Start Date
12-12-2014 10:45 AM
End Date
12-12-2014 11:45 AM
Description
During the 1960’s during the Warren Court, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. was part of a court that significantly expanded the protection of individual rights under the federal Constitution. However, when the United States Supreme Court became more conservative and began to roll back the court’s expansive interpretation of the federal constitution in the 1970’s, Justice Brennan issued a call to the states to take up the gauntlet. In a Harvard law review article published in 1977, Justice Brennan declared that “state courts cannot rest when they have afforded their citizens the full protections of the federal Constitution. State constitutions, too, are a font of individual liberties, their protections often extending beyond those required by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal law.” With this call to arms, many states have attempted to assert their own autonomy regarding state constitutional rights. While courts have interpreted the federal equal protection clause as deferential to legislative taxing schemes, many state courts have asserted that their own state constitutional provisions posit a less deferential standard. The presentation will examine how states have analyzed property tax laws under state equal protection and uniformity clauses and how those analyses may or may not differ from a federal equal protection clause analysis. The presentation will also provide practice pointers for those facing a state equal protection or uniformity clause challenge to a property tax law.
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Bradley C. Esq., "Constitutional requirements of equalization: Have states gone too far?" (2014). IAAO Annual Legal Seminar. 10.
https://researchexchange.iaao.org/legal/legal14/sessions/10
Constitutional requirements of equalization: Have states gone too far?
During the 1960’s during the Warren Court, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. was part of a court that significantly expanded the protection of individual rights under the federal Constitution. However, when the United States Supreme Court became more conservative and began to roll back the court’s expansive interpretation of the federal constitution in the 1970’s, Justice Brennan issued a call to the states to take up the gauntlet. In a Harvard law review article published in 1977, Justice Brennan declared that “state courts cannot rest when they have afforded their citizens the full protections of the federal Constitution. State constitutions, too, are a font of individual liberties, their protections often extending beyond those required by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal law.” With this call to arms, many states have attempted to assert their own autonomy regarding state constitutional rights. While courts have interpreted the federal equal protection clause as deferential to legislative taxing schemes, many state courts have asserted that their own state constitutional provisions posit a less deferential standard. The presentation will examine how states have analyzed property tax laws under state equal protection and uniformity clauses and how those analyses may or may not differ from a federal equal protection clause analysis. The presentation will also provide practice pointers for those facing a state equal protection or uniformity clause challenge to a property tax law.
