Court Opinion

ID: 9454711
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:56:05.891893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:15.803238
License: Public Domain

BELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. There are three sound grounds, in my judgment, for affirming the district court.
First, any known principle of comity would dictate that the legality of the statute in question be tested in the state courts. It involves the fiscal affairs of the State of Florida and goes to the heart of the taxing process. The local property tax limitation in question is only a part of the total state and local taxing scheme and legality vel non necessarily draw's the entire taxing process into consideration. A federal court should be reluctant to interfere with the fiscal affairs of a state even by declaratory judgment.
Second, assuming arguendo that a cause of action lies under the theory of the complaint for violation of the equal protection clause, there is no way, under the allegations of the complaint and the admitted facts, to demonstrate discrimination through the statute under attack. Without such a premise, the equal protection question is insubstantial. That there can be no such premise became clear on the oral argument of this case when it was agreed that there is no uniform valuation of property in the State of Florida for assessment purposes. To show discrimination as amongst the children in the various Florida counties, one county as against another county, it would be necessary to first know what an ad valorem tax levy would produce. This cannot be known absent an uniform valuation system. A one mill levy in one county may be based on an assessment of ten per cent of actual value while in another it may be based on an assessment of some other percentage of actual value. To increase the complexity, it would then be necessary, from the standpoint of each child’s share of the education revenues, to relate all state education expenditures under the distributive formula of the Florida Minimum Foundation Program for Education (F.S.A. Sections 236.01-236.07), to the children in the respective Florida *329counties. In addition, federal funds for education must also be added to the total before the equal protection computation could be made. Once this was all known, it would then be possible for one to determine whether discrimination exists as betwen the local school systems. This state of affairs means that no cognizable equal protection question is presented for an equal protection claim must rest on discrimination. Cf. Davis v. Georgia State Board of Education, 5 Cir., 1969, 408 F.2d 1014 [March 11, 1969].
Moreover, as a third ground, it would appear, contrary to what the majority implies in citing the same case, that the Supreme Court has already declined an equal protection elasticity approach analogous to that asserted by appellants. McInnis v. Shapiro, 293 F.Supp. 327 (three-judge court, N.D.Ill., 1968), aff’d sub nom. McInnis v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 322, 89 S.Ct. 1197, 22 L.Ed.2d 308 (1969). There the three-judge district court concluded that the equal protection clause did not require the apportioning of state funds as among school districts according to the educational needs of the students. In addition to this basic holding, the court went further to say that even if the equal protection clause required such an apportionment, the controversy would be non justiciable in that court-manageable standards would be lacking.
Thus we need not contemplate what a three-judge district court may hold here on the merits in light of the Mc-lnnis case, for, as was held in Bailey v. Patterson, 369 U.S. 31, 82 S.Ct. 549, 7 L.Ed.2d 512 (1962), it is not necessary to convene a three-judge court to determine a constitutional question which is settled. The most that can be said of appellants’ position is that it is novel. We should require substance as well as novelty. I would hold now that the question is settled.