Court Opinion

ID: 9430074
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:51.63+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:38.620572
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor join,
dissenting.
The Court in this case draws into question the constitutionality of a statute that was not intended to discriminate *29against anyone, does not discriminate against appellants, and, for all that appears, never has been applied in a discriminatory fashion against anyone else. Nevertheless, the Court has imagined a fanciful hypothetical discrimination, and then has threatened that the statute will violate equal protection unless the Vermont Supreme Court or the Vermont Legislature rejects the Court’s conjecture.
As the Court recognizes, Vermont’s use tax is designed to help defray the State’s cost for building and maintaining its roads. Generally speaking, if one purchases an automobile in Vermont, one pays a sales tax on the purchase. If one purchases a car elsewhere but registers it in Vermont, the use tax is assessed. The end result is that likely users of the State’s roads are assessed a tax for their use. The overlapping series of credits and exemptions built into this vehicle tax system are designed to resolve a number of less common cases that fall outside the typical pattern of a Vermonter’s purchase of a car either in Vermont or elsewhere. However complex and redundant, the exceptions and credits accomplish two related legitimate purposes: they facilitate the flow of interstate commerce by ensuring that residents and nonresidents alike are not penalized for purchasing cars in a foreign State, and they protect against the possibility that someone using the roads primarily in only one State will be forced to pay taxes in two States.
Thus Vermont, along with apparently every other State, will not charge a sales tax to an out-of-state purchaser of an automobile. See Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 23, §463, and Tit. 32, § 8903(a) (Supp. 1984); J. C. Penney Co. v. Hardesty, 164 W. Va. 525, 538-539, 264 S. E. 2d 604, 613 (1980). This exemption ensures that out-of-state purchasers who do not use Vermont roads except to leave the State will not be made to pay for their use.
The credit at issue in this litigation accomplishes much the same purpose. If a Vermont resident, for whatever reason, does pay an out-of-state sales tax, then, when he returns to Vermont with his car, he will be excused from payment of *30Vermont’s use tax to the extent of the amount paid by way of the sales tax, if the other State provides a reciprocal credit. Again, the credit facilitates the interstate purchase of automobiles, and helps ensure that a car buyer is not paying for the use of two States’ roads when using only one.1
A
Vermont’s tax credit system worked exactly as it was intended to work in the cases of Mr. Williams and Ms. Levine. Each purchased his or her car and used it for a time in another State, and so paid a tax to that State for the use of its roads. When each subsequently moved to Vermont and registered the cars there, he or she paid a second tax for the use of the roads in their new State. Each used his or her car in two States, and each paid two States’ use or sales taxes. Thus, appellants are not situated similarly to a Vermont resident who buys his car in Illinois or New York, is exempted from sales taxes there, drives it to Vermont, and pays Vermont’s use tax. Such an individual uses a car only in Vermont, and pays only Vermont’s use tax. As the Superior Court most appropriately found, any difference in treatment between appellants and the typical Vermont out-of-state automobile purchaser “is supported by [appellants’] use of the highways of more than one state.” App. 15. Nor would it have furthered the commerce-facilitating purposes of the tax to extend a credit to persons in appellants’ situation. Having already purchased their cars, they are beyond *31the reach of any credit designed to facilitate the purchase of cars across state lines.
Vermont’s asserted purposes being concededly legitimate, and the means used to achieve those purposes rational in the abstract and effective in these particular instances, the tax exemption should easily pass the minimal scrutiny this Court routinely applies to tax statutes. See, e. g., Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Washington, 461 U. S. 540, 547-548 (1983). The Court, however, has subjected Vermont’s motor vehicle tax laws to a kind of microscopic scrutiny that few enactments could survive, and has managed, it feels, to find a way in which the statute can be understood to discriminate against appellants. The Court seems to have adopted a new level of scrutiny that is neither minimal nor strict, but strange unto itself. Out there somewhere, the Court imagines, is someone whom Vermont wishes to treat better than it treated Mr. Williams or Ms. Levine.
This phantom beneficiary of Vermont’s discrimination is a Vermont resident who leaves the State to purchase an automobile, pays the sales tax and registers the car in the foreign State of purchase, lives there for a while, and then returns to Vermont and registers the ear there. This resident is said to be entitled to the exception of Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 32, § 8911(9) (1981), while the similarly situated nonresident such as Mr. Williams is not. The phantom’s car is said to be entitled to the credit because it is “acquired outside the state by a resident of Vermont” under the terms of the statute.
B
The majority correctly understands that if its hypothetical Vermonter is not entitled to the exception, the discrimination disappears. That being the case, the problem the Court identifies seems to me to be largely of its own making. For the discrimination it finds was neither pleaded in the complaint nor discussed in any opinion of the Vermont courts. The Court rejects the State’s submission that the exception *32would not be applied to this hypothetical Vermonter, has never been applied in that situation, and was not intended to be so applied. It rejects this understanding of the statute because the statute is ambiguously worded, and because the Supreme Court of Vermont in Leverson v. Conway, 144 Vt. 523, 481 A. 2d 1029, appeal dism’d, 469 U. S. 926 (1984), pet. for rehearing pending, No. 84-315, apparently failed to consider explicitly and accept the State’s view of the statute. Ante, at 19-21.2 Thus a statute is placed under a constitutional cloud because a state court failed to go out of its way to reject a hypothetical interpretation of one of the statute’s terms. If appellants were in fact concerned about this type of discrimination, they should have made that concern clear in their pleadings, so the Vermont courts could address the issue.
