After limiting taxpayer standing in one respect last week, the Supreme Court today expands it in another area. In Wheatherford v. City of San Rafael, the Supreme Court holds that an individual need not be a property tax payer to have taxpayer standing to challenge an illegal use of government funds, in this case the alleged improper impounding of vehicles. Like many Supreme Court opinions, Wheatherford is a statutory interpretation case, this one determining whether the plaintiff qualifies as a resident “who is assessed for and is liable to pay [or has paid] a tax” in the governmental jurisdiction being sued.
The court’s opinion, by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, finds that the applicable statute “does narrow the category of taxpayers able to sue to enjoin certain expenditures of governmental funds,” but it concludes that “limiting its application to property taxpayers reflects an unduly constrained view of the statute’s requirements.” Rather, the court states, “it is sufficient for a plaintiff to allege she or he has paid, or is liable to pay, to the defendant locality a tax assessed on the plaintiff by the defendant locality.”
All seven justices sign the court’s opinion, but Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye writes a separate concurring opinion (joined by Justice Goodwin Liu), urging “the Legislature to revisit [the taxpayer standing statute] and amend the statute in a manner that makes clear what kinds of taxes are sufficient to establish standing to sue a particular government entity for alleged wasteful or illegal expenditures.” She notes the statute contains a “single sentence” with “87 words parsed by 19 commas,” and laments, “It is not a model of clarity.”
Justice Leondra Kruger writes her own concurring opinion (which Justice Liu also signs) identifying questions unanswered by this case, such as whether the statute “imposes a direct-assessment requirement,” a requirement which might omit sales taxes (assessed against merchants even though passed on to customers).
The court reverses the First District, Division One, Court of Appeal.