Allegheny-Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. County Comm’n, 488 U.S. 336 (1989)

Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. County Commission

of Webster County, West Virginia
No. 87-1303

Argued December 7, 1988
Decided January 18, 1989 *
488 U.S. 336

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF WEST

VIRGINIA

Syllabus

The West Virginia Constitution in relevant part establishes a general principle of uniform taxation so that all property, both real and personal, shall be taxed in proportion to its value. The Webster County tax assessor, from 1975 to 1986, valued petitioners’ real property on the basis of its recent purchase price. Other properties not recently transferred were assessed based on their previous assessments with minor modifications. This system resulted in gross disparities in the assessed value of generally comparable property. Each year, respondent county commission affirmed the assessments, and petitioners appealed to the State Circuit Court. Eventually, a number of these appeals were consolidated and decided. The State Circuit Court held that the county’s assessment system systematically and intentionally discriminated against petitioners in violation of the State Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution. It ordered respondent to reduce petitioners’ assessments to the levels recommended by the state tax commissioner in his guidelines for local assessors. The State Supreme Court of Appeals reversed. It held that the record did not support a finding of intentional and systematic discrimination because petitioners’ property was not assessed at more than true value, as appropriately measured by the recent arm’s-length purchase price of the property. In its view, any comparative undervaluation of other property could only be remedied by an action by petitioners to raise those other assessments.

Held:

1. The assessments on petitioners’ property violated the Equal Protection Clause. There is no constitutional defect in a scheme that bases an assessment on the recent arm’s-length purchase price of the property, and uses a general adjustment as a transitional substitute for an individual reappraisal of other parcels. But the Clause requires that such general adjustments be accurate enough to obtain, over a short period of time, rough equality in tax treatment of similarly situated property owners. This action is not one involving permissible transitional inequality, since petitioners’ property has been assessed at roughly 8 to 35 times more than comparable neighboring property, and these discrepancies have continued for more than 10 years with little change. The county’s adjustments to assessments that are carried over are too small to seasonably dissipate the disparity. Pp. 342-344.

2. The Equal Protection Clause permits a State to divide different kinds of property into classes and to assign to each a different tax burden so long as those divisions and burdens are neither arbitrary nor capricious. West Virginia has not drawn such a distinction here, as its Constitution and laws provide that all property of the kind held by petitioners shall be taxed uniformly according to its estimated market value. There is no suggestion that the State has in practice adopted a different system that authorizes individual counties to independently fashion their own substantive assessment policies. The Webster County assessor has, apparently on her own initiative, applied state tax law in a manner resulting in significant and persistent disparity in assessed value between petitioners’ and similarly situated property. The intentional systematic undervaluation of such other property unfairly deprives petitioners of their rights under the Clause. Pp. 344-346.

3. The State might on its own initiative remove the discrimination against petitioners by raising the assessments of systematically and intentionally undervalued property in the same class. A taxpayer in petitioners’ position, however, forced to litigate for redress, may not be remitted by the State to the remedy of seeking to have the assessments of the undervalued property raised. P. 346.

___ W.Va. ___, 360 S.E.2d 560, reversed and remanded.

REHNQUIST, C.J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.