Pung v. Isabella County · ¶10

When taxpayers fall behind on their property-tax bills, federal, state, and local governments alike have long used foreclosure and sale as a collection method. In Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U. S. 631 (2023), we held that the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause requires the government to return any surplus proceeds from tax foreclosure sales, i.e., the difference between the sale price and the taxpayer’s debt. The question presented here is whether the government must pay more when the sale price falls below the property’s hypothetical fair market value. In other words, is the constitutional baseline for “just compensation” the actual tax-sale price or the price that someone would pay for the property in a hypothetical open-market transaction?

slip opinion
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.