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 had fallen behind on the taxes on her condominium. By the time Hennepin County was finished, the debt was roughly $15,000. The county foreclosed, sold the condo for $40,000, kept the entire $40,000, and sent her nothing.
In Tyler v. Hennepin County, 598 U.S. 631 (2023), the Court held that this was a taking. The government may collect what it is owed. It may not keep the rest.
On June 23, 2026, the Court answered the question Tyler left open: how much is “the rest”?
The answer is less than Minnesota homeowners might hope, and it makes one deadline in Minnesota law far more important than it looks.
What Pung decided
Timothy Pung’s 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 could not simply keep the difference. It had to return the surplus — the sale price minus the debt. Pung argued that was not enough. Just compensation, he said, should be measured against what the home was actually worth, not what a tax auction happened to fetch on a given morning. On his theory the county owed him something closer to $192,000 than to $74,000.
The Court rejected that, 9–0. Justice Alito wrote:
The proper baseline for measuring “just compensation” following a tax sale is the auction sale price, not the property’s hypothetical fair market value, at least when the sale is fairly conducted in light of the country’s history of tax sales.
The reasoning is historical and practical. English and American law have permitted tax seizure and sale for centuries, on the condition that the surplus go back to the owner — that condition, and not a fair-market guarantee, is the rule with the pedigree. And practically, the Court observed, a fair-market-value rule would make tax sales unworkable: the government would routinely take a loss on collecting a debt, paying the shortfall to the delinquent taxpayer. A reading of the Constitution that would abolish a collection practice this old is, the Court said, strong evidence the reading is wrong.
Pung’s Eighth Amendment argument — that keeping the gap was an excessive fine — failed for the same reasons.
The sentence that is doing the real work
Read the holding again and notice the qualifier: at least when the sale is fairly conducted.
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Jackson, wrote separately for the express purpose of flagging it. She read the Court’s opinion as not identifying “the contours of a fair auction,” and not endorsing anyone’s proposed standard for what fairness requires. Those questions were left for remand.
That is the whole future of this area of law in one paragraph. The Court has told us the measure is the auction price. It has not 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 discourage bidders, produces a number — and whether that number can serve as constitutional “just compensation” is now the live question.
For a homeowner, that is where the argument moved. Not how much was my house worth, but was this a real sale.
What Minnesota did after Tyler
This is where Minnesota’s story diverges from most states’, because Minnesota has already been through both halves of it.
Backward-looking: 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. Payments have gone out in rounds, most recently in February and May of 2026, with more expected through the rest of the year. If you filed a claim and have not seen a payment, the case is still administering.
Forward-looking: 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 item again. Minnesota does not hold your equity indefinitely. 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 imagined a fallback: a federal takings claim for the full value of the home, unconstrained by whatever the auction produced.
Pung substantially closes 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. The statute is not a lesser alternative to your constitutional remedy. After Pung, for most people, it is the remedy.
Which means the practical protections for a Minnesota homeowner are now these three, in order:
- Do not 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.
- Do not 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 expires. 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. How was it advertised, when was it held, what were the bidding terms, and did it produce a price that looks like a market outcome or a formality. Under the Court’s own qualifier, an unfair sale does not get to set the number.
A word about how this happens
Almost nobody loses a house over $2,241.93 because they decided not to pay $2,241.93.
They lose it because of a death in the family and a probate nobody opened, or a hospitalization, or dementia, or a divorce where each spouse believed the other was handling it, or a mortgage servicer that stopped escrowing without a clear notice, or an address change that never reached the county. The delinquency is usually a symptom of something else, and the something else is usually the reason the warning letters went unanswered too.
The Supreme Court has now said twice in three years that the government cannot profit from that. What it said this June is that the profit is measured against the auction, and that the auction has to be fair.
In Minnesota, it also has to be claimed — in six months.
If a property you owned or held an interest in has been forfeited for unpaid taxes, or you have received a notice of surplus proceeds and are not sure what to do with it, the timeline is short. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Pung v. Isabella County, 609 U. S. ___ (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.