Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/719/
Timestamp: 2013-12-22 01:59:11
Document Index: 122177549

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 39000', '§ 42200', '§ 43000', '§ 43006', '§ 46175', '§ 48029', '§ 41000', '§ 47183', '§ 42200', '§ 42275', '§ 42325', '§ 42355', '§ 43152', '§ 43530', '§ 43151', '§ 44900']

SALYER LAND COMPANY et al., Appellants, v. TULARE LAKE BASIN WATER STORAGE DISTRICT. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews SALYER LAND COMPANY et al., Appellants, v. TULARE LAKE BASIN WATER STORAGE DISTRICT.
410 U.S. 719 (93 S.Ct. 1224, 35 L.Ed.2d 659)
(a) The activities of appellee district fall so disproportionately on landowners as a group that it is not unreasonable that the statutory framework focuses on the land benefited, rather than on people as such. Pp. 726728.
(b) Although appellee district has some governmental powers, it provides none of the general public services ordinarily attributed to a governing body. Pp. 728729.
3. The exclusion of lessees from voting does not violate the Equal Protection Clause since the short-term lessee's interest may be substantially less than that of a landowner and, the franchise being exercisable by proxy, other lessees may negotiate to have the franchise included in their leases Pp. 731733.
4. Weighting the vote according to assessed valuation of the land does not evade the principle that wealth has no relation to voter qualifications where, as here, the expense as well as the benefit is proportional to the land's assessed value. Pp. 733735.
'Were the (county's governing body) a special-purpose unit of government assigned the performance of functions affecting definable groups of constituents more than other constituents, we would have to confront the question whether such a body may be apportioned in ways which give greater influence to the citizens most affected by the organization's functions.' 390 U.S., at 483484, 88 S.Ct., at 1120.
The particular type of local government unit whose organization is challenged on constitutional grounds in this case is a water storage district, organized pursuant to the California Water Storage District Act, Calif. Water Code § 39000 et seq. The peculiar problems of adequate water supplies faced by most of the western third of the Nation have been described by Mr. Justice Sutherland, who was himself intimately familiar with them, in California Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co., 295 U.S. 142, 156157, 55 S.Ct. 725, 728, 79 L.Ed. 1356 (1935):
It was not enough, therefore, for individual farmers or groups of farmers to build irrigation canals and ditches which depended for their operation on the natural flow of these streams. Storage dams had to be constructed to impound in their reservoirs the flow of the rivers at flood stage for later release during the dry season regimen of these streams. For the construction of major dams to facilitate the storage of water for irrigation of large areas, the full resources of the State and frequently of the Federal Government were necessary.
Some history of the experience of California and the other Western States with the problems of water distribution is contained in Fallbrood Irrigation District v. Bradley, 164 U.S. 112, 151154, 17 S.Ct. 56, 6061, 41 L.Ed. 369 (1896), in which the constitutionality of California's Wright Act was sustained against claims of denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. While the irrigation district was apparently the first local governmental unit authorized to deal with water distribution, it is by no means the only one. General legislation in California authorizes the creation, not only of irrigation districts, but of water conservation districts, water storage and conservation districts, flood control districts, and water storage districts such as appellee.
Such districts are authorized to plan projects and execute approved projects 'for the acquisition, appropriation, diversion, storage, conservation, and distribution of water . . ..' Calif. Water Code § 42200 et seq.
Incidental to this general power, districts may 'acquire, improve, and operate' any necessary works for the storage and distribution of water as well as any drainage or reclamation works connected therewith, and the generation and distribution of hydroelectric power may be provided for.
Id., §§ 43000, 43025. They may fix tolls and charges for the use of water and collect them from all persons receiving the benefit of the water or other services in proportion to the services rendered. Id., § 43006. The costs of the projects are assessed against district land in accordance with the benefits accruing to each tract held in separate ownership. Id., §§ 46175, 46176. And land that is not benefited may be withdrawn from the district on petition. Id., § 48029.
It is the voter qualification for such elections that appellants claim invidiously discriminates against them and persons similarly situated. Appellants are landowners, a landowner-lessee, and residents within the area included in the appellee's water storage district. They brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in an effort to prevent appellee from giving effect to certain provisions of the California Water Code. They allege that §§ 41000
unconstitutionally deny to them the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, in that only landowners are permitted to vote in water storage district general elections, and votes in those elections are apportioned according to the assessed valuation of the land. A three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2284, and the case was submitted on factual statements of the parties and briefs, without testimony or oral argument. A majority of the District Court held that both statutes comported with the dictates of the Equal Protection Clause, and appellants have appealed that judgment directly to this Court under 28 U.S.C. 1253.
