139 S. Ct. 682 (2019)
Tyson Timbs pleaded guilty in Indiana state court to dealing in a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft.1 The trial court sentenced him to one year of home detention and five years of probation, which included a court-supervised addiction-treatment program.2 The sentence also required Timbs to pay fees and costs totaling $1,203.3 At the time of Timbs's arrest, the police seized his vehicle, a Land Rover SUV Timbs had purchased for about $42,000.4 Timbs paid for the vehicle with money he received from an insurance policy when his father died.5
The State engaged a private law firm to bring a civil suit for forfeiture of Timbs's Land Rover, charging that the vehicle had been used to transport heroin.6 After Timbs's guilty plea in the criminal case, the trial court held a hearing on the forfeiture demand.7 Although finding that Timbs's vehicle had been used to facilitate violation of a criminal statute, the court denied the requested forfeiture, observing that Timbs had recently purchased the vehicle for $42,000, more than four times the maximum $10,000 monetary fine assessable against him for his drug conviction.8
The Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed that determination, but the Indiana Supreme Court reversed.9 The Indiana Supreme Court did not decide whether the forfeiture would be excessive.10 Instead, it held that the Excessive Fines Clause constrains only federal action and is inapplicable to state impositions.11 The Supreme Court granted certiorari.12
Whether the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause is an incorporated protection applicable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause?13
A Bill of Rights protection is incorporated against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause if it is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty or deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.14 The Excessive Fines Clause, which limits the government's power to extract payments as punishment for an offense, meets this standard because it traces its origins to Magna Carta, was reaffirmed in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, was included in the Eighth Amendment, and was reflected in the constitutions of thirty-five of thirty-seven states by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.15
Yes. The incorporation standard requires that the right itself, rather than every application of it, be fundamental or deeply rooted.16 The facts show that Tyson Timbs pleaded guilty in Indiana state court to dealing in a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft, received a sentence including home detention, probation, and $1,203 in fees, and faced a subsequent civil forfeiture action in state court seeking his $42,000 Land Rover on the ground that it had been used to transport heroin.17 The trial court denied forfeiture as grossly disproportionate under the Excessive Fines Clause, the Court of Appeals of Indiana affirmed, and the Indiana Supreme Court reversed solely on the ground that the Clause constrains only federal action.18
These state-court proceedings illustrate the need for the protection.19 The historical consensus at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment confirms that the right is deeply rooted, so the Clause applies identically to the States.20
The Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.21
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Gorsuch agrees that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause against the States on the basis of the historical evidence presented.22 He observes that as an original matter the appropriate vehicle for incorporation may well be the Privileges or Immunities Clause rather than the Due Process Clause.23 Yet nothing in this case turns on that question.24
Regardless of the precise vehicle, there can be no serious doubt that the Fourteenth Amendment requires the States to respect the freedom from excessive fines enshrined in the Eighth Amendment.25
Justice Thomas concurs in the judgment that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on excessive fines applies fully to the States but rejects the majority's reliance on the Due Process Clause.26 He would hold instead that the right is one of the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.27 He supplies extensive historical evidence that the prohibition on excessive fines was understood as a fundamental right of citizenship both at the founding and at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment's ratification.28
He criticizes substantive due process as lacking any basis in the Constitution and as having produced notoriously incorrect decisions.