[AZ Education Ruling]: Somehow Worse Than Before

Amphetamine

Daily Kos wrote:

The Court’s ruling today will allow the wholesale defunding of public schools and the channeling of funds into separate schools based on loosely disguised racial factors. To be completely clear this ruling allows state to cut funds to public schools while channeling that money to private intermediate organization which will then decide on which student the funds are spent. This differs from vouchers in which all students are entitled to the same amount of funding.

So much for all that progress, eh?

Daily Kos wrote:

The private character of these STOs makes enforcement of civil rights laws difficult if not impossible. The result of this will be a game of racial whack-a-mole. If one STO is found to act in a racial discriminatory way, a new organization with vaguely change guidelines can quickly be established. The private character of these organizations further vests their leadership with extreme power in deciding who will receive an education.

I just don't fucking know anymore.

Styrofoam Sammich

Can we get a link to an actual news organization for this?

Amphetamine

Sorry, got a little trigger happy with making a thread on something.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/04/04/20110404arizona-tuition-tax-supreme-court-ruling.html

At least Kagan got pissed off:

http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2011/04/nsba-supreme-court%E2%80%99s-arizona-ruling-may-promote-state-voucher-schemes/

override367

Ehh... Thread title is hyperbole

Although I'll grant you it may well head there

BubbaT

Arizona Christian STO v Winn, Syllabus and Text

And this Kos article says it didn't overturn Brown, but rather issued a statement on the standing of individual citizens to sue government based on their status taxpayers.

Under Article III of the Constitution, courts can only hear "cases or controversies." To sue someone, you have to show that you have been injured, physically, monetarily, whatever. The Court has generally ruled that if your only asserted injury is as a taxpayer then that is a generalized grievance that doesn't give you standing. Progressives on the Court have favored taxpayer standing because it increases the ability of citizens to challenge government action. The self described "conservatives' do not favor taxpayer standing. Well, the anti-progressives prevailed again.

The Court majority found a way to further narrow the rights of taxpayers to sue by creating a new rule. The held that a tax credit is not the same as an expenditure of funds. This distinction is truly ridiculous and was clearly fabricated for the sole purpose of making it harder for citizens to hold their government accountable.

Styrofoam Sammich

Yeah it looks like the SC only ruled the parents didn't have grounds to sue, which isn't that far out there, even if I disagree.

They didn't actually rule on the program itself.

But man this is Arizona. Its like the High Citadel of crazy at the center of the galactic Crazy Empire.

enlightenedbum

override367 wrote: »

Ehh... Thread title is hyperbole

Although I'll grant you it may well head there

The five conservatives damn well would overturn Brown given the chance, but this was not that. Still an awful ruling.

Amphetamine

override367 wrote: »

Ehh... Thread title is hyperbole

Although I'll grant you it may well head there

Yeah I just grabbed the Kos article's headline and ran with it, I'll edit it up shortly. Like I said- trigger happy thread making.

BubbaT

Upon further review, this seems to be about whether tax breaks = government expenditures.

SCOTUS wrote:

Flast held that taxpayers have standing when two conditions are met.

The first condition is that there must be a “logical link” between the plaintiff’s taxpayer status “and the type of legislative enactment attacked.” Id., at 102.
...

The second condition for standing under Flast is that there must be “a nexus” between the plaintiff’s taxpayer
status and “the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged.” 392 U. S., at 102.
...

Respondents contend that these principles demonstrate their standing to challenge the STO tax credit. In their
view the tax credit is, for Flast purposes, best understood as a governmental expenditure. That is incorrect.
It is easy to see that tax credits and governmental expenditures can have similar economic consequences, at least for beneficiaries whose tax liability is sufficiently large to take full advantage of the credit. Yet tax credits and governmental expenditures do not both implicate individual taxpayers in sectarian activities. A dissenter whose tax dollars are “extracted and spent” knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience. Flast, supra, at 06. In that instance the taxpayer’s direct and particular connection with the establishment does not depend on economic speculation or political conjecture. The connection would exist even if the conscientious dissenter’s tax liability were unaffected or reduced. See Daimler Chrysler, supra, at 348–349. When the government declines to impose a tax, by contrast, there is no such connection between dissenting taxpayer and alleged establishment. Any financial injury remains speculative. See supra, at 6–10. And awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences.

The distinction between governmental expenditures and tax credits refutes respondents’ assertion of standing.
When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to STOs, they spend their own money, not money the State has
collected from respondents or from other taxpayers.

Personally, appropriated expenditure vs tax credit/subsidy seems like a distinction without a difference. It's like McDonald's saying there's a meaningful difference between giving $1 cash back on a hamburger, or offering a $1-off coupon on a hamburger.

ronya

It is easy to see that tax credits and governmental expenditures can have similar economic consequences [...] When the government declines to impose a tax, by contrast, there is no such connection between dissenting taxpayer and alleged establishment. Any financial injury remains speculative.

