Court Opinion

ID: 9426465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:04.680417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.110502
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
Obviously, and naturally, I join the Court’s per curiam opinion. Last Term, in lonely dissent, in the case which has spawned the present motions by Pennsylvania and by Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont, I said:
“Because the New Hampshire income tax statutes operate in such a way that no New Hampshire resident is ultimately subjected to the State’s income tax, the case at first glance appears to have some attraction. That attraction, however, is superficial and, upon careful analysis, promptly fades and disappears entirely. The reason these appellants, who are residents of Maine, not of New Hampshire, pay a New Hampshire tax is because the Maine Legislature — the appellants’ own duly elected representatives — has given New Hampshire the option to divert this increment of tax (on a Maine resident’s income earned in New Hampshire) from Maine to New Hampshire, and New Hampshire willingly has picked up that option. All that New Hampshire *667has done is what Maine specifically permits and, indeed, invites it to do. If Maine should become disenchanted with its bestowed bounty, its legislature may change the Maine statute. The crux is the statute of Maine, not the statute of New Hampshire. The appellants, therefore, are really complaining about their own statute. It is ironic that the State of Maine, which allows the credit, has made an appearance in this case as an amicus urging, in effect, the denial of the credit by an adjudication of unconstitutionality of New Hampshire’s statute. It seems to me that Maine should be here seeking to uphold its own legislatively devised plan or turn its attention to its own legislature.” Austin v. New Hampshire, 420 U. S. 656, 668-669 (1975).
The Court in its per curiam, ante, at 664, now concedes that the “injuries to the plaintiffs’ fiscs were self-inflicted” and that no State “can be heard to complain about damages inflicted by its own hand.” Quod ap-probo non reprobo.