Supreme Court protects property rights of elderly woman and curbs states' tax power.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the state of Minnesota violated the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against government taking private property without "just compensation" when it seized a 94-year-old woman's one-bedroom condominium over a small unpaid tax bill and pocketed the profit. The decision clears the way for the woman to return to a lower court to seek compensation from the state and effectively strikes down laws like Minnesota's, which has been branded as "equity theft" by critics.