Court Opinion

ID: 9848966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:31:20.543174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:55.662291
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that since Oregon Waste Systems v. Department of Environmental Quality, 511 U.S. 93, 114 S.Ct. 1345, 128 L.Ed.2d 13 (1994), was decided under the Commerce Clause as opposed to the Privileges and Immunities Clause, its reasoning is inapposite here. I cannot agree.
The United States Supreme Court has long acknowledged “the mutually reinforcing relationship between the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV, § 2, and the Commerce Clause — a relationship that stems from their common origin in the Fourth Article of the Articles of Confederation and their shared vision of federalism....” Hicklin v. Orbeck, 437 U.S. 518, 531-32, 98 S.Ct. 2482, 2490, 57 L.Ed.2d 397 (1978). It has, in fact, endorsed the methodology of referring to Commerce Clause precedent in deciding claims based solely on the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Id. See also Sestric v. Clark, 765 F.2d 655, 664 (7th Cir.1985) (“The two clauses are part of the same document, drafted by very intelligent and careful men; why would they have wanted the same discrimination against nonresidents to be tested by a different standard, depending on which clause was cited in the complaint?”).
I do not mean to suggest that the two clauses are completely interchangeable. The differences between them, however, appear to primarily involve matters of scope as opposed to content. For example, the market regulator — market participant doctrine can shield a state from Commerce Clause attack but not from a claim based on the Privileges and Immunities Clause. United Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council v. Mayor, 465 U.S. 208, 221-22, 104 S.Ct. 1020, 1029, 79 L.Ed.2d 249 (1984). On the other side of the equation, the Commerce Clause protects corporations, while the Privileges and Immunities Clause does not. Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. (8 Wall) 168, 19 L.Ed. 357 (1869).
*1347In this way discrimination predicated somehow on state affiliation can fall within the scope of the Privileges and Immunities Clause alone, the Commerce Clause alone, both clauses, or, for that matter, neither.1 Once it has been determined that a discriminatory policy falls within the purview of one or both of these clauses, however, I am not persuaded that the methodology of the two should diverge in any significant respect. The extent to which the interpretation of these two clauses has historically been interwoven confirms this assessment.
Further, the level of scrutiny triggered by a discriminatory policy that falls within the scope of either of these clauses appears to be very nearly identical. Professor Tribe has observed that the standard of review employed in Privileges and Immunities cases is “almost as demanding as that elaborated by the Warren Court in equal protection and first amendment strict scrutiny.” 2 Similarly, in Oregon Waste Systems, the Supreme Court observed that Commerce Clause eases “require that justifications for discriminatory restrictions on commerce pass the ‘strictest scrutiny.’ ” Oregon Waste Systems, 511 U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 1351. Under both clauses, the burden is placed on the state to provide a sufficient justification for its discriminatory policy.
Considering the significant similarities between the two clauses, it not surprising that in Carlson I we simply referenced our Privileges and Immunities Clause analysis in order to dispose of the Commerce Clause issue, concluding that “[t]he analysis under Article I, section 8, clause 3 of the United States Constitution (the Commerce Clause) is quite similar, assuming that it is implicated.” Carlson I, 798 P.2d at 1276. Indeed, we went on to state that “[i]t would be anomalous ... to conclude that a law facially discriminating against interstate commerce could pass muster under the Privilege and Immunities Clause yet fail under the Commerce Clause; both clauses have a common origin in the fourth article of the Articles of Confederation.” Id at 1277 n. 5. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Oregon Waste Systems, however, the majority has reconsidered this position and concluded that, in fact, “the analysis is not interchangeable.”
It is obvious that the fee discrepancy in this case implicates the Privileges and Immunities Clause. The policy is facially discriminatory, and it impairs an interest that is “fundamental” for purposes of Privileges and Immunities Clause analysis. Given the exceptionally close relationship between this clause and the Commerce Clause, I cannot, as noted above, join in the majority’s summary rejection of the United States Supreme Court’s reasoning in Oregon Waste Systems.
The justification offered by Oregon for discriminating against out-of-state interests in Oregon Waste Systems is very similar, if not identical, to the justification advanced by the State in the ease at bar. The primary rationale is that out-of-state interests ought to be made to bear their “fair share” of the costs that their activities impose on the state. Oregon Waste Systems, 511 U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 1351; Carlson I, 798 P.2d at 1272. In both cases, the “share” or contribution of in-state interests is augmented by general state tax revenues, or their analytical equivalent, in order to justify the tax or fee discrepancies.3
*1348In Carlson I, we concluded that this kind of augmentation was acceptable under the holding of Toomer v. Witsell, 334 U.S. 385, 68 S.Ct. 1156, 92 L.Ed. 1460 (1948). In Toomer, the Supreme Court stated, in dicta, that a state could “charge non-residents a differential which would merely compensate the State ... for any conservation expenditures from taxes which only residents pay.” Id. at 399, 68 S.Ct. at 1163. The Supreme Court in Oregon Waste Systems, however, expressing its reluctance to “plunge ... into the morass of weighing comparative tax burdens by comparing taxes on dissimilar events[,]” explicitly rejected this type of justification for state discrimination in the Commerce Clause context. Oregon Waste Systems, 511 U.S. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 1353 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
The majority correctly observes that the compensatory tax doctrine, focusing on whether or not the taxes which allegedly cancel each other out are imposed on “substantially equivalent events,” finds its origins in Commerce Clause cases. It does not follow from this observation, however, that the doctrine has no place in Privileges and Immunities analysis. There is nothing inherent in this doctrine, or the policy concerns behind it, that indicates that it should only apply to discriminatory state taxation challenged under the Commerce Clause.
In Armco, Inc. v. Hardesty, 467 U.S. 638, 104 S.Ct. 2620, 81 L.Ed.2d 540 (1984), the Supreme Court struck down a discriminatory tax on the grounds that “manufacturing and wholesaling are not ‘substantially equivalent events’ ” on which compensating taxes might be imposed. Id. at 643, 104 S.Ct. at 2623. In that case, West Virginia had imposed a wholesale gross receipts tax from which local manufacturers were exempt. The policy underlying the exemption was that it would put in-state manufacturers who were wholesaling their products in West Virginia on equal footing with their out-of-state competitors who were functionally exempt from West Virginia’s manufacturing tax.4 The Court rejected this justification, observing that
[i]f Ohio or any of the other 48 States imposes a like tax on its manufacturers— which they have every right to do — then Armco and others from out of state will pay both a manufacturing tax and a wholesale tax while sellers resident in West Virginia will pay only the manufacturing tax.
Id. at 644, 104 S.Ct. at 2623.
Likewise, the Supreme Court in Oregon Waste Systems observed that Oregon’s compensatory tax theory “ignore[s] the fact that shippers of waste from other States in all likelihood pay income taxes in other States, a portion of which might well be used to pay for waste reduction activities in those States.” Oregon Waste Systems, 511 U.S. at - n. 7, 114 S.Ct. at 1353 n. 7.
In this respect the “substantially equivalent events” test essentially serves to identify a significant logical flaw that often infects “fair share” justifications for discriminatory taxes. I can see no reason to assume that this flaw is any less serious when it is exposed through litigation based upon the Privileges and Immunities Clause than it is when challenged under the Commerce Clause.5
*1349The justification advanced by the State in this case suffers from precisely the same defect alluded to in both Armco and Oregon Waste Systems. Specifically, a fisher from Oregon who purchases a commercial license in Alaska will no doubt be under an obligation to pay Oregon income taxes, a portion of which probably will have been used for conservation costs in that state. Accordingly, the fee discrepancy places the Oregon fisher, as a nonresident, at a competitive disadvantage. In other words, both the Alaska fisher and the Oregon fisher are obliged to contribute to a general tax fund6 from which their respective States may draw monies to support local fisheries, but only the Oregon fisher is being called upon to pay enhanced fees.
Restating our holding in Carlson I, the majority concludes that “[t]he disparate fees charged to nonresidents will not offend the Privileges and Immunities Clause if the differential does not exceed the contribution made by residents, because the differential will be justified as imposing on nonresidents their share of the costs of commercial fisheries.” Implicit in this analysis is that a share of this state’s petroleum revenues, the analytical equivalent to general tax revenues, should be attributed to the resident fishers in calculating their contribution. Since I believe that the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Oregon Waste Systems effectively forecloses this method of justifying a discriminatory tax, I cannot agree.
On the basis of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Oregon Waste Systems, I conclude that the fee discrepancies authorized by AS 16.05.480, AS 16.43.160 and 20 AAC 05.240 violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution of the United States of America.

