The state of Indiana really wants to take Tyson Timbs’s Land Rover, as punishment for dealing just a few hundred dollars’ worth of drugs. He’s now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let him keep it.

Stories about civil forfeiture injustices are unfortunately common. What sets Timbs’s case apart is his legal argument: that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines should shield his property from confiscation at the state level. If the Supreme Court takes up the case and agrees, the justices could impose some much-needed barriers on state and local governments’ voracious appetites for fees, fines, and forfeitures.

Timbs’s personal story is a familiar one amid America’s opioid epidemic. He was prescribed hydrocodone to alleviate the pain from a back injury caused at work. But after the pills ran out, his lawyers said in a petition to the Supreme Court in January, did Timbs pursue a more dangerous high: heroin.

For a time, Timbs conquered his addiction. But things fell apart again after his father died. A life-insurance policy left Timbs with roughly $73,000, of which he spent just over $41,000 to buy a Land Rover LR2. “With a new Land Rover and more than $31,000 left to spend, [he] began driving the vehicle to Richmond, Indiana, and Ohio—sometimes on a daily basis—to buy heroin for his personal use,” his lawyers told the court.

Undercover officers solicited from Timbs, buying just under four grams of heroin for less than $400. He was arrested and charged with dealing a controlled substance and conspiracy to commit theft. Timbs pleaded guilty and received a six-year sentence to be served outside prison walls. The state also tried to seize his Land Rover, kicking off the legal battle that ultimately brought him to the Supreme Court.