While it is idle to speculate as to how the Vermont Supreme Court will interpret § 8911(9) on remand, it is not inappropriate to observe that there is force in the State’s position that in context an equally plausible interpretation of the phrase “acquired outside the state” in § 8911(9) is that the car is purchased outside the State but registered immediately in Vermont. This reading of the statute best comports with the legislative purpose in enacting exceptions to the automobile use tax. Section 8911(9) was designed to prevent people who buy their cars out-of-state but live in Vermont from being doubly taxed. Nothing in the exception/credit scheme suggests that Vermont ever wished to protect a resident who took up temporary residency elsewhere and therefore ultimately used the highways in two States, rather than in just one. Allowing such residents this credit would be directly *33contrary to the purpose of the tax, which is to have the users of the State’s roads pay for the maintainance and improvement of those roads. See Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 32, §8901 (1981). There is also support for this construction of the statute in the language of § 8911 itself.3 Nor is there any evidence in the legislative history or the administrative practice that supports the Court’s contrary reading of the statutory language.
C
Even if the Court is correct in its understanding of § 8911(9), however, the identified discrimination still is created by a classification rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose sufficient to satisfy the minimal scrutiny the Court routinely applies in similar equal protection challenges to tax provisions. The Court admits that it is a legitimate governmental purpose to assess taxes on people who use roads to provide for their upkeep. The question then becomes whether the identified discrimination worked by § 8911(9) is designed rationally to further this purpose. And I would have thought the answer was not even close.
The reason nonresidents who purchase cars out-of-state are taxed if they subsequently relocate in Vermont, while resident out-of-state purchasers are not, is that it was pre*34sumed that people will use their cars primarily in the States in which they reside. Most people who do not reside in Vermont and do not purchase their cars in that State, will not use their cars primarily in Vermont. If at some time in the future they move to Vermont and register their automobiles there, the assumption is that they will have used their cars in two different States. On the other hand, most people who reside in Vermont and purchase their cars out-of-state will return to Vermont immediately with their cars. Thus, the out-of-state purchaser is taxed, while the Vermont purchaser is exempted to the extent that he already has paid a sales tax. This distinction is hardly irrational, and the fact that there may be a Vermont resident who both purchases and uses his car out-of-state, and is therefore situated similarly to Mr. Williams, surely does not render the scheme irrational. A tax classification does not violate the demands of equal protection simply because it may not perfectly identify the class of people it wishes to single out. A State “is not required to resort to close distinctions or to maintain a precise, scientific uniformity with reference to composition, use or value.” Allied Stores of Ohio, Inc. v. Bowers, 358 U. S. 522, 527 (1959).4
The Court disagrees, and finds that “residence at the time of purchase is a wholly arbitrary basis on which to distinguish among present Vermont registrants — at least among those who used their cars elsewhere before coming to Vermont.” Ante, at 23. The Court, however, ignores the purpose of the tax and of the classification. Vermont does not wish to “dis*35tinguish among present Vermont registrants,” but to distinguish those who will likely use Vermont’s roads immediately after they have purchased cars out-of-state from those who will not. Residency is not an irrational way to enact such a classification. Moreover, the Court’s qualification misstates the language of the statute, for, as indicated, §8911(9) does not distinguish among residents depending upon where they first used their cars, but upon where they acquired their cars. A classification based on the assumption that people will use their cars in the States where they live, rather than in the States where they acquire them, is far from the kind of “palpably arbitrary” classification that the Court previously has struck down on equal protection grounds. See Allied Stores of Ohio, Inc. v. Bowers, 358 U. S., at 527.
D
Having interpreted the statute so as to generate some discrimination, and then having declared the discrimination “wholly arbitrary,” the Court felicitously retreats to a holding sufficiently narrow as to strip its decision of any constitutional significance. The problem is not that the statute actually discriminates, we are told, but that the Vermont Superior Court dismissed the equal protection challenge before there was record evidence of “ ‘the actuality of [the statute’s] operation.’” Ante, at 28, quoting Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. v. Reily, 373 U. S. 64, 69 (1963). The implication is that equal protection challenges to tax statutes may never be dismissed on the pleadings when the plaintiff can concoct a discriminatory application of the statute, no matter how farfetched. Were it to be given any general application, this would be a mischievous rule of law, especially when, as here, the discrimination that has been seized upon was not even identified with particularity in the complaint. It does, however, leave Vermont’s taxing power intact.
This follows because the State need take only one of a number of actions to save its statute. It may produce an ad*36ministrative regulation clarifying the scope of the exception. See Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 32, §8901 (1981). It may introduce evidence at trial concerning the statute’s application. Or it may introduce evidence to show that a classification based upon residency is a rational way to assess for road use — a proposition that until today I thought was self-evident. And if the state courts on remand find that the statute does not discriminate as applied, or that the discrimination is rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose, that, too, should end this litigation.
This, then, is another case which approaches the status of a “noncase, made seemingly attractive by high-sounding suggestions of inequality and unfairness.” Austin v. New Hampshire, 420 U. S. 656, 670 (1975) (dissenting opinion).6 Mr. Williams and Ms. Levine apparently delayed the day on which they were required to pay for their right to use Vermont’s roads by failing to register their cars within the time period set by Vermont law.6 Today the Court does little *37more than add to this delay by forcing the State to develop a record to prove the rationality of a manifestly rational distinction. Thus the Court requires unnecessary litigation and for the time being deprives Vermont of $282 in taxes to which it is entitled.
I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of Vermont.

