Court Opinion

ID: 9688967
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:14:55.801657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:43.314889
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I have reexamined Apartment Operators Ass’n v. City of Minneapolis, 191 Minn. 365, 254 N.W. 443 (1934) in light of Justice Yetka’s dissent and have concluded that our decision there does not control our decision in this case as to whether Minn. Stat. § 273.13, subd. 7 (1984) violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment of the United States Constitution and article X, § 1, the uniformity clause of the Minnesota Constitution. Minnesota Statutes, chapter 359, enacted in 1933, did not, in fact, provide for a system of two classifications of homesteads with value assessed on a graduated scale. Rather the legislature created, for the first time, a homestead exemption, one homestead exemption, for the purpose of real property taxation. For both class 3b un-*622platted real estate and class 3c platted real estate, the first $4,000 of true and full value constituted the homestead exemption. This exemption, as Justice Yetka has suggested, would have covered all homes which today would be valued up to and well in excess of $100,000. In both classes of property, unplatted and platted, under the 1933 act, the value of real estate used for homestead purposes which exceeded $4,000 was assessed and taxed as non-homestead property at the rate applicable to each class for property unaffected by the exemption. In contrast, under Minn.Stat. § 273.13, subd. 7, the homestead exemption afforded class 3c real property is divided into three classifications according to the value of the homestead and assessed at a graduated rate. In my view, such a scheme does not comport with the constitutional mandate that taxes must be “uniform on the same class of subjects.” “Ability to pay,” as used by the Apartment Operators court, referred to the ability of homeowners owning a homestead of greater value than that afforded by the exemption to pay the higher non-homestead rate for the remaining value. It did not give constitutional approval for graduated rates within the homestead exemption itself.
I join the dissent of YETKA, J.