Anybody fighting City Hall is outgunned and outnumbered. It is just a fact of life. If anything can be said to have deep pockets, it is government–because their pockets include everybody else’s.

That’s why it is so important to have independent groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation, which along with a few other nonprofits like the Institute for Justice, can beef up the power of the little guy. They can’t fight every battle, but they can rack up some important victories which make everybody’s lives a bit better.

"Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed inclined to side with a 94-year-old woman who said a Minnesota county unfairly pocketed the surplus when it seized and sold her condominium after she failed to pay property taxes."https://t.co/ta3LjnpLjp

— Pacific Legal 🗡⚖️ (@PacificLegal) April 27, 2023

I am a big fan of the PLF and what they have accomplished and am particularly interested in a case they just argued before the Supreme Court, Tyler v. Hennepin County. I happen to live in Hennepin County.

The case is pretty simple. A 94-year-old woman was driven by crime out of her condo in Minneapolis, eventually finding a home at a Senior Center. She fell behind a bit on her property taxes, and the county started piling on fees and fines that ran up from a couple thousand in delinquent taxes to a $15,000 bill.

This is the first injustice. The second is much worse: they seized her condo, sold the property for a pittance, and kept the profits.

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed inclined to side with a 94-year-old woman who said a Minnesota county unfairly pocketed the surplus when it seized and sold her condominium after she failed to pay property taxes.

Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, foreclosed on Geraldine Tyler’s one-bedroom condo after she moved into an apartment building for the elderly and stopped paying property taxes for five years.

She owed about $15,000 in taxes and penalties. The county sold her condo for $40,000 and kept the surplus, as the law allows in Minnesota, the District of Columbia and about a dozen other states.

The Supreme Court is considering Tyler’s claim that keeping the excess money violates the Constitution’s prohibition on the taking of private property without fair compensation by the government, as well as protection against excessive fines. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights group representing Tyler, calls what Hennepin County did “equity-stealing.”

Talk about adding insult to injury. They just up and stole her property, keeping an extra $25,000 for themselves.

This is hardly unique, as you can see. Over a dozen states do this, and if the Pacific Legal Foundation wins its case the practice will be stopped.

The questioning by the justices in oral arguments was pretty hostile to Hennepin County, but it is always dangerous to read too much into that. Supreme Court justices are always probing to find weaknesses in arguments without necessarily endorsing their implied objections.

Still, some of the questions were pretty obvious, with Justice Kagan seeming very skeptical.

“At bottom, she’s saying the county took her property, made a profit on it with the surplus equity, and it belongs to her,” Justice Clarence Thomas said. He asked Washington lawyer Neal K. Katyal, representing Hennepin County, whether he could think of “any instance in which a creditor can . . . seize property and keep the excess profit or the excess amount over the debt that’s actually owed?”

Justice Elena Kagan similarly pushed Katyal. “Are there any limits?” she asked. “I mean, $5,000 tax debt, $5 million house. Take the house, don’t give back the rest?”

She added: “If the mind rebels at the notion that the government can seize your $100,000 bank account and not give you back the $90,000 that you don’t owe, if the mind rebels at that, you know, why should . . . what was going on in 1200 or what was going on in 1776 change anything?”

One thing is certain: a 94-year-old woman is not in a position to fight back against a county government with billions in revenue every year. It takes a champion with deeper pockets and more stamina to carry the fight against government injustice.

Geraldine’s case is only one of over a hundred cases the Foundation is fighting at the moment, and they have 15 victories at the Supreme Court.

With a mission to protect liberty and a record like that, I’m glad to have them on our side. It’s not like the forces of liberty are overburdened with allies at the moment.

Let’s hope Geraldine’s case is victory #16.