"-the entire assessment is a nullity, upon the ground that the state board of equalization included "- property [the fences] which it was without jurisdiction to assess for taxation"-
The Court rejected the county's appeal, and that was the end of it. Except for one thing.
One of the railroad's six defenses involved the Fourteenth Amendment. As it happens, since the case was decided based on the fence issue, the railroad didn't need those extra defenses, and none of them was ever decided by the court. But one of them - related to the Fourteenth Amendment - still crept into the written record, even though the Court specifically did not rule on it.
Here's how the matter unfolded. First the railroad's defense.
The treatment that the railroad claimed was unfair
In the Fourteenth Amendment part of their defense, the railroad said:
That the provisions of the constitution and laws of California "- are in violation of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, in so far as they require the assessment of their property at its full money value, without making deduction, as in the case of railroads [that are only] operated in one county, and of other corporations, and of natural persons, for the value of the mortgages "-(Emphasis added)
The italic portions say, in essence, "The state is taxing us railroads on the whole value of our property, instead of deducting our mortgage the way people do. That's not fair. Nobody else gets taxed that way."
The implication, of course, is that the state has no right to decide that corporations get different tax rates than humans. And the railroad was using the former slaves' Equal Protection clause (the Fourteenth Amendment) as its shield.
The legal difference between "artificial" and "natural persons"
In the Supreme Court, cases are typically decided a year after arguments are presented, allowing the Justices time to research and prepare their written decisions. So it happened that on January 26th, 1885 (a year before the 1886 decision was handed down), Delphin M. Delmas, the attorney for Santa Clara County, made his case before the Supreme Court in exquisitely persuasive language:
The defendant claims [that the state's taxation policy]"-violates that portion of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "- In defending the provisions of our Constitution, permit me, in the first place, to reply to this attack made upon it, which, if tenable, would place the organic law of California in a position ridiculous to the extreme. "- If this be so, it is safe to say that there is hardly a State in this Union whose revenue system is not in danger of overthrow. "-
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
