This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 12th, 2003.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court has delivered relief to Geraldine Tyler, the woman whose home was seized by local government over unpaid taxes,

where the government just kept the equity over what Miss Tyler owed.

What are the implications for government takings in the future?

Cato's Tommy Barry details what the court said.

Tommy, you and I've talked about the case of Tyler v Hennepin County before.

I happen to have an in-house expert on the practice of home equity theft here in my home

who's filled my head with all of the technical details of how governments seize homes and keep the

proceeds. The Supreme Court here not really divided at all.

You know, the bulk of this case, or at least the substance of the case, was decided

overwhelmingly.

Indeed, unanimously, we talked about this case three months ago.

It was the last argued case of the term and decided very quickly nine to nothing.

This is the case of the 94 year old woman in the

Minneapolis, Minnesota whose condo was seized after she wasn't able to pay

property taxes on it. She was behind by about 15,000. The condo was sold for 40,000 and the county took all of the money.

So she was out about $25,000 more than she in fact owed.

The county argued that under state law,

this wasn't her property anymore.

It belonged to the county under a law passed about 100 years ago.

And the Supreme Court rejected that not by a close

...