Court Opinion

ID: 9859565
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 22:01:41.9232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:53:12.922246
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
concurring.
Because the Court’s opinion leaves me uncertain about the basis on which N.J.S.A. 54:4-23a is declared! to be unconstitutional, I put a little distance between myself and the majority by stating separately my reasons for joining in the result.
Let me explain why I am unsure of the Court’s holding. If the point is that the uniformity rule for taxation of real property, which “forever bar[s]” discriminatory burdens, ante at 433, cannot be avoided by resort to the exemption clause, then I do not quite grasp the significance of the Court’s reference, ante *440at 438, to other property-improvement exemption statutes. That reference might leave one with the impression that discriminatory classification and exemption of real property is unconstitutional only when the purpose of the offending legislation is to benefit a particular industry. That impression is fortified by the discussion surrounding the two “amendatory sentences,” ante at 433-434, as well as the opinion’s flat-out statement that “[r]ecognition of such [statutory] exemptions [for property improvements such as fallout shelters, pollution control devices, automatic fire systems, and solar hearing devices] appears to be in accord with the history and tradition that surround this power of exemption.” Ante at 439. If that is the holding, I should think that the Court would do well to say so.
That would not, however, be my holding. The “history and tradition that surround this power of exemption” are well and forcefully stated by the Court. Ante at 438. They require that “as to real property, then and now the lifeblood of government, discriminatory burdens be forever barred.” Ante at 433. Coupled with the characterization of the exemption clause as being limited to its “historical mold,” ante at 435, and with the observation that “real property dedicated to municipal tax purposes should never be taxed at an unequal burden,” ante at 436-437 (emphasis added), the opinion can be read to say that the exemption clause can never defeat the uniformity requirement for taxation of real property. That is my view of the correct holding. I would therefore not encourage those who must wrestle with real-property tax law to believe that the Court has left for another day the possibility that a “public purpose” classification for partial exemption from real property taxation can be achieved without a constitutional amendment.