... the hell?

Think about the claim here: a government can decline to impose existing taxes on, say, Baptist churches and Baptist churches only, and there is no 'establishment' here because the non-Baptist taxpayers aren't being spent on, they're just being taken from. Er.

edit: from the dissent:

Consider some further examples of the point, but this time concerning state funding of religion. Suppose a State desires to reward Jews—by, say, $500 per year—for their religious devotion. Should the nature of taxpayers’ concern vary if the State allows Jews to claim the aid on their tax returns, in lieu of receiving an annual stipend? Or assume a State wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes. It could purchase the religious symbols in bulk and distribute them to all takers. Or it could mail a reimbursement check to any individual who buys her own and submits a receipt for the purchase. Or it could authorize that person to claim a tax credit equal to the price she paid. Now, really—do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the State selects the last of these three options? The Court today says they do, but that is wrong. The effect of each form of subsidy is the same, on the public fisc and on those who contribute to it. Regardless of which mechanism the State uses, taxpayers have an identical stake in ensuring that the State’s exercise of its taxing and spending power complies with the Constitution.

MrMister

ronya wrote: »

Think about the claim here: a government can decline to impose existing taxes on, say, Baptist churches and Baptist churches only, and there is no 'establishment' here because the non-Baptist taxpayers aren't being spent on, they're just being taken from. Er.

edit: from the dissent:

Consider some further examples of the point, but this time concerning state funding of religion. Suppose a State desires to reward Jews—by, say, $500 per year—for their religious devotion. Should the nature of taxpayers’ concern vary if the State allows Jews to claim the aid on their tax returns, in lieu of receiving an annual stipend? Or assume a State wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes. It could purchase the religious symbols in bulk and distribute them to all takers. Or it could mail a reimbursement check to any individual who buys her own and submits a receipt for the purchase. Or it could authorize that person to claim a tax credit equal to the price she paid. Now, really—do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the State selects the last of these three options? The Court today says they do, but that is wrong. The effect of each form of subsidy is the same, on the public fisc and on those who contribute to it. Regardless of which mechanism the State uses, taxpayers have an identical stake in ensuring that the State’s exercise of its taxing and spending power complies with the Constitution.

Yeah, this ruling is fucking dumb.

The Roberts Court is full-on fail. That's the real Bush legacy that's going to haunt us for generations.

Couscous

ronya wrote: »

It is easy to see that tax credits and governmental expenditures can have similar economic consequences [...] When the government declines to impose a tax, by contrast, there is no such connection between dissenting taxpayer and alleged establishment. Any financial injury remains speculative.

... the hell?

Think about the claim here: a government can decline to impose existing taxes on, say, Baptist churches and Baptist churches only, and there is no 'establishment' here because the non-Baptist taxpayers aren't being spent on, they're just being taken from. Er.

edit: from the dissent:

Consider some further examples of the point, but this time concerning state funding of religion. Suppose a State desires to reward Jews—by, say, $500 per year—for their religious devotion. Should the nature of taxpayers’ concern vary if the State allows Jews to claim the aid on their tax returns, in lieu of receiving an annual stipend? Or assume a State wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes. It could purchase the religious symbols in bulk and distribute them to all takers. Or it could mail a reimbursement check to any individual who buys her own and submits a receipt for the purchase. Or it could authorize that person to claim a tax credit equal to the price she paid. Now, really—do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the State selects the last of these three options? The Court today says they do, but that is wrong. The effect of each form of subsidy is the same, on the public fisc and on those who contribute to it. Regardless of which mechanism the State uses, taxpayers have an identical stake in ensuring that the State’s exercise of its taxing and spending power complies with the Constitution.

I haven't read jack shit about the opinion other than what was on this page, but I think this directly goes against some previous rulings that a tax exemption and expenditure are the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Monthly,_Inc._v._Bullock

The lack of a sales tax on religious literature was in effect a subsidy to these religious writers. If the religious writers did not pay a tax, then a secular writer would have to. This would in essence force tax payers, whether religious or not to pay for a subsidy to religions. They held that had the statute been more broad, including charities for example, then it would have been constitutional. Brennan recognized the argument of the state that taxing the publications may inhibit their ability to function to some extent thereby going against the Free Exercise Clause which states continuing from the above clause "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." However Brennan argued that if all American people were required to pay the tax it did not unduly burden religion to pay the tax nor "prohibit" them from exercising as they wished.

The reasons for considering them the same in these cases is really fucking obvious to anybody who isn't a disingenuous motherfucker.

ronya

It's the "no such connection" thing that strikes me, they're treating establishment as some of kind of voodoo moral contaminant that leaps contagiously from spending program right to the taxpayer contribution and thus violates the taxpayer's personal sense of moral purity. While tax credits don't do that, so that's a-okay! And that's the establishment clause, in the majority view: egalitarianism needed in spending only, revenue side irrelevant.

Arrrgh.

