Public Interest Briefs
Public Interest Briefs track CLIPI’s filings, funding, coalition wins, showing how each step drives policy change and nurtures advocates.
Spring 1992
On February 25, 1992 the United States Supreme Court entertained oral argument in Nordlinger v Hahn. Brought by Stephanie Nordlinger, a recent home buyer, the CLIPI-funded suit challenges the assessment provisions of Proposition 13.
Prop 13 requires that property be assessed at its market value when purchased, rather than at its current market value. It thereby forces taxpayers who own nearly identical properties to pay wildly different taxes simply because they purchased their properties at different times. It also allows properties of vastly different market values to be assessed as if they were nearly identical.
Recent home buyers commonly pay 10 to 17 times more in taxes than owners of similar homes who bought their property before 1978. Commercial and industrial property owners experience comparable tax disparities. Purchasers of vacant lots may end up paying as much as 583 times more in property taxes than owners of similar undeveloped lots purchased in previous years. While at the same time vastly dissimilar properties, such as a million-dollar Palos Verdes Estates home located on an 18,000 square foot lot and a Watts home located on a 25 foot wide lot, can be assessed at nearly the same value.
According to Carlyle Hall of Hall & Phillips, the lead attorney representing Ms. Nordlinger, his client’s challenge to the inequalities of Prop 13 was impelled in part by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co v. County Commission of Webster County, W, Va., 488 U.S. 336 (1989). That decision struck down a property tax system nearly identical to California’s because it violated the federal equal protection clause. Hall contends that the acquisition value assessment provisions of Proposition 13 also violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution. In addition, Hall asserts that those provisions violate the constitutional right to travel by favoring long-time residents over new arrivals. (The suit does not challenge Proposition 13’s other provisions, including the 1% maximum tax rate).
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CLIPI-funded Nordlinger case reaches U.S. Supreme Court, arguing Prop 13’s acquisition-value assessments create extreme tax disparities, violate equal-protection and right-to-travel protections by favoring longtime owners over recent buyers.
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