In Kramer, the Court was confronted with a voter gualification statute for school district elections that limited the vote to otherwise qualified district residents who were either (1) the owners or lessees of taxable real property located within the district, (2) spouses of persons owning qualifying property, or (3) parents or guardians of children enrolled for a specified time during the preceding year in a local district school. Without reaching the issue of whether or not a State may in some circumstances limit the exercise of the franchise to those primarily interested or primarily affected by a given governmental unit, it was held that the above classifications did not meet that statearticulated goal since they excluded many persons who had distinct and direct interests in school meeting decisions and included many persons who had, at best, remote and indirect interests. Id., at 632633, 89 S.Ct., at 18921893.
Similarly, in Cipriano v. City of Houma, supra, decided the same day, provisions of Louisiana law which gave only property taxpayers the right to vote in elections called to approve the issuance of revenue bonds by a municipal utility were declared violative of the Equal Protection Clause since the operation of the utility systems affected virtually every resident of the city, not just the 40% of the registered voters who were also property taxpayers, and since the bonds were not in any way financed by property tax revenue. 395 U.S., at 705, 89 S.Ct., at 1900. And the rationale of Cipriano was expanded to include general obligation bonds of municipalities in Phoenix v. Kolodziejski, supra. It was there noted that not only did those persons excluded from voting have a great interest in approving or disapproving municipal improvements, but they also contributed both directly through local taxes and indirectly through increased rents and costs to the servicing of the bonds. 399 U.S., at 210211, 90 S.Ct., at 19941995.
'while not fully as broad as those of the Midland County Commissioners, certainly show that the trustees perform important governmental functions within the districts, and we think these powers are general enough and have sufficient impact throughout the district to justify the conclusion that the principle which we applied in Avery should also be applied here.' 397 U.S., at 5354, 90 S.Ct., at 794.
It provides no other general public services such as schools, housing, transportation, utilities, roads, or anything else of the type ordinarily financed by a municipal body. App. 86. There are no towns, shops, hospitals, or other facilities designed to improve the quality of life within the district boundaries, and it does not have a fire department, police, buses, or trains. Ibid.
Not only does the district not exercise what might be thought of as 'normal governmental' authority, but its actions disproportionately affect landowners. All of the costs of district projects are assessed against land by assessors in proportion to the benefits received. Likewise, charges for services rendered are collectible from persons receiving their benefit in proportion to the services. When such persons are delinquent in payment, just as in the case of delinquency in payments of assessments, such charges become a lien on the land. Calif.Water Code §§ 47183, 46280. In short, there is no way that the economic burdens of district operations can fall on residents qua residents, and the operations of the districts primarily affect the land within their boundaries.
Appellants' argument ignores the realities of water storage district operation. Since its formation in 1926, appellee district has put into operation four multimillion-dollar projects. The last project involved the construction of two laterals from the Basin to the California State Aqueduct at a capital cost of about $2,500,000. Three small landowners having land aggregating somewhat under four acres with an assessed valuation of under $100 were given one vote each in the special election held for the approval of the project. The J. G. Boswell Company, which owns 61,665.54 acres with an assessed valuation of $3,782,220 was entitled to cast 37,825 votes in the election. By the same token, however, the assessment commissioners determined that the benefits of the project would be uniform as to all of the acres affected, and assessed the project equally as to all acreage. Each acre has to bear $13.26 of cost and the three small landowners, therefore, must pay a total of $46, whereas the company must pay $817,685 for its part.
Thus, as the District Court found, 'the benefits and burdens to each landowner . . . are in proportion to the assessed value of the land.' 342 F.Supp. 144, 146. We cannot say that the California legislative decision to permit voting in the same proportion is not rationally based.
