Court Opinion

ID: 9752027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:30:09.666092+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:51:43.071561
License: Public Domain

CAPPY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the Appellant class of taxpayers, who seek to challenge the constitutionality of the property tax assessment system, may maintain their action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in common pleas court without first exhausting their state statutory remedies. Although I do not disagree with the majority’s background summary of the relevant law, I differ with the majority’s resolution of the “apparent conflict” in the United States Supreme Court’s “competing lines of cases.” (Majority opinion at 184.)
*64First, it must be remembered that section 1983 creates a federal cause of action. The Supreme Court in Fair Assessment in Real Estate Association v. McNary, 454 U.S. 100, 102 S.Ct. 177, 70 L.Ed.2d 271 (1981), specifically held that this federal action requires exhaustion of state administrative and judicial remedies due to the sensitive nature of state tax issues. It makes no sense to undercut the Court’s interpretation of federal law. Further, I believe that interests of comity1 dictate that state courts defer to the federal framework carefully established by the United States Supreme Court, just as the federal court in Fair Assessment deferred to the state courts in fashioning a rule that would not disrupt a carefully fashioned state tax scheme. The majority’s approach creates the anomalous result of encouraging federal claimants to flock to state courts to pursue section 1983 actions, when the precise purpose of the federal rule is to ensure that state courts may deal with the matter under state law first.
Moreover, the majority’s approach virtually eliminates any opportunity for the state courts to examine the state tax scheme under the laws or Constitution of the Commonwealth. The precise concern for the sensitive nature of state tax schemes, which motivated the United States Supreme Court in Fair Assessment, should a fortiori motivate state courts to examine those schemes under state law first. The majority’s approach obliterates this opportunity and, again, produces the incongruous result of creating a stronger, virtually exclusive federal forum for section 1983 claims in state court — rather than in federal court where the action should take priority.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131, 108 S.Ct. 2302, 101 L.Ed.2d 123 (1988), in no way compels the majority’s result. It must be remembered that for the state courts to require exhaustion of state remedies as a prerequisite to a section 1983 action would only be to impose *65upon plaintiffs in state court the same requirement that would be imposed upon them in federal court. Felder simply prohibits the application of a state rule where the rule conflicts with the remedial objectives of section 1983 and its enforcement will “frequently and predictably produce different outcomes in § 1983 litigation based solely on whether the claim is asserted in state or federal court.” 487 U.S. at 138, 108 S.Ct. at 2307. Ironically, the majority’s refusal to impose an exhaustion requirement creates just such a situation where different outcomes will be reached in section 1983 litigation “based solely on whether the claim is asserted in state or federal court.”
I believe that, in the circumstances of this case, the Court should defer to the framework established by the federal courts. Therefore, I must respectfully dissent.

. It is important to remember that comity works both ways. Judicial comity is “[t]he principle in accordance with which the courts of one state or jurisdiction will give effect to the laws and judicial decisions of another, not as a matter of obligation, but out of deference and respect.” Black's Law Dictionary 267 (6th ed. 1990).