Takings

The Government Seized Their $195,000 Home Over a $2,242 Debt. What Does the Supreme Court Say They're Owed?

The Pung family of Isabella County, Michigan, maintained they were entitled to fair market value. The high court disagreed, but with a twist.

Billy Binion | 6.23.2026 5:00 PM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Adani Samat/Envato)

Few things have been subject to as much syrupy sentimentality as the home. Those walls often hold more than any other structure: loved ones, growing pains, milestones, memories of the living and the dead.

For a lot of Americans, they also hold something else: their life savings, in the form of equity. What happens when that's effectively vaporized overnight by the government?

Thousands of people across the U.S. confront a version of this question each year. They are now closer to an answer: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that when the government seizes someone's house to satisfy a property tax debt, the owner is entitled to the surplus proceeds from a tax sale, where prices are often depressed, as opposed to the home's fair market value.

At the center of the case is the Pung family, of Isabella County, Michigan, who found themselves locked in a dispute with the local government over a $1,600 tax that the Michigan Tax Tribunal had previously ruled they were exempt from paying. A local assessor was undeterred. "I don't care what he says," Patricia DePriest, tax assessor for Union Township in Isabella County, remarked of the judge who ruled in the family's favor. During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said DePriest "was like Inspector Javert," the fanatically unbending cop from Les Misérables, "but it was even worse because Jean Valjean hadn't stolen the bread."

With penalties, the total debt—which the family to this day contests they owed—came to........

© Reason.com