# Baker v. Matheson

> Utah Supreme Court · December 28, 1979 · 607 P.2d 233

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9549324

## Case

- **Full name:** Linn C. BAKER, Treasurer of the State of Utah, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Scott M. MATHESON, Governor of the State of Utah; Dale D. Williams, Director of the Department of Finance of the State of Utah; Richard G. Jensen, Auditor of the State of Utah; Robert B. Hansen, Attorney General of the State of Utah; State Tax Commission of the State of Utah, Defendants and Appellants, and Miles “Cap” Ferry, President of the Utah State Senate and Chairman of the Legislative Management Committee, and James v. Hansen, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Vice Chairman of the Legislative Management Committee, Defendants in Intervention
- **Court:** Utah Supreme Court
- **Decided:** December 28, 1979
- **Citations:** 607 P.2d 233; 1979 Utah LEXIS 968
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Wilkins
- **Judges:** Stewart, Maughan, Wilkins, Crockett, Hall
- **Cited by:** 32 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9549324

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- noting that increased property taxes on vacation homes do not pose as great a threat to householder's standard of living as taxes or rent paid on a primary residence

## Opinion text

WILKINS, Justice
(concurring generally with dissent):
I concur generally with the dissent of Mr. Justice Maughan, and add these comments.
What must be understood here, in my opinion, is that this statute, benign though the motives may have been the enacting it, is not some harmless detour of a minor legal principle. It is rather a major assault upon Article XIII of the Constitution of this State and the caselaw following and guarding it, both of which forbid inequality of taxation (except where specifically authorized in our basic document) — and indeed forbid that inequality regardless of the form of the mechanism employed to accomplish it. And it is no convincing argument, I submit, to say that Article XIII is, not violated here because none of the funds to be refunded by Section 59-26-1 originate from or are identified with property tax funds. Why? The Legislature in Article •XIII is the very body specifically charged with the solemn duty to “. . . provide by law a uniform and equal rate of assessment and taxation on all tangible property (at § 3 of Art. XIII) — and that duty is imposed without, of course, implanting the seeds of its own destruction by legally permitting the Legislature to accomplish indirectly a result when Article XIII expressly and directly forbids that result.
In short, though it may be gratifying and socially worthy to see public funds generously distributed by the State of Utah to tens of thousands of property owners (and *261 renters) in this State, that worthiness cannot, in my view, magically imbue the legislation here with constitutional validity.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9549324. Public record. Not legal advice.