where State Constitution prohibited classification, railroad property could not be singled out for higher assessments
How later courts described this case
- where State Constitution prohibited classification, railroad property could not be singled out for higher assessments
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McCREE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting.)
I respectfully dissent because I believe that Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway v. Browning, et al., 310 U.S. 362 , 60 S.Ct. 968 , 84 L.Ed. 1254 (1939), is controlling and that the District Court has failed to distinguish it. I understand that case to hold that
“" * * The states may classify property for taxation * * * and in making all these differentiations may treat railroads and other utilities with that separateness which their distinctive characteristics and functions in society make appropriate.” 310 U.S. at 368 , 60 S.Ct. at 972 .
That Tennessee has accomplished this by long established practice is even clearer now than it was when Browning was decided, and as Mr. Justice Frankfurter wrote then for the unanimous court,
“And if the state supreme court chooses to cover up under a formal veneer of uniformity the established system of differentiation between two classes of property, an exposure of the fiction is not enough to establish its unconstitutionality.” 310 U.S. at 369 , 60 S.Ct. at 972 .
Even if, as appellee contends, the assessment by appellant of appellee’s property at a different level of value from the assessment of locally-assessed properties violates the law of Tennessee, Snowden v. Hughes, 321 U.S. 1 , 64 S.Ct. 397 , 88 L.Ed. 497 (1943), establishes that “state action, even though illegal under state law, can be no more or less constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment than if it were sanctioned by the state legislature.” 321 U.S. at 11 , 64 S.Ct. at 402 .
I would reverse.