The Pacific Legal Foundation, the Cato Institute, Professor Paul M. Sullivan, The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, and the Goldwater Institute have filed this amicus brief, supporting the cert petition filed last month in Corboy v. Louie, No. 11-336 (cert. petition filed Sep. 15, 2011).
That's the case seeking SCOTUS review of the Hawaii Supreme Court's opinion concluding that challengers to the property tax exemptions conferred on lessees of Hawaiian Homesteads lacked standing. Only "native Hawaiians" are eligible to lease homestead land, and thus only those possessing the appropriate blood quantum are entitled to the tax exemptions, and the Hawaii court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, holding the petitioners lacked standing to challenge the exemption since they had not sought homestead leases (leases for which they were ineligible because they are not native Hawaiians).
The petition asks this question:
Whether the Hawaii courts erred in failing to recognize that petitioners have standing to seek a refund of their own taxes and that the Equal Protection Clause precludes a State or municipality from creating tax exemptions that are available only to members of a certain race.
The core issue of this case is whether a state and its municipalities may enforce property tax schemes that require some citizens to pay higher taxes because of their race. The State of Hawaii and its four counties allow leaseholders of certain public lands—the Hawaiian ceded lands—to pay little or no property taxes. By definition, only "native Hawaiians," a term held by this Court to be a racial classification, may lease the ceded lands. Thus, the state and county tax structures that afford benefits only to the leaseholders of the ceded lands grant preferences to, and discriminate against, Hawaiian citizens on the basis of their race. The authority for this discriminatory treatment comes from both federal and state laws.
. . . .
The state and county tax exemptions are "inextricably tied to an ancestral requirement." Appendix A (Opinion of the Supreme Court of Hawaii (Apr. 27, 2011) (Acoba, J., concurring)) to Petition at 62a. The Homestead Act, as incorporated by the Hawaii Constitution, relies upon the same ancestral definition of native Hawaiian that was found to be a racial classification in Rice. 528 U.S. at 515. All racial or ethnic classifications imposed by any level of government "are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests." Adarand, 515 U.S. at 227. The state’s race-based tax exemptions cannot survive this strict scrutiny level of review.
Stay tuned.
Brief Amicus Curiae of Pacific Legal Foundation, CATO Institute, Prof. Paul M. Sullivan, The Grassroot Inst...
