JEROME K. LANNING AND JOYCE A. LANNING, HUSBAND AND WIFE, AND ANN C. REESE, AS PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF MARLOW REESE, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVES OF SIMILARLY SITUATED PERSONS, APPELLANTS,
v.
PATRICK P. PILCHER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS PROPERTY APPRAISER OF WALTON COUNTY, FLORIDA; RHONDA SKIPPER, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS TAX COLLECTOR OF WALTON COUNTY, FLORIDA; WALTON COUNTY, FLORIDA, A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA; THE WALTON COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD; TIMOTHY SMITH, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS PROPERTY APPRAISER OF OKALOOSA COUNTY, FLORIDA; CHRIS HUGHES, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS TAX COLLECTOR FOR OKALOOSA COUNTY, FLORIDA, OKALOOSA COUNTY, FLORIDA, A POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA; THE CITY OF DESTIN, FLORIDA, A MUNICIPAL CORPORATION; THE OKALOOSA COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, JAMES ZINGALE, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN HIS CAPACITY AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE; AND ALL NAMED DEFENDANTS, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVES OF A CLASS OF SIMILARLY SITUATED PERSONS OR ENTITIES, APPELLEES

Fla. 1st DCA | 2009-08-26
No. 1D07-6564
BARFIELD and LEWIS, JJ., concur.
16 So. 3d 294 Florida District Court of Appeal, First District (2009) Positive Treatment
Cited by 8 cases

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Holding

The court held that article VII, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution and its implementing statute are constitutional and do not violate federal rights.


Headnotes

[1] A sixty-day time period for contesting a property tax assessment does not apply to litigation challenging the constitutionality of tax laws.

[2] A constitutional provision limiting annual real property tax increases does not violate the Equal Protection Clause when the tax benefit is based on property use, not lan…

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Facts & Procedural History

Plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of Florida's 'Save Our Homes' Amendment, arguing it violated federal equal protection, privileges and immu…

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Opinion of the Court
PADOVANO, J.

PADOVANO, J.

This is an appeal from a final order upholding the constitutional validity of article VII, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution, commonly known as the “Save Our Homes” Amendment.1 The plaintiffs argue that section 4(c) violates their rights under various provisions of the United States Constitution, principally the Equal Protection Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, and the Commerce Clause. The defendants argue in their answer brief that the trial court decided the case correctly on the merits. Some of them have also filed a cross-appeal to present an alternative claim that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to consider the plaintiffs’ challenge. The argument on the cross-appeal is that the plaintiffs were required by law to assert their claim within sixty days of the date of their property assessments. We affirm the order on the appeal and the cross-appeal and offer very little comment, as all of the issues in this case are controlled by well reasoned precedent.

We consider first the issue presented in the cross-appeal. The defendants contend that the trial-court should have dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction, because section 194.171, Florida Statutes, requires that an action such as this be filed within sixty days of the tax assessment. This argument was considered and rejected by the court in Reinish v. Clark, 765 So.2d 197 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000). There we held that the sixty-day time period in section 194.171 applies only to an action to contest a property tax assessment or the *297denial of an exemption and that it does not apply to litigation such as this involving the validity of the tax laws. See Reinish, 765 So.2d at 202.

Our decision in Reinish is supported by the plain meaning of the statute, and we see no reason to recede from it now. Section 194.171, Florida Statutes states in material part:

194.171 Circuit court to have original jurisdiction in tax cases.—
(1) The circuit courts have original jurisdiction at law of all matters relating to property taxation....
(2) No action shall be brought to contest a tax assessment after 60 days from the date the assessment being contested is certified for collection....

The statute begins by creating a broad grant of jurisdiction in “all matters relating to property taxation,” and then it goes on to create a filing period for certain kinds of actions: those in which the landowner is contesting a tax assessment. The defendants construe the limitation for challenging an assessment as if it applies to all litigation relating to property taxation, but that is not what the statute says.

The plaintiffs are not contesting the tax assessments on their property. Rather, they are challenging a provision of the Florida Constitution and the statutes enacted to implement that provision.2 If this court were to find the provision and statutes unconstitutional, this would not entitle the plaintiffs to a reduction or a refund. The point of the case is that the Florida property tax scheme has a discriminatory effect on nonresidents. The case has nothing to do with the assessment made on any particular property in Florida, and so the sixty-day provision in section 194.171 and the policy considerations underlying the statute do not come into play.

The main appeal consists of a series of federal constitutional challenges to article VII, section 4(c), but all of the supporting arguments have been rejected before in comparable cases. For example, the Supreme Court held in Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 112 S.Ct. 2326, 120 L.Ed.2d 1 (1992), that a California constitutional amendment limiting real property tax increases to 2% per year, in the absence of a change of ownership, did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. And this court held in Reinish that the Florida homestead exemption did not violate the Equal Protection Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, or the Commerce Clause. Although Reinish dealt with the application of the $25,000 homestead exemption, while this case involves a challenge to the 3% tax cap on increases in the assessment of homestead property, the analysis is the same. In both cases, the tax benefit is based on the way the property is used, not on the status of the landowner as a resident or nonresident.

The homestead exemption and the 3% tax cap apply only to property that is used as a primary residence and therefore qualifies as a homestead. A Florida resident who owns vacation property or business property in the state will not be entitled to claim any tax benefit under article VII, section 4(c) and will be in the same position with respect to that property as a nonresident. The plaintiffs argue that the existence of a benefit for homestead prop*298erty, when combined with the tax treatment of non-homestead property, gives Florida residents a tax advantage, but this is essentially an argument that the homestead exemption is itself unconstitutional, a point rejected in Reinish.

For these reasons we hold that article VII, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution is valid under the United States Constitution and that it does not violate a nonresident’s rights under the Equal Protection Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, or the Commerce Clause. Likewise, we hold that section 193.155, Florida Statutes, the law implementing article VII, section 4(c), is constitutionally valid.

Affirmed.

BARFIELD and LEWIS, JJ., concur.


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Citator

Cited By

  • Bruner v. Hartsfield, 23 So. 3d 192 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009)
    …ese amendments violate several federal constitutional provisions. This court has already considered and rejected virtually identical constitutional challenges to SOHA in Reinish v. Clark, 765 So. 2d 197 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000), and Lanning v. Pilcher, 16 So. 3d 294 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009). The holdings in Reinish and Lanning that section 4, Article VII is not unconstitutional for the reasons claimed are not changed by the passage of Amendment 1. Accordingly, we affirm the final order of dismissal. As for the iss…
  • Deluccio v. Havill, 25 So. 3d 31 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009)
    …federal constitutional provisions. Because the trial court erroneously concluded that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction when appellants did not comply with section 194.171(1), Florida Statutes, we reverse on the authority of Lanning v. Pilcher, 16 So. 3d 294 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009), and Reinish v. Clark, 765 So. 2d 197 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000). We note that this case has been consolidated with Bruner v. Hartsfield, 23 So. 3d 192 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009), and this case raises nearly identical constitutional challeng…
  • Laurel Kelly v. Spain, 160 So. 3d 78 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015)
    …tus of the property. (Emphasis added). Among the benefits inhering in homestead status is the tax break afforded [*83] by article VII, Section 4(d) of the Florida Constitution, popularly known as the “Save Our Homes” amendment. Lanning v. Pilcher, 16 So. 3d 294, 296 (Fla. 1st DCA 2009). The amendment “took its place in the Florida Constitution after the voters of this State approved a citizens’ initiative on November 3,1992,” Zingale v. Powell, 885 So. 2d 277, 280 (Fla.2004), with the purpose of “encouragi…

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