SCOTUS to hear case over Hennepin Co. keeping revenue of foreclosed properties
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of a 94-year-old Minnesota woman who fell behind in her property taxes, then had her home confiscated by local authorities. It's one of the eight new cases added to the court's docket.
Hennepin County sold Geraldine Tyler's home for $40,000 as payment for approximately $15,000 in property taxes, penalties, interest and costs. But the county kept all the money.
Tyler's lawyers say the practice, a version of which is used in roughly a dozen states, violates two constitutional provisions, barring excessive fines and taking property without fair payment.
"Home equity is property protected by the Constitution," Christina Martin, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, said. "When the government takes more than it is owed in taxes, that's home equity theft. We are thrilled the Supreme Court will hear this case, which we hope will end unconstitutional home equity theft across the country."
Tyler's legal team says more than a dozen states actively engage in "home equity theft," and that "on average, homeowners lost 86% of their equity."
Two lower courts have already sided with Hennepin County, including the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled:
"In 1935, the Minnesota legislature augmented its tax-forfeiture plan with detailed instructions regarding the distribution of all 'net proceeds from the sale and/or rental of any parcel of forfeited land.'"
Other Cases
The eight cases are expected to be argued in April. In one involving a former postal employee, the justices will consider what accommodations employers must make for religious employees. The case comes when religious plaintiffs have generally fared well at the court, which is dominated 6-3 by conservative justices.
Under a federal civil rights law, employers can't discriminate against employees because of their religion. The law says employees' religious practices have to be accommodated unless the employer can demonstrate doing so is an "undue hardship" to the business. The justices are being asked to reconsider a 1977 Supreme Court case that challengers say means lower courts almost always side with employers "whenever an accommodation would impose any burden."
The case the justices agreed to hear involves Gerald Groff, a former postal worker in Pennsylvania. Groff, a Christian, said his religious beliefs required him to be off on Sundays. Initially his bosses were able to accommodate him but eventually that ended. Groff resigned and sued the post office. Two lower courts have ruled against him.
Among other cases the justices agreed to hear:
—The case of Billy Raymond Counterman, who was charged with stalking a Colorado musician on Facebook, sending her messages over the course of two years. Counterman argued his messages were protected speech but a court found them to be unprotected "true threats" and he was ultimately sentenced to more than four years in prison. An appeals court also ruled against him. The high court will consider what prosecutors must show to prove a statement is a "true threat."
—A case about reviving whistleblower lawsuits claiming that supermarket and pharmacy chains Supervalu Inc. and Safeway overcharged government health-care programs for prescription drugs by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The justices on Friday also agreed to hear appeals from the whistleblowers, who alleged that the companies defrauded the Medicare and Medicaid programs when they reported retail prices for generic prescription drugs, even though they had mainly been sold to customers at deeply discounted prices.
The cases stem from the companies' effort to match a 2006 decision by Walmart to offer 30-day supplies of many generic drugs for $4.
Supervalu and Safeway matched the discounted price at their pharmacies, but they reported to the federal and various state governments a much higher "usual and customary" price when seeking reimbursement.
An expert for the whistleblower in the Safeway lawsuit testified that the company received $127 million more than it would have gotten had it reported the discounted price, according to court papers.
In the case against Supervalu, the whistleblower said the company matched Walmart's discounted price 6.3 million times over 11 years, according to court papers.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed both cases, holding that the companies' decisions to report the higher prices were "not objectively unreasonable."
In urging the high court to reject the appeals, lawyers for Supervalu wrote that the correct price to report "may seem easy enough to determine in the abstract, but it is far from simple."
The Biden administration is backing the whistleblowers.
