Court Opinion

ID: 9775882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 19:11:52.222821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:31.864566
License: Public Domain

*536GAMMAGE, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
The Federalist No. 62 (James Madison).
Madison’s admonition may be a fitting epitaph for this episode in the continuing saga of public school finance.
While I concur in the portion of the judgment holding that Senate Bill 351 is unconstitutional and agree that this judgment should be applied prospectively, I cannot join in the majority’s overwritten opinion and do not agree that it is either necessary or desirable to inflict an unconstitutional tax on the citizens of this state for more than one taxing cycle.
I agree generally with the majority’s historical account, in Part I of its opinion, of the development of Texas school finance and the recent challenges it has faced. I also agree generally with Parts III and Via of the majority’s opinion, but with the qualifications expressed below. The fatal defect in Senate Bill 351 is its failure to submit newly proposed taxing authorities to local voters, as required by Article VII, sections 3 and 3-b of our State’s Constitution. The issues addressed in Parts II, IV, VIB, and VIIA of the majority’s opinion are unnecessary to the decision in this case. I disagree with making the court’s judgment prospective for two taxing cycles as provided for in Parts VIC and VIIB. Moreover, I disagree with Part V, wherein the court insists on once more wading into the advisory opinion swamp — a constitutionally proscribed journey, TEX. CONST. art. V, § 3; Morrow v. Corbin, 122 Tex. 553, 563, 62 S.W.2d 641, 646 (1933), criticized in my concurrence in overruling the motion for rehearing in Edgewood II. 804 S.W.2d at 501.
I
The history of Article VII, section 3 reveals that the legislature and the courts have consistently given it a practical construction requiring a vote of local citizens to authorize the levy of an ad valorem tax for a school district’s support when such a district is created by the legislature. See generally 2 G. Braden, The Constitution of the State of Texas: An Annotated and Comparative Analysis 512-13 (1976). Article VII, section 3-b does not authorize creation of CEDs with taxing authority, absent voter approval, because a newly-created CED is not a change in “boundaries” of an existing school district. In Freer Municipal Indep. School Dist. v. Manges, 677 S.W.2d 488 (Tex.1984) (per curiam), this court held that when an existing school district splits into two completely separate school districts by disannexation of a portion of the original district, that is a “boundaries” change for both of the resulting districts, id. at 490, and Freer could continue to tax at the rate authorized by the Benavides district, of which it had been a part. Freer simply does not apply to this case. Further, the new CEDs are not boundary changes by “the annexation of, or consolidation with, one or more whole school districts.” Tex. Const, art. VII, § 3-b (emphasis added). Senate Bill 351 does not consolidate whole school districts, but rather creates a new taxing authority purporting to utilize a portion of the existing districts’ taxing power.
II
Our decision should be applied prospectively because school districts, their students and patrons have relied on the presumption of constitutionality of Senate Bill 351, and because the equitable considerations apparent in disruption of the Texas public school system favor only a prospective remedy. Senate Bill 351 violates a constitutional provision unique to the Texas *537Constitution, and its invalidity is a question only of state law. No federal legal issues are involved. Whether to make this court’s decision prospective or retrospective is a decision for this court. American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Smith, 496 U.S. 167, 110 S.Ct. 2323, 2330, 110 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990); Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co., 287 U.S. 358, 364, 53 S.Ct. 145, 148, 77 L.Ed. 360 (1932). We need not and should not adopt any federal test for prospectivity, because federal law is not involved. Our decision in Reagan v. Vaughn, 804 S.W.2d 463, 467-68 (Tex.1990) (“considerations of fairness and policy preclude full retroactivity when the court’s decision establishes a new principle of law that either overrules clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied or decides an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed”), controls. We should not engage in legal gymnastics to make our test fit the federal formula under Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), or try to rationalize factors as if we were applying federal law. Nor should we be distracted by election-year political considerations from our earlier recognition of the urgency of resolving the issues of public school finance. For these reasons I agree with the majority that the effect of the court’s judgment should be prospective, but would withhold its effect only until June 1, 1992.
Ill
I strongly object to Part V of the court’s opinion. Whether the legislature speculated that the act might be unconstitutional is irrelevant. This court’s role in this cause, where we have actual parties contesting the constitutionality of the statute, is to decide whether the act suffers from the constitutional infirmities alleged. The court goes further to defend its writing on rehearing in Edgewood II, by arguing it “did not say that tax base consolidation could not be unconstitutional; all we said was that it could be constitutional.” Ante, at 512 (emphasis in original). The court imprudently tried to give advice, but once undertaking the task failed to give complete advice. Legislatures enact statutes; courts decide cases. Even when this court has before it an actual case involving a specific constitutional complaint, we have no business speculating for the legislature, the executive department, or anyone else, what may or may not be otherwise constitutionally done. Our duty is to address the questions presented to the extent necessary to dispose of the case — no more and no less.
IV
Justice Doggett’s dissent correctly characterizes the requirement of a local vote on the CED taxation issue as a “veto” in the following sense: unless the voters in each CED approve the tax, the whole state system fails to meet the Edgewood I mandate requiring substantially the same educational opportunity for the same tax effort. For the entire system to meet this efficiency requirement, all of its CED components must have substantially the same tax system. Consequently, any one of the 188 CEDs can, in effect, “veto” the statutory school tax scheme for the entire state.
But the issue presented for our decision is indeed whether to enforce this specific right to vote on taxation, a right the people of Texas expressly reserved to themselves in Article VII, sections 3 and 3-b of our Constitution. We may not ignore the express words of the Constitution, nor may we shirk our duty to construe section 3 and the exceptions of section 3-b consistent with precedent and sound legal analysis. We should not bend the words of the Constitution beyond their reasonable construction to suit our convenience, nor even to meet our own perceptions of what is “good” for educating Texas school children. Our oath is to uphold the Texas Constitution, including the people’s right, expressly reserved therein, to vote on such tax matters.