Court Opinion

ID: 9425749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:44.337939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.327288
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
concurring.
The opinion of the Court fully explicates the issue presented here, and I am in accord with its resolution. I write briefly only to emphasize my understanding that today’s decision does not foreclose the possibility that some combination of unreasonably burdensome taxation and direct competition by the taxing authority might amount to a taking of property without just compensation in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
To some extent, private business is inevitably handicapped by direct governmental competition, but the opinion of the Court makes plain that the legitimate exercise of the taxing power is not to be restrained on this account. It is conceivable, however, that punitive taxation of a private industry and direct economic competition through a governmental entity enjoying special competitive advantages would effectively expropriate a private business for public profit. Such a combination of unreasonably burdensome taxation and public competition would be the functional equivalent of a governmental taking of private property for public use and would be subject to the constitutional requirement of just compensation. As the opinion of the Court clearly reveals, ante, at 377-378, no such circumstance has been shown to exist in the instant case.