From its inception in 1926, this district has had repeated flood control problems. Four rivers, Kings, Kern, Tule, and Kaweah, enter Tulare Lake Basin. South of Tulare Lake Basin is Buena Vista Lake. In the past, Buena Vista has been used to protect Tulare Lake Basin by storing Kern River water in the former. That is how Tulare Lake Basin was protected from menacing floods in 1952. But that was not done in the great 1969 flood, the result being that 88,000 of the 193,000 acres in respondent district were flooded. The board of the respondent district dominated by the big landowner J. G. Boswell Co.voted 64 to table the motion that would put into operation the machinery to divert the flood waters to the Buena Vista Lake. The reason is that J. G. Boswell Co. had a long-term agricultural lease in the Buena Vista Lake Basin and flooding it would have interfered with the planting, growing, and harvesting of crops the next season.
Landownerslarge or small, resident or nonresident, lessees or landlords, sharecroppers
or ownersall should have a say. But irrigation, water storage, the building of levees, and flood control, implicate the entire community. All residents of the district must be granted the franchise.
The majority, however, would distinguish the water storage district from 'units of local government having general governmental powers over the entire geographic area served by the body,' Avery v. Midland County, Tex., 390 U.S. 474, 485, 88 S.Ct. 1114, 1120, 20 L.Ed.2d 45, and fit this case within the exception contemplated for 'a special-purpose unit of government assigned the performance of functions affecting definable groups of constituents more than other constituents.' Id., at 483484, 88 S.Ct., at 1120. The Avery test was significantly liberalized in Hadley v. Junior College District, 397 U.S. 50, 90 S.Ct. 791, 25 L.Ed.2d 45. At issue was an election for trustees of a special purpose district which ran a junior college. We said,
'. . . (S)ince the trustees can levy and collect taxes, issue bonds with certain restrictions, hire and fire teachers, make contracts, collect fees, supervise and discipline students, pass on petitions to annex school districts, acquire property by condemnation, and in general manage the operations of the junior college, their powers are equivalent, for apportionment purposes, to those exercised by the county commissioners in Avery. . . . (T)hese powers, while not fully as broad as those of the Midland County Commissioners, certainly show that the trustees perform important governmental functions . . . and have sufficient impact throughout the district to justify the conclusion that the principle which we applied in Avery should also be applied here.' Id., at 5354, 90 S.Ct., at 794. (Emphasis added; footnote omitted.)
Such state agencies 'are considered exclusively governmental,' and their property is 'held only for governmental purpose,' not in the 'proprietary sense.'
They are a 'public entity,' just as 'any other political subdivision.'
That is made explicit in various ways. The Water Code of California states that '(a)ll waters and water rights' of the State 'within the district are given, dedicated, and set apart for the uses and purposes of the district.'
Directors of the district are 'public officers of the state.'
When we decided Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506, and discussed the problems of malapportionment we thought and talked about peopleof population, of the constitutional right of 'qualified citizens to vote,' (id., at 554, 84 S.Ct., at 1377) of 'the right of suffrage,' (id., at 555, 84 S.Ct., at 1378) of the comparison of 'one man's vote' to that of another man's vote. Id., at 559, 84 S.Ct., at 1382. We said:
It is indeed grotesque to think of corporations voting within the framework of political representation of people. Corporations were held to be 'persons' for purposes both of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Yet, it is unthinkable in terms of the American tradition that corporations should be admitted to the franchise. Could a State allot voting rights to its corporations, weighting each vote according to the wealth of the corporation? Or could it follow the rule of one corporation, one vote? It would be a radical and revolutionary step to take, as it would change our whole concept of the franchise. California takes part of that step here by allowing corporations to vote in these water district matters
The actual adoption of district projects is long and involved. After a district undertakes a project, it must be approved by the California Department of Water Resources. Calif. Water Code § 42200 et seq. A report and the estimated cost of the project must be submitted to the California State Treasurer, who undertakes an independent investigation before declaring the project abandoned or approving the report. Id., § 42275 et seq. If the report is approved, a 'special election' is called. Id., § 42325 et seq. In order for the project to be finally adopted, a majority of the votes and a majority of the voters must approve it. Id., §§ 4235542550.
The board has the power to employ and discharge persons on a regular staff and to contract for the construction of district projects. Calif.Water Code § 43152. It can condemn private property for use in such projects, id., §§ 4353043533, and may cooperate (including contract) with other agencies, state and federal. Id., § 43151. Both general obligation bonds and interest-bearing warrants may be authorized. Id., §§ 4490045900.
Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining & Milling Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U.S. 181, 188189, 8 S.Ct. 737, 740741, 31 L.Ed. 650; Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 397, 6 S.Ct. 1132, 30 L.Ed. 118.