Justices reject constitutional attack on foreclosure rules

Tuesday’s decision in Pung v. Isabella County squarely rejects an argument that the longstanding use of tax foreclosure sales as a method to collect unpaid real-estate taxes violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment or the excessive fines clause of the Eighth Amendment. The specific problem that gives rise to the case is the reality that a tax foreclosure sale typically, perhaps invariably, produces a sale price far lower than the price that would come from the ordinary sale process of listing the property with a broker and marketing it over the course of weeks (or months). In this...