 In the rare event that the use-tax credit is used because the out-of-state sales tax for some reason was paid, see n. 5, infra, the State that receives the tax will not be the State whose roads are used, but the State where the car was purchased. Because the statute is reciprocal, however, it is hardly irrational to assume that the reciprocal payments will even out. The exemptions, thus, are entirely consistent with the user-pays principle of the tax. And from the point of view of the purchaser, as with these appellants, it matters little to whom he is paying a tax. He is using the car primarily in only one State, and paying a use or sales tax in one State.

 In the only nonsummary opinion issued in this case, however, the Vermont Superior Court found that the statute did not discriminate:
“The state exacts a use tax upon the value of all cars used within the state, regardless of whether they were purchased by residents or nonresidents, and Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that they would have been treated any differently had they been Vermont residents when they purchased their cars.” App. 15 (emphasis in original).

 When the Vermont Legislature meant to exempt an automobile under § 8911 because of where it was operated or who owned it, it said so. In particular, the State made only one specific allowance for certain residents who purchase and initially register their cars out-of-state. Thus, in § 8911(11) motor vehicles “owned or purchased in another state by a member of the armed forces on full time active duty” are exempted from the use tax. That section would be partially redundant if the Court’s interpretation of § 8911(9) were accurate. Other subsections of § 8911 also speak explicitly of cars classified by where they are operated or registered. Thus, the statute exempts ears “owned or registered” by any State, cars “owned and operated by the United States,” cars “owned and registered” by religious or charitable groups, cars “owned and operated” by certain dealers, and certain cars “owned and operated by physically handicapped persons.” §§ 8911(1), (2), (3), (4), and (12). Only § 8911(9), in contrast, speaks in terms of where a car is “acquired.”

 “States have large leeway in making classifications and drawing lines which in their judgment produce reasonable systems of taxation.” Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co., 410 U. S. 356, 359 (1973). Were it otherwise, it would be an easy task to ferret out inconsistencies in taxation schemes. After all, even if Vermont’s statute were worded in terms of the State of first registration, rather than the State of residency, as the Court wishes, it would still be possible to imagine some hypothetical Vermont registrant who uses his car initially exclusively in some other State. He, too, is situated similarly to Mr. Williams in that neither initially is using Vermont roads.

 This is a noncase in another sense as well. Since all States apparently forgo payment of their sales tax by out-of-state purchasers of automobiles, see J. C. Penney Co. v. Hardesty, 164 W. Va. 525, 538-539, 264 S. E. 2d 604, 613 (1980), § 8911(9) might well be entirely superfluous, as no out-of-state purchaser will ever be required to pay a sales tax which could be credited against Vermont’s use tax pursuant to § 8911(9). I doubt that a statute offering a tax credit that is never applied can violate equal protection.

 Vermont automobile owners are required to register their cars in Vermont when they become residents of the State. Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 23, §§4(30), 301 (1978). In appellants’ case, liability for the tax arose six months after they accepted employment in the State, at which time they became Vermont residents. Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 32, §8902(2) (1981). Mr. Williams accepted employment in Vermont on February 1, 1981, App. 5, and so was required to register his car before August 1 of that year. He did not attempt to register it, however, until his Illinois registration expired on September 30, 1981. Similarly, Ms. Levine accepted employment in Vermont in November 1979, ibid., and was required to register her car in May 1980. She did not attempt to do so until December 1982, when her New York registration was about to expire.