Here’s the cert petition, recently filed, which asks the Supreme Court to review the California courts’ decision that the state’s “unclaimed property” statute  — by which the State is able to grab billions of dollars of private property on the theory that the owners abandoned it. The statute requires the State to try and locate the owners, but the petition alleges the procedures do not provide adequate notice to the owners, and that the State doesn’t really try all that hard to tell them.

Here are the Questions Presented:

1. Whether the Controller’s actions under color of the California Unclaimed Property Law, Cal. Civ. Proc. Code §§ 1300, et seq. (“UPL”), violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because they deprive owners of their property without affording constitutionally adequate notice.

2. Whether the Controller’s actions under color of the California UPL violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment because they take private property without just compensation.

This issue was left open by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, which held that the government keeping excess funds after a tax foreclosure sale was a taking, and rejected the County’s argument that the homeowner had abandoned the excess by failing to pay her property taxes. The Court noted that for property to be deemed abandoned, the government must, at the very least, make some kind of process available for the owner to reclaim it that is reasonably designed to let them actually reclaim it:

The County portrays this as just another example in the long tradition of States taking title to abandoned property. We upheld one such statutory scheme in Texaco. There, Indiana law dictated that a mineral interest automatically reverted to the owner of the land if not used for 20 years. 454 U. S., at 518.

…

“It is the owner’s failure to make any use of the property”—and for a lengthy period of time—“that causes the lapse of the property right.” Texaco, 454 U. S., at 530 (emphasis added). In Texaco, the owners lost their property because they made no use of their interest for 20 years and then failed to take the simple step of filing paperwork indicating that they still claimed ownership over the interest.

Tyler, slip op.at 13-14.

Follow along here, or on the Court’s docket.

Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Hashim v. Cohen, No. 23-195 (U.S. Aug. 29, 2023)