Agenda - Council - 12/20/1983 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I The taxpayers' arguments that the limitation provision protected some taxpayers only at the expense of others, that these other taxpayers were not necessarily better able to pay higher property taxes, and that continued inflation perpetuated what were intended to be temporary inequities, addressed the wisdom of the legislature's program, not its constitutionality. It has been made clear by the United States Supreme Court that the wisdom and social effects of such programs lie within the responsibility of the legislatures, not the courts . · . · Id. at 918. The Court went on to quote the United States Supreme Court: Most laws classify, and many affect certain groups unevenly, even though the law itself treats them no differently from all other members of the class described by the law. When the basic classification is rationally based, uneven effects upon particular groups within a class are ordinarily of no constitutional concern. [Citations omitted.] The calculus of effects, the manner in which a particular law reverberates in a society, is a legislative and not a judicial responsibility. Id. at 919 (quoting from Personnel Administrator of Massacusetts v. Feeny, 442 U.S. 256, 271-72, 99 S. Ct. 2282, 2291 (1979) (emphasis added)). Thus, in the Huntsville City Board of Education case, the statutory minimum level of Title I aid survived equal protection attack because it was intended to prevent drastic and sudden fluctuation in the funding available to particular.school districts, despite the fact that as a result the amount of Title I aid distributed would bear no precise relationship to the number of educationally disadvantaged children within each school system. -30-