 535 U. S. 302, 324 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).

The principle that a government may not take from a taxpayer more
than she owes is rooted in English law and can trace its origins at least
as far back as the Magna Carta.  From the founding, the new Govern-
ment of the United States could seize and sell only “so much of [a] tract
of land . . . as may be necessary to satisfy the taxes due thereon.”  Act 
of July 14, 1798, §13, 1 Stat. 601.  Ten States adopted similar statutes
around the same time, and the consensus that a government could not 
take more property than it was owed held true through the ratification 
of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Today, most States and the Federal 
Government require excess value to be returned to the taxpayer whose 
property is sold to satisfy outstanding tax debt.  

The Court’s precedents have long recognized the principle that a tax-
payer is entitled to the surplus in excess of the debt owed.  See United 
States v. Taylor, 104 U. S. 216; United States v. Lawton, 110 U. S. 146. 
Nelson v. City of New York, 352 U. S. 103, did not change that.  The 
ordinance  challenged  there  did  not  “absolutely  preclud[e]  an  owner 
from  obtaining  the  surplus  proceeds  of  a  judicial  sale,”  but  instead
simply defined the process through which the owner could claim the 
surplus.  Id., at 110.  Minnesota’s scheme, in comparison, provides no
opportunity for the taxpayer to recover the excess value from the State. 
Significantly,  Minnesota  law  itself  recognizes  in  many  other  con-
texts that a property owner is entitled to the surplus in excess of her 
debt.  If a bank forecloses on a mortgaged property, state law entitles 
the homeowner to the surplus from the sale.  And in collecting past due 
taxes  on  income  or  personal  property,  Minnesota  protects  the  tax-
payer’s right to surplus.  Minnesota may not extinguish a property in-
terest that it recognizes everywhere else to avoid paying just compensa-
tion when the State does the taking.  Phillips, 524 U. S., at 167.  Pp. 4–12.
(c) The Court rejects the County’s argument that Tyler has no prop-
erty interest in the surplus because she constructively abandoned her 
home by failing to pay her taxes.  Abandonment requires the “surren-
der or relinquishment or disclaimer of” all rights in the property, Rowe 
v. Minneapolis, 51 N. W. 907, 908.  Minnesota’s forfeiture law is not 
concerned about the taxpayer’s use or abandonment of the property, 
only her failure to pay taxes.  The County cannot frame that failure as