. A well-recognized example of this last category would be a policy of discriminating against nonresidents in the granting of recreational game or fishing license fees. This kind of state discrimination does not implicate the Commerce Clause since it does not significantly burden interstate commerce, arid it does not implicate the Privileges and Immunities Clause because it does not involve a fundamental right. See, e.g., Baldwin v. Fish and Game Comm’n of Montana, 436 U.S. 371, 98 S.Ct. 1852, 56 L.Ed.2d 354 (1978).

. Lawrence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 6-35, at 544 (2d ed.1988).

.Although the majority asserts that the fee-shifting we authorized in Carlson I is not the same kind of fee-shifting denounced by the Supreme Court in Oregon Waste Systems, I think that the similarities between the two far outweigh any potential differences. The approach authorized by the majority seems to place greater emphasis on the theoretical equality of individual contributions than the Oregon tax did. There is, however, no indication that the Oregon tax was designed to impose on out-of-state interests their "entire share” of solid waste disposal costs nor, for that matter, that the shares of disposers of instate waste, who paid an $0.85 per ton fee, were to be borne by the entire population. More *1348importantly, the decision in Oregon Waste Systems did not turn on the fact that the surcharge was excessive but rather on the conclusion that any surcharge was constitutionally offensive under the circumstances. Consequently, the majority’s endorsement of the class's per capita approach does not sufficiently distinguish the fee discrepancies here from those in Oregon Waste Systems.

. Presumably the only reason that the Privileges and Immunities Clause was not invoked in this case — where it would seem to be a natural choice — is that the plaintiff was a corporation not entitled to protection under that clause. As such, the Armco case provides an excellent example of how the "substantially equivalent events” test should apply with equal force regardless of which clause is invoked.

. A commentator has observed:
While differences exist between the purposes and functions of the two constitutional clauses, they clearly exert overlapping spheres of influence. To hold the same tax invalid under one clause because it does not meet the substantially equivalent events requirement of the compensatory tax test, but valid under the other clause because it is important ... that a state have power to preserve and regulate the exploitation of an important resource through means of a functionally compensatory tax, is surely to elevate form over substance.
Jeffrey J. Lamontagne, Note, Oregon's Wasted Effort: The Supreme Court's Inability to Adapt its *1349Compensatory Tax Doctrine to Solid Waste Regulations, 19 Wm. & Maiy Envtl. L. & Pol'y Rev. 345, 360 (1995) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

. The Alaskan fisher "contributes” in the form of foregone benefits from petroleum revenues.