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Page Number: 11.0

8 

TYLER v. HENNEPIN COUNTY 

Opinion of the Court 

much of it by nonresidents who did not live on or farm the 
land but instead hoped to sell it for a profit.  McClure, 24 
W. Va.,  at  564.    Many  of  these  nonresidents  “wholly  ne-
glected to pay the taxes” on the land, id., at 565, so Virginia
provided  that  title  to  any  taxpayer’s  land  was  completely
“lost, forfeited and vested in the Commonwealth” if the tax-
payer failed to pay taxes within a set period, 1790 Va. Acts 
p. 5, §5.  This solution was short lived, however; the Com-
monwealth repealed the forfeiture scheme in 1814 and once
again sold “so much only of each tract of land . . . as will be 
sufficient to discharge the” debt.  1813 Va. Acts p. 21, §27. 
Virginia’s  “exceptional”  and  temporary  forfeiture  scheme
carries little weight against the overwhelming consensus of 
its sister States.  See Martin v. Snowden, 59 Va. 100, 138 
(1868).

The  consensus  that  a  government  could  not  take  more 
property than it was owed held true through the passage of 
the Fourteenth Amendment.  States, including Minnesota,
continued  to  require  that  no  more  than  the  minimum
amount of land be sold to satisfy the outstanding tax debt.2 
The County identifies just three States that deemed delin-
quent  property  entirely  forfeited  for  failure  to  pay  taxes. 
See  1836  Me.  Laws  p.  325,  §4;  1869  La.  Acts  p.  159,  §63;
1850 Miss. Laws p. 52, §4.3  Two of these laws did not last. 

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2 Many of these new States required that the land be sold to whichever 
buyer would “pay [the tax debt] for the least number of acres” and pro-
vided that the land forfeited to the State only if it failed to sell “for want 
of bidders” because the land was worth less than the taxes owed.  1821 
Ohio  pp.  27–28,  §§7,  10;  see  also  1837  Ark.  Acts  pp.  14–17,  §§83,  100; 
1844 Ill. Laws pp. 13, 18, §§51, 77; 1859 Minn. Laws pp. 58, 61, §§23, 38;
1859  Wis.  Laws  Ch.  22,  pp.  22–23,  §§7,  9;  cf.  Iowa  Code  pp.  120–121, 
§§766, 773 (1860) (requiring that property be offered for sale “until all
the  taxes  shall  have  been  paid”);  see  also  O’Brien  v.  Coulter,  2  Blackf. 
421,  425  (Ind.  1831)  (per curiam)  (“[S]o  much  only  of  the  defendant’s 
property shall be sold at one time, as a sound judgment would dictate to 
be sufficient to pay the debt.”). 

3 North Carolina amended its laws in 1842 to permit the forfeiture of