Tyler v. Hennepin County
Tyler v. Hennepin County is the United States Supreme Court decision, handed down on 25 May 2023, that ended Minnesota's practice of keeping the surplus value of tax-forfeited property.
It is the most consequential development in Minnesota property tax law in decades, and it arose from a very small debt.
The facts#
Geraldine Tyler bought a one-bedroom condominium in Minneapolis in 1999 and lived there alone for more than a decade.
As she aged, her family moved her to a senior community in 2010. Nobody paid the property taxes on the empty condominium.
By 2015 it had accumulated about $2,300 in unpaid taxes, and roughly $13,000 in interest and penalties on top — a total of about $15,000.
Hennepin County took the property under Minnesota's forfeiture procedures and sold it for $40,000. The $15,000 debt was extinguished. The county kept the remaining $25,000.
Under the statute as it then stood, the surplus was split between the county, the town and the school district. Tyler had no opportunity to recover any of it.
What the Court held#
That she had plausibly alleged that the county's retention of the excess value above her tax debt violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The lower courts had dismissed her claim on the reasoning that Minnesota law recognised no property interest in surplus proceeds, so nothing was taken. The Court rejected that: a state cannot extinguish a property interest it recognises in every other context simply to avoid paying compensation when it is the one doing the taking.
The decision was unanimous. A concurrence went further, suggesting the scheme may also have run afoul of the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause.
What it changed#
Minnesota amended its forfeiture statutes and notices in response.
The notice of expiration of redemption now tells owners that if parcels forfeit and are sold for more than the delinquent taxes, assessments, penalties, interest and costs assigned to them, they may be entitled to the excess proceeds.
A class settlement also addresses forfeitures that occurred before the change, with claim windows that vary by county.
Why the interest and penalties matter#
The detail that gets overlooked, and it explains how a $2,300 tax bill became a $15,000 debt.
The tax itself was modest. The compounding was not. That is the ordinary pattern in Minnesota tax delinquency, and it is why a bill that seemed manageable when it was first missed becomes unpayable three years later.
The wider lesson#
Tyler was 94, had moved into care, and the property sat empty with nobody attending to it.
That is the profile tax forfeiture actually reaches — not people refusing to pay, but property that has fallen out of anybody's attention. Inherited houses. Absentee owners. Elderly owners who have moved. The forfeiture machinery works on inattention, and it worked exactly as designed.