The facts of this case should shock the country. What happened to our clients could happen to anyone. They did nothing wrong...

I have big news: Pacific Legal Foundation is going back to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend a Michigan family against an outrageous injustice. We’ve joined as co-counsel in the case Pung v. Isabella County, which will be argued at the Court this term. (You can hear directly from the attorneys litigating the case if you join our online discussion on Wednesday, December 17—register here.

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The facts of the case should shock the country. What happened to the Pung family could happen to anyone. The family did nothing wrong. They paid their property taxes on their three-bedroom suburban home in Union Township, Michigan, where Scott Pung lived with his wife and two kids.

The Pungs’ home is lost now. The County seized it and auctioned it off for a fraction of its worth—because of a $1,600 school tax the family was legally exempt from. (See a photo of the home below.)

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Here’s what happened: In 1994, Scott Pung applied for and received an exemption to a small supplemental school tax. Tragically Scott died in 2004, leaving behind his wife and children.

Several years later, the local tax assessor argued that Scott’s widow (who, by then, had also died unexpectedly) should have resubmitted paperwork for the school tax exemption. The tax assessor was wrong: State law says the exemption continues as long as family members continue to live in the home. Scott’s son still lived there. No further paperwork was necessary.

But being wrong doesn’t always deter government officials from exerting their power. Based on her misreading of the law, the tax assessor retroactively denied the exemption for several previous years.

Mike Pung—Scott’s uncle and the administrator of the estate—objected. First, he tried to reason with the tax assessor. “I explained to her about the law,” he told us. “It didn’t make any difference.” He took the case to the Michigan Tax Tribunal, which ruled for the Pungs.

But when Mike tried to pay the family’s 2012 taxes, a town clerk told him his check was short: The tax assessor had once again denied the school tax exemption, despite the finding of the Tax Tribunal.

Mike, furious, refused to pay something he didn’t owe.

“I don’t know what the word quit means,” he says.

The tax assessor reported the Pung home as delinquent and began foreclosure proceedings. Scott Pung’s son Marc was living in the home at the time, along with his wife and young child. The County confiscated the home—which it had assessed at nearly $200,000—to recover the $1,600 school tax the family didn’t owe. Then it auctioned the home for only $76,000, kept all the money, and evicted Marc and his family. (See a photo of the family below.)

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The Pungs sued and, thanks in part to other cases won by PLF, a federal court held that the County owed compensation. But it awarded only the “surplus proceeds” of the County’s fire-sale auction—about $73,000—leaving the Pungs uncompensated for all the rest of the equity they lost.

For years, PLF has led the charge against home equity theft. Local governments are not allowed to abuse the tax system to take more from families than is owed. We won a unanimous victory at the Supreme Court in 2023

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. What happened to the Pung family is exactly the kind of flagrant government abuse that Pacific Legal Foundation exists to fight (and defeat). An innocent family was victimized by people in power who ran roughshod over the rule of law.

Mike Pung is now our client at the Supreme Court, where we’ll litigate this, backing up attorney Philip Ellison, the Pungs’ long-time attorney who will deliver argument to the justices. For Mike, winning at the Supreme Court would bring an end to a years-long nightmare. “It would mean that a whole bunch of people are going to get some justice,” he told us.

We’re gearing up for a good legal fight—and we look forward to defending the Pung family’s property rights in another landmark case for liberty.

​Onward,

Steven D. Anderson

President and CEO



P.S. You can read more about the case here

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, and if you haven’t already registered for the December 17 webinar, save your spot

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