Cook County’s tax foreclosure scheme violates the Fifth and Eighth Amendments of the US Constitution, but the liability of the county still needs to be determined with further fact-finding, an Illinois federal court said.
A class action showed Cook County’s tax foreclosure scheme deprived homeowners of their property without just compensation by taking their properties that were worth more than the tax debt they owed and keeping the excess funds, the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said Monday. Cook County failed to convince the court that a county fund was enough to compensate the homeowners because ...