Court Opinion

ID: 9729762
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:48:11.794017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.046203
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
In Turner v. Fouche, (1970) 396 U.S. 346, 90 S.Ct. 532, 24 L.Ed.2d 567, the United States Supreme Court applied the equal protection clause to qualifications for holding public office. There the Court was faced with a Georgia statute which created school boards, set their size at five members, and required each member of them to be a freeholder. In this case we are confronted with a statute which creates the township advisory board, sets its membership at three, and requires that each member of it be a freeholder. Both boards make financial decisions which influence the delivery and availability of government services to freeholder and nonfreeholder. In Indiana, as in Georgia, a freeholder is any person who owns real estate. Both the Georgia school board and the Indiana township advisory board have statutory authority to levy taxes on real estate situated within their jurisdictions. This authority renders the real property taxpayers in both cases subject to the danger of excessive taxation. Indeed, in this regard, since the Georgia board levied for school purposes, while the Indiana board levied only to pay for the vestiges of township government, a strong case can be made out that any such danger was much greater in the Georgia situation. The Supreme Court concluded that the freeholder requirement in the Georgia scheme was invidiously discriminatory in violation of the equal protection clause. I regard that ease as applicable and decisive here and as requiring that we likewise invalidate the freeholder requirement for holding the Indiana office of township advisory board.