When Enough is Enough
Linda Greenhouse, NYT
What to do while waiting for the health care decision. . . . Perusing one of the tiny handful of decisions the Supreme Court has issued in the past couple of weeks, an old, never-to-be-forgotten one came to mind: Bush v. Gore. Not that the new decision, Armour v. City of Indianapolis, had anything to do with presidential politics. Quite the opposite: its subject was something that happened at the most local level of government, a sewer improvement assessment in a subdivision of Indianapolis.
The city gave the 180 property owners affected a choice of how to pay the $9,278 assessment: in a lump sum, or over time with interest. Most chose to pay over 10, 20 or 30 years. Three dozen paid up front, and the city then played them for suckers, announcing a year later that it was changing the way it financed sewer improvements and would issue bonds to cover most of the cost. It would forgive the indebtedness of the installment-payers. But the city refused to give the full-payers any of the refund they demanded.
The full-payers then did what any red-blooded American would do in such a galling circumstance: sue. Their theory was that the city had violated their constitutional right to equal protection. (Does that bring back warm memories of Bush v. Gore? Wait, there’s more.) When the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against the unhappy homeowners, the homeowners appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where they met the same fate.
Writing for the 6-to-3 majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer explained that all that was at stake was an economic regulation, to which the court gives the lowest level of scrutiny. “As long as the city’s distinction has a rational basis, that distinction does not violate the Equal Protection Clause,” Justice Breyer said.
(More here.)
What to do while waiting for the health care decision. . . . Perusing one of the tiny handful of decisions the Supreme Court has issued in the past couple of weeks, an old, never-to-be-forgotten one came to mind: Bush v. Gore. Not that the new decision, Armour v. City of Indianapolis, had anything to do with presidential politics. Quite the opposite: its subject was something that happened at the most local level of government, a sewer improvement assessment in a subdivision of Indianapolis.
The city gave the 180 property owners affected a choice of how to pay the $9,278 assessment: in a lump sum, or over time with interest. Most chose to pay over 10, 20 or 30 years. Three dozen paid up front, and the city then played them for suckers, announcing a year later that it was changing the way it financed sewer improvements and would issue bonds to cover most of the cost. It would forgive the indebtedness of the installment-payers. But the city refused to give the full-payers any of the refund they demanded.
The full-payers then did what any red-blooded American would do in such a galling circumstance: sue. Their theory was that the city had violated their constitutional right to equal protection. (Does that bring back warm memories of Bush v. Gore? Wait, there’s more.) When the Indiana Supreme Court ruled against the unhappy homeowners, the homeowners appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where they met the same fate.
Writing for the 6-to-3 majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer explained that all that was at stake was an economic regulation, to which the court gives the lowest level of scrutiny. “As long as the city’s distinction has a rational basis, that distinction does not violate the Equal Protection Clause,” Justice Breyer said.
(More here.)
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