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Supreme Court Rules That States Are Not Entitled to Windfalls in Tax Disputes – The New York Times

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Supreme Court Rules That States Are Not Entitled to Windfalls in Tax Disputes – The New York Times

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that states that seize and sell private property to recoup unpaid taxes violate the Constitution’s takings clause if they retain more than what the taxpayer owed.

The case concerned a 94-year-old woman in Minnesota who had stopped paying property taxes on her condominium after moving into an assisted-living center.

By the time Hennepin County seized the property, the woman, Geraldine Tyler, owed about $2,000 in taxes and another $13,000 in penalties and interest. The county sold the condo at auction for $40,000, and it kept not only the $15,000 that all agreed it was due but also the remaining $25,000.

Retaining the entire value of a confiscated property, even when the debts owed amounted to a small portion of it, is authorized by Minnesota law.

NPR

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Redistricting fight over who is Black in Louisiana voting map : NPR

Since a 2003 ruling by the Supreme Court, that definition of "Black" has included every person who identifies as Black on census forms — including people who check off the boxes for Black and any other racial or ethnic category such as white, Asian and Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be of any race.

Republican state officials, however, have called for narrower definitions of Blackness that do not include people who also identify with another minority group.

Citing no evidence, GOP officials in Alabama argued in lower court filings that limiting the definition to people who mark just the "Black" box and do not identify as Latino for the census would be "most defensible."

And in the Louisiana case — Ardoin v. Robinson — officials have been arguing for the definition to only include people who check off either just the "Black" box or both "Black" and "White" and do not identify as Latino.