The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the Supreme Court defending citizens’ rights not to suffer excessive tax fines.
The organization argued that tax sales need to be held to the proportionality standards of the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, which bars the government from imposing disproportionately large monetary penalties.
Essentially, the taxpayer watchdog group says, a family should not lose their house and receive no equity in return from the government for just a $2,200 in tax debt.
The case is Pung v. Isabella County, Michigan.
In this case, the Pung family’s home was sold at auction by Isabella County, Michigan, to settle a $2,200 tax debt, though there was a dispute over whether the Pungs owed that money to the county to begin with, based on Michigan’s homestead exemptions for a family’s home.
The county seized the home and auctioned it off to pay the debt, but the auction was not well-advertised and not many attended, according to the brief, so the house sold for a winning bid of just $76,000.
After the county took its cut to pay off the taxes, the buyer subsequently flipped the house for a sales price of $194,400.
“The question is how much is owed to the Pungs and under what right: the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment Takings Clause or the Eighth Amendment Excessive Fines Clause?” the taxpayer advocates said.
“Our amicus brief focuses on that second question. We explain that, in effect, the Pungs lost their home for less than 1% of its value in property taxes. No matter how one looks at it, this case involves an excessive fine levied against the Pungs — and thousands of others across the country.”
NTUF said that the ban on excessive fines is “a fundamental right” that predates the Constitution all the way back to the Magna Carta and that they trace that history through English law to the debates surrounding the American Revolution to the adoption of state constitutions after Independence.
Tracking private-sector donors to Trump Accounts
Americans for Tax Reform is keeping an eye on all the donors who contribute to Trump Accounts, the new tax-advantaged savings accounts for children under 18 with a $1,000 government seed deposit for eligible U.S. newborns.
This month, philanthropists Michael and Susan Dell made a $6.25 billion charitable commitment to the Trump Accounts.
Americans for Tax Reform is now tracking the donations on a rolling basis on its website.
Some of the newest donors are BlackRock, which is matching the $1,000 government contribution for its eligible U.S. employees’ children; Ray and Barbara Dalio, who are providing $250 contributions to 300,000 children in Connecticut; and Bank of New York Mellon, which will provide $1,000 contributions into the accounts of their employees’ children.
Connecticut-based Charter Communications said its matching contribution further strengthens “its commitment to its 100% U.S.-based employee workforce.”
Charter will also offer employees additional ways to direct their own pay into their children’s Invest in America Trump Accounts.
Trump Accounts, officially known as Section 530A Accounts, were enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The accounts allow contributions up to $5,000 per year, inflation-adjusted, for long-term wealth building, which is accessible at 18 years of age for qualified expenses like education and housing or in cases of disability, with strict low-fee index fund investments.
There are exceptions for money withdrawals before 18 years of age for hardship.
FAIR backs immigration enforcement at churches
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has filed a brief in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals defending the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policy at places such as hospitals, schools, protest rallies and religious services.
Several religious organizations have filed suit over the administration’s policy, which they say makes illegal immigrants fear going to religious services, thereby restricting these groups’ religious exercise in violation of both the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The Trump administration has modified a Biden administration policy that prohibits all immigration law enforcement in or around these “protected areas,” including religious services, and directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to use common sense when doing their jobs in sensitive areas.
FAIR takes issue in its brief with the claim that it is this change in policy, instead of President Trump’s change to begin enforcing immigration laws more stringently, that deprives the plaintiffs of illegal immigrant congregants.
“After all, if illegal aliens are deported, they cannot attend plaintiffs’ religious services, whether Trump has modified the protected areas policy or not,” the organization said.
The brief also notes that if illegal immigrants are hesitant to attend the plaintiffs’ religious services, it is more likely because the overall increase in enforcement makes them cautious, as opposed to a change to an “obscure agency memo they probably do not even know about.”
“Churches can’t shut down immigration law enforcement just because it may reduce the size of their congregations,” said Christopher J. Hajec, deputy general counsel of FAIR. “So they go after Trump’s modification to the protected areas policy instead. The problem is, they can’t trace their claimed injury to that modification—and that leaves them without standing to sue. We hope the court realizes how hollow this lawsuit really is, and denies relief.”
The Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law filed the lawsuit on behalf of over two dozen Christian and Jewish religious denominations and associations at the beginning of the year in response to the administration’s rescission of the Department of Homeland Security’s “sensitive locations.”
The case, Mennonite Church USA et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al., was filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia.
