Pung v. Isabella County · ¶36

Our task in this case, however, is not to decide whether tax sales as historically conducted represent good public policy. Our authority is limited to deciding whether the Takings Clause requires the transformation Pung advocates, and the answer to that question is clear. Tax sales have been an accepted means for governments to collect debts since the earliest days of our Nation. If the Takings Clause had been understood to impose restrictions that rendered these sales untenable, they would have presumably faded away, at least after the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Takings Clause against the States. See Chi cago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226, 241 (1897). Yet these sales remained common then and are common today. That Pung’s novel interpretation of the Takings Clause would whisk this longstanding practice into the dust bin is strong evidence that his interpretation…

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