Three years ago, a 94-year-old Minneapolis woman named Geraldine Tyler won a unanimous Supreme Court case that changed property law across the country.
She’d fallen behind on the taxes on her condominium. By the time Hennepin County was done, the debt was roughly $15,000. The county foreclosed, sold the condo for $40,000, kept all $40,000, and sent her nothing.
In Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U.S. 631 (2023), the Court held that was a taking. The government may collect what it’s owed. It may not keep the rest.
On June 23, 2026, the Court answered the question Tyler left open: how much is “the rest”?
Less than Minnesota homeowners might hope. And the answer makes one deadline in Minnesota law far more important than it looks.
What Pung decided
The Pung family owed $2,241.93 in property taxes in Isabella County, Michigan. The county foreclosed and sold the home at public auction for $76,008. For tax purposes, that home was assessed at $194,400.
Under Tyler, the county couldn’t just keep the difference. It had to give back the surplus: the sale price minus the debt. Pung said that wasn’t enough. Just compensation, he argued, should be measured against what the home was actually worth, not what a tax auction happened to bring in on a given morning. On his theory the county owed him something closer to $192,000 than to $74,000.
The Court said no, 9–0. Justice Alito wrote:
The baseline for measuring just compensation in the tax-sale context is therefore the sale price, not the property’s hypothetical fair market value, at least when the sale is fairly conducted in light of our country’s history of tax sales.
The reasoning is part history, part common sense. English and American law have allowed tax seizure and sale for centuries, on the condition that the surplus goes back to the owner. That condition is the rule with the pedigree. A fair-market guarantee isn’t. And on the practical side, the Court pointed out that a fair-market-value rule would make tax sales unworkable: the government would routinely take a loss collecting a debt, paying the shortfall to the taxpayer who didn’t pay. If your reading of the Constitution would abolish a collection practice this old, the Court said, that’s strong evidence your reading is wrong.
Pung’s Eighth Amendment argument, that keeping the gap was an excessive fine, failed for the same reasons.
The phrase that matters most
Read the holding again and look at the qualifier: at least when the sale is fairly conducted.
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Jackson, wrote separately to flag exactly that. She read the Court’s opinion as not identifying “the contours of a fair auction,” and not endorsing anybody’s proposed standard for what fairness requires. Those questions were left for remand.
That’s the whole future of this area of law in one paragraph. The Court has told us the measure is the auction price. It hasn’t told us what makes an auction legitimate enough to be the measure. A sale advertised only in a legal notice nobody reads, held at an inconvenient hour, with terms that scare off bidders, still produces a number. Whether that number can count as constitutional “just compensation” is now the live question.
So for a homeowner, the fight has moved. It’s not how much was my house worth. It’s was this a real sale.
What Minnesota did after Tyler
Here Minnesota’s story splits off from most states’, because Minnesota has already been through both halves of it.
Looking back: the settlement. Minnesota’s pre-Tyler forfeitures produced a class settlement of $109 million in Ramsey County District Court, covering owners whose property was forfeited during defined periods — for Hennepin County, from August 16, 2012 through December 31, 2023; for St. Louis County, from June 2, 2016; and for all other Minnesota counties, from June 23, 2016. Eligible claimants could receive up to 90% of the surplus value plus interest from the date of forfeiture.
That claims deadline has passed. It was June 6, 2025. If you filed a claim and haven’t seen a payment, check its status with the settlement administrator.
Looking forward: the statute. In 2024 the Legislature built a claims procedure into the tax-forfeiture statutes. It now lives at Minn. Stat. § 282.005, and it works like this:
- If a sale of tax-forfeited land produces a surplus over the minimum bid, the county auditor must send notice and a claim form to interested parties within 60 days of the sale.
- Interested parties — not just the former owner, but fee owners, vendees, mortgagees, lienholders, escrow agents and lessees — may claim the surplus.
- The claim must be filed within six months from the date the notice is first mailed.
- If nobody claims it in time, or no claimant is found entitled to it, the money goes back to the county’s forfeited tax sale fund.
Read that last one again. Minnesota doesn’t hold your equity forever. Six months after a letter is mailed, a constitutional right becomes the county’s money.
Why Pung makes that deadline matter more
Before Pung, a homeowner who missed the six-month window might have pictured a fallback: a federal takings claim for the full value of the home, no matter what the auction brought.
Pung largely shuts that door. If the sale was fairly conducted, the surplus is the compensation. And in Minnesota, the surplus is exactly what § 282.005 pays out, on the schedule § 282.005 sets. So the statute isn’t some lesser substitute for your constitutional remedy. After Pung, for most people, it is the remedy.
That leaves a Minnesota homeowner with these protections, in this order:
- Don’t miss the claim. Watch for the auditor’s notice, and calendar six months from the date it was mailed — not the date you opened it.
- Don’t assume the notice reached you. Notice goes to interested parties at the addresses of record. People who lose homes to tax forfeiture have very often moved, and mail forwarding runs out. If a property you had an interest in was forfeited and sold, the burden of finding out falls on you.
- Look hard at the sale itself. This is the argument Pung opened up. How was it advertised? When was it held? What were the bidding terms? Did it produce a price that looks like a market outcome, or a formality? Under the Court’s own qualifier, there’s a real argument that an unfair sale doesn’t get to set the number.
How people actually lose a house this way
Almost nobody loses a house over $2,241.93 because they decided not to pay $2,241.93.
They lose it because somebody died and nobody opened the probate. Or a hospital stay, or dementia, or a divorce where each spouse thought the other one was handling it. Or a mortgage servicer that quit escrowing without a clear notice, or an address change that never made it to the county. The unpaid tax is usually a symptom of something else, and that something else is usually why the warning letters went unanswered too.
The Supreme Court has now said twice in three years that the government can’t profit from that. What it said this June is that the profit gets measured against the auction, at least when the auction is fairly conducted.
In Minnesota, you also have to claim it. Six months.
If a property you owned or held an interest in has been forfeited for unpaid taxes, or you’ve gotten a notice of surplus proceeds and aren’t sure what to do with it, the clock is short. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Pung v. Isabella County, 609 U. S. 30 (2026) (Alito, J.), No. 25–95, decided June 23, 2026, and the concurring opinion of Sotomayor, J.; Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U.S. 631 (2023); Minn. Stat. § 282.005 (2024 c 127 art 70 s 4); Tyler v. Hennepin County settlement administration materials, Ramsey County District Court File No. 62-CV-19-6012. This article is general commentary on published decisions and Minnesota statutes, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Deadlines and eligibility depend on facts specific to each property. No outcome is promised or implied.