“When The Columbus Dispatch interviewed voters headed to the polls in November 2025, almost all said they liked the idea of property tax abolition but didn’t want to see the quality of local services degrade.
None of Florida’s proposed property tax reforms include any plan to offset the lost revenue. The two measures that would eliminate homestead property taxes also include clauses forbidding local governments from cutting law enforcement funding.
The Ohio nonprofit Citizens for Property Tax Reform notably does not call for offsetting spending cuts. Instead, it suggests increases to sales taxes and local school district income taxes.
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Making up for the revenue lost from property tax cuts would be a tall order.
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Property taxes pay for nearly 30 percent of local government services in both Ohio and Florida. States trying to replace every dollar of property tax revenue with sales or income tax revenue would ultimately reduce overall economic efficiency as well.
Milton Friedman called the property tax (and particularly the tax on the value of unimproved land) the “least bad tax” because it discouraged less economic activity than sales and income taxes.
Property taxes are also less distortionary. People and firms can move to places where they are less heavily taxed to avoid local sales and income taxes. Real estate, in contrast, generally has to stay put.”
Russia’s privatization after the Cold War, failed partially because the Russian government was too weak. It could not enforce property rights and the rule of law. Instead, the government was corrupted by the oligarchs. When Putin took over, he exchanged many oligarchs for one–himself.
When the U.S. tries to deregulate for potentially good reasons, and avoids taxes, we need to be careful that we are not setting up our own oligarchs who avoid helpful taxes and regulations at the expense of the people.
“In an ideal world, I control my property—but don’t get to tell other people what they can do with theirs provided they don’t intrude on my actual rights (as opposed to bogus ones that protect, say, my property values). As the late legal scholar Bernard Siegan explained, “There are very serious restrictions upon private property involved in zoning—where people, your neighbors, are telling you how you can use your land.””
“In 1994, Donald Trump tried to use eminent domain to take a woman’s house so he could create parking spaces for limos outside his casino in Atlantic City.
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A court eventually denied Trump’s Atlantic City land grab. That turned out well for everyone, since his casino went bankrupt, and no limos needed to park.
However, judges were less reasonable in another eminent domain case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.”
“DeSantis wants us to believe that preventing a dietician, a property manager, or a professor from buying property in Florida, based purely on their national origin and non-immigrant status, somehow strikes a blow against “the Chinese Communist Party” and “crack[s] down on Communist China.” But it is hard to see why innocent people should suffer for the crimes of an oppressive regime they left behind.”
“if the government deprives owners of their supposed state constitutional right to a fair return on their investment, fewer people will go into the business and even fewer will upgrade their properties. That helps no one.
The result is obvious: fewer available rentals and fewer rentals in tip-top condition. Investing in rental property has always been a prime means for middle-class people to build wealth. My grandfather was an immigrant paperhanger (remember wallpaper?) who invested in Philadelphia row houses decades ago. Now, I talk to many people who won’t dare buy a rental house out of the legitimate fear that the government can suspend rent payments at will.”
“”We agree that the government can seize the property to collect a debt,” says Christina M. Martin, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who has represented both women. “What it can’t do is take more than it’s owed.””
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“At the core of home equity theft cases is the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Nor shall private property be taken for public use,” it reads, “without just compensation.” It would seem fairly straightforward.
It has not been.”
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“according to the 8th Circuit, Tyler—and the many people also in her shoes—simply have no recourse when the government profits off of their poverty. “In every other debt collection context, the debt collector is only allowed to take what is owed, plus the cost of collecting the debt. But here, the government gets to tack on penalties, interests, fees, and then they get to take everything that’s left over after that?” asks Martin. “That can’t be right.””
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“”We’re not asking for anything unusual here,” says Martin, who will be arguing the case in front of the high court. “We’re asking that the government not [receive] self-dealing, preferential treatment that allows them to just take a massive windfall, usually at the expense of the most vulnerable people.””
“A number of state wildlife agencies as well as FWS claim the right to not only enter private property, but in some cases to plant cameras as well, without either a warrant or the property owner’s permission. For example, a chapter of the FWS policy manual denoting “circumstances where a Service officer may observe and obtain evidence without courts considering it a search” stipulates, “when Service officers enter onto open fields…their observations are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
The open fields doctrine dates back to the Prohibition-era Supreme Court decision Hester v. United States (1924). Revenue agents caught a bootlegger with jugs of moonshine. He was on his property but away from his home. He sued to overturn his arrest, as the officers were on the property without a warrant. Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld the arrest, finding that “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects’ is not extended to the open fields.”
Decades later, the Court affirmed the decision in Oliver v. United States (1984): Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. held that “in the case of open fields, the general rights of property protected by the common law of trespass have little or no relevance to the applicability of the Fourth Amendment.” Further, “steps taken to protect privacy,” like fences or “No Trespassing” signs, “do not establish that expectations of privacy in an open field are legitimate in the sense required by the Fourth Amendment.””
“Roberts has spent much of his career crusading against voting rights, specifically the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil rights law that ended Jim Crow practices disenfranchising Black voters and prohibiting race discrimination of all kinds in elections.
As a young Justice Department lawyer, Roberts fought unsuccessfully to convince President Ronald Reagan to veto an important 1982 amendment to the law, which overturned a previous Supreme Court decision making it very difficult to win Voting Rights Act lawsuits. As a justice, Roberts wrote the Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which neutralized much of the law. He also joined two other opinions severely weakening the rest of the law — the latter of which, Brnovich v. DNC, was decided on the last day of this term.
The practical impact of this trilogy is that the Voting Rights Act is barely alive. Under Brnovich, for example, states are likely to have carte blanche to roll back early voting and absentee voting, as well as other, similar innovations that became common in the last four decades. And most challenges to the latest wave of Republican voter suppression laws are likely to fail.”
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“in a term gravid with extraordinarily aggressive arguments made by right-wing lawyers, conservatives and Republicans had an exceptionally good run. They convinced the Court to hobble the Voting Rights Act, to open a new line of attack on donor disclosure laws, to expand property rights, to attack unions, and to rewrite the rules governing when religious objectors are exempt from the law.
And that’s after just one term with a 6-3 Court. Next term, the Court will hear a case that could overrule Roe v. Wade.”