Court Opinion

ID: 9695979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:32:54.537405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:17.735193
License: Public Domain

Clinton, X,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that those sections of L.B. 945 dealing with intercounty equalization where a taxation district overlaps two or more counties are unconstitutional.
I do not agree that the portion of section 77-202 (1), R. R. S. 1943, exempting “(d) household goods, including major appliances either attached or detached to real property” is when properly construed unconstitutional because in violation of Article VIII, section 2, of the Constitution. That section of the Constitution, in my judgment, does not, as the majority opinion in effect states, authorize the Legislature to call black, white, and make it so. The Legislature has not attempted to do that in L.B. 945.
Subsection (1) (d) is obviously intended to exempt from taxation those items of property such as ovens, stoves, washing machines, clothes dryers, and dishwash*341ers which in recent history because of changes in home design and construction are now sometimes built in and semipermanently attached to the home, and which for this reason occupy an uncertain status in the technical terms of property law. The constitutional amendment was intended to meet this situation and enable the Legislature to treat on the same basis those homeowners who own such items attached or semiattached and those homeowners who own the same items but which are clearly personal property. As so limited and construed the statute ought to be said to be constitutional.