violated due process. It held that "when mailed notice of a tax sale is returned unclaimed, the State must take additional reasonable steps to attempt to provide notice to the property owner before selling his property, if it is practicable to do so." Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissent, arguing that the State's attempts went beyond any requirements the Court's prior precedents had established. Roberts' majority opinion Chief Justice Roberts wrote that considering the "extraordinary power" the State is exerting against a property owner, "[i]t is not too much to insist that the State do a bit more to attempt to let him know about it when the notice letter addressed to him is returned unclaimed." Though the method of using certified mail was in itself reasonably calculated to give notice, the knowledge that the State gained when the mail was returned unclaimed obligated it to take additional reasonable steps. However, "[i]n response to the returned form suggesting that Jones had not received notice that he was about to lose his property, the State did—nothing." The Court believed that "someone who actually wanted to alert Jones that he was in danger of losing his house would do more when the attempted notice letter was returned unclaimed, and there was more that reasonably could be done." Reasonably calculated to give notice The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires a State to provide an owner with notice and an opportunity to be heard before it may take his property and sell it for unpaid taxes. The Court had recently ruled in Dusenbery v. United States, that the government did not violate due process by sending notice to the jail where the property owner was imprisoned and allowing a prison official to sign for it, even though the prisoner never actually received the notice. Dusenbery established that due process did not require actual notice prior to a governmental taking of property, but instead only that the government attempt to give notice by a method "reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances," to inform all interested parties. Based on Dusenbery as well as earlier cases, the State argued that once it provided notice reasonably calculated to apprise Jones of the impending tax sale by mailing him a certified letter, due process was satisfied. However, the Court pointed out that in each of those prior cases, the government had