Court Opinion

ID: 9426234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:13.508285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:59.727990
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion, and the statutory construction that makes unnecessary the Court’s addressing the claims of Mr. Laing and Mrs. Hall that they were denied *186procedural due process secured by the Fifth Amendment. Decision of that question is therefore expressly reserved, ante, at 184 n. 26. I write only to state my views of the considerations raised by the due process claim.
The Court’s construction of the relevant statutes permits the IRS to seize a taxpayer’s assets upon a finding by the Commissioner in compliance with § 6851 (a)(1). No hearing is required, judicial or administrative, prior to the seizure. But it cannot be gainsaid that the risk of erroneous determinations by the Commissioner with consequent possibility of irreparable injury to a taxpayer is very real. This suffices to bring due process requirements into play.
The "root requirement” of the Due Process Clause is “that an individual be given an opportunity for a hearing before he is deprived of any significant property interest, except for extraordinary situations where some valid governmental interest is at stake that justifies postponing the hearing until after the event.” Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371, 379 (1971) (emphasis in original). See, e. g., Bell y. Burson, 402 U. S. 535, 542 (1971); Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254 (1970). The precise timing and attributes of the due process requirement, however, depend upon accommodating the competing interests involved. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565, 579 (1975); Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 481 (1972); Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961).
Governmental seizures without a prior hearing have been sustained where (1) the seizure is necessary to protect an important governmental or public interest, (2) there is a “special need for very prompt action,” and *187(3) “the standards of a narrowly drawn statute” require that an official determine that the particular seizure is both necessary and justified. See Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67, 91 (1972). Seizures pursuant to jeopardy assessments are clearly necessary to protect important governmental interests and there is a “special need for very prompt action.” But § 6851 (a)(1), although requiring an official determination that the particular seizure is both necessary and justified, nevertheless falls short, in my view, of meeting due process requirements. This is because present law denies an affected taxpayer access to any forum for review of jeopardy assessments for up to 60 days.
In Goss v. Lopez,, supra, the Court held that notice and hearing must follow a deprivation “as soon as practicable.” 419 U. S., at 582-583. The Louisiana statute upheld in Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600 (1974), entitled debtors whose assets had been seized to a hearing immediately following seizure and to invalidation of the seizure unless the creditor could prove the basis for the seizure, id., at 606. In contrast, a Georgia garnishment statute was invalidated for want of any opportunity “for an early hearing at which the creditor would be required to demonstrate at least probable cause for the garnishment.” North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., 419 U. S. 601, 607 (1975). Thus, the governing due process principle obliges the IRS to provide a prompt hearing at which the IRS must prove “at least probable cause” for its claim.
But present law requires that taxpayers wait up to 60 days before challenging jeopardy assessments by filing suit in the Tax Court. However expeditiously the Tax Court handles the claim, that court is not required to decide the merits within any specified time, and no provision is made for a prompt preliminary evaluation of *188the basis for the assessment. In my view, such delay would be constitutionally permissible only if there were some overriding governmental interest at stake, and the IRS suggested none in either of these cases.* But even if delay in judicial review on the merits were justifiable, due process would at least require some supporting rationale for denying taxpayers the opportunity for a prompt preliminary determination by an unbiased tribunal on the validity of the basis for the assessment. Again, none was offered in either of these cases.

The dissenting opinion would require no justification for even a six-month delay, apparently on the view that tax seizures are somehow different from other deprivations for due process purposes. I am aware of no precedent drawing that distinction. Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U. S. 589 (1931), concerned a procedure that offered taxpayers an alternative of seeking a prompt determination before the Board of Tax Appeals, the predecessor to the Tax Court, before payment and without posting any bond. Id., at 598. The bond referred to in the dissenting opinion, post, at 210-211, was required pending review in the court of appeals of the Board of Tax Appeals' decision.