Couscous

Because reading through these types of opinions usually causes me to rage more than is healthy, I just read a summary. It has to do with taxpayer standing to sue on constitutional issues.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/04/opinion-recap-the-near-end-of-taxpayer-standing/

Along with an essay suggesting that courts (including, the Supreme Court) sometimes decide too much constitutional law, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote came very close on Monday to taking away altogether the right of taxpayers to go to court to challenge government programs that provide financial aid to religion — in this case, indirect state subsidies that go most often to pay for parochial school tuition. While the Court left in the books its most important ruling on “taxpayer standing,” the 1968 precedent in Flast v. Cohen, that ruling appeared to stand alone, in stark and even threatened isolation.

The dissenters complained, perhaps without exaggeration, that “today’s opinion enables the government to end-run Flast‘s guarantee of access to the Judiciary.” In addition, the decision rewarded — at least in a symbolic way — the Obama Administration’s sweeping claim in this case that practically all of the Supreme Court’s “taxpayer standing” decisions had been wrong.

One practical implication of the new decision was the obvious survival of Arizona’s 14-year-old program of giving individual taxpayers a dollar-for-dollar credit on their state taxes when they make contributions to private, non-profit groups that provide scholarships to private school students. The program has been under challenge in state and federal courts from its beginning, but has been in effect since 1999; the largest organizations that hand out the subsidized scholarships do so for parochial students. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the program would fail constitutionally if it actually went to trial, but now there is no apparent candidate eligible to pursue such a challenge.

In broader terms, the Court’s decision appeared certain to encourage those who support parochial education to seek far wider adoption of the tax credit approach in order to channel money to often cash-strapped parochial schools.

The key to the Court majority’s opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, is that there is a clear-cut distinction between taxpayer lawsuits that challenge direct government spending to aid religion (still allowed, apparently, but perhaps only in the narrowest way), and lawsuits that challenge the use of a tax credit as an indirect way of channeling government tax revenues into parochial education (possibly, no longer allowed). The Court majority accepted the theory of the Arizona program’s supporters that the money that was going to the subsidized scholarships was not actually state tax revenues, but the donations of the taxpayers who put up the money — and then got a dollar-for-dollar cut in their state taxes. Further, the Court said the channeling of the money imposed no tax burden on the taxpayers who sued to challenge the program. The opinion asserted that its understanding of the limited opportunity for taxpayers to sue to challenge subsidies to religion could be traced directly to limitations in the Flast v. Cohen precedent.

While the majority said that some who object to government aid to religion may still be able to sue, based on a different theory of constitutional law, it did not leave any opening for a taxpayer to do so unless the specific lawsuit could fit within the narrow confines of the Flast decision as the majority understood that precedent.

Kennedy’s opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia, in a separate opinion joined by Thomas, said he would go further, and simply overrule Flast v. Cohen as “misguided.” The fact that they said that in a separate opinion reinforced the conclusion that the Kennedy opinion did leave that precedent intact, but without much chance of ever again being used successfully against a subsidy, especially if legislatures take the hint and use the tax credit approach instead of the direct spending mode.

In both the opening and closing portions of the Kennedy opinion, the Court majority counseled lower courts about staying within the Constitution’s limits on the decision-making powers of the federal courts to actual “cases or controversies” — that is, cases in which someone complaining about a government program has to show that they, personally, would suffer some very specific harm, and that only a court could relieve it. Judicial decrees, Kennedy wrote, gain legitimacy from the sparing use of judicial power.

The Court’s newest Justice, Elena Kagan, wrote for the four dissenters. She accepted the view of the challengers that the Arizona program, in fact, uses public tax revenues to subsidize parochial tuition. Since the program’s origin, her opinion said, it “has cost the state…nearly $350 million in diverted tax revenues.” The decision, she said, “devastates taxpayer standing” in cases involving claims that the government is breaching the constitutional wall of separation between religion and government. She accused the majority of seriously misinterpreting, and “ravaging,” the Flast precedent. “In not a single non-trivial respect could the Flast Court recognize its handiwork in the majority’s depiction.”

The dissenting opinion said the majority had manufactured a new distinction between direct spending subsidies and aid to religion through tax credits. That conclusion, Justice Kagan wrote, “has as little basis in principle as it has in our precedent….Taxpayers pick up the cost of the subsidy in either form….What is a cash grant today can be a tax break tomorrow.” The majority opinion, Kagan said, allows a taxpayer to challenge a grant, but not a tax break, but she argued that a tax break is just another form of a “tax expenditure.”

Joining in the dissent were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

The combined cases were Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, et al. (09-987) and Garriott v. Winn, et al. (09-991).

So now it is pretty much impossible to have taxpayer standing and we just need to rely on the federal government to challenge unconstitutional state laws where other forms of standing isn't really possible to get. Hahahahahaha.

wwtMask

The next person I meet that voted for Nader in 2000 is getting punched in the balls. All of this SC's shit ass decisions are their fault.