Active: Litigation is ongoing.

When Wayside Church fell behind on its 2011 property taxes on a parcel that the church had used as a youth camp, Van Buren County, Michigan took the youth camp property and sold it for $206,000 to pay the church’s $16,750 in taxes, penalties, interest, and fees. Invoking the Michigan General Property Tax Act, the County kept the surplus proceeds—$189,250 more than the debt—as a windfall.

Similarly, the County sold Myron Stahl’s property, where he was building his retirement home, for $68,750 to pay a $25,000 debt. It also sold Henderson Hodgens’s farm and home for $47,750 to pay a $5,900 debt. Rather than simply keeping the amount needed to satisfy the debt and refunding the remainder to the owners, the county pocketed all the proceeds: $274,850 in after-debt profits from the three sales.

Michigan law offered no clear remedy, so Wayside Church, Stahl, and Hodgens sued in federal court on the grounds that the County violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment when it kept the surplus proceeds from the sales of their foreclosed properties.

What’s At Stake?

  • Local governments violate the Takings Clause of the Constitution when they keep the surplus proceeds from tax sales.
  • The federal courthouse doors should be open to anyone who seeks to enforce the Fifth Amendment’s right to just compensation.

Case Timeline