CopyCited 31 times | Published | Supreme Court of Florida | 27 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 667, 2002 Fla. LEXIS 1479, 2002 WL 1476278
...We have on appeal a decision of the Third District Court of Appeal declaring invalid a state statute. See McGrath v. City of Miami,
789 So.2d 1168 (Fla. 3d DCA 2001). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(1), Fla. Const. Because we conclude that section
218.503(5)(a), Florida Statutes (1999), constitutes a special law authorizing the imposition of non-ad valorem taxes in violation of the Florida Constitution, we affirm the Third District's decision in this case. BACKGROUND In 1999, [1] the Florida Legislature enacted section
218.503(5), which authorizes a municipality to impose a parking tax but restricts which municipalities may impose the tax as follows: (5)(a) The governing authority of any municipality with a resident population of 300,000 or more by April 1,...
...[2] In July 1999, the City of Miami ("City") implemented the statute by passing an ordinance authorizing the levying of a parking tax, which became effective September 1, 1999. Patrick McGrath, III, filed a complaint against the City, challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance and section 218.503(5)(a)....
...a general law, and thus is unconstitutional under article VII, sections 1(a) and 9(a), of the Florida Constitution. [3] Miami-Dade County ("County"), and one of its employees, Laureen Varga, *146 challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance and section 218.503(5)(a) in another case, and intervened as plaintiffs in this case. The City and McGrath filed cross-motions for summary judgment, and the County and Varga joined in support of McGrath's motion. The trial court granted the City's motion for summary judgment, upholding the constitutionality of the ordinance and section 218.503(5)(a). The Third District reversed, however, holding that section 218.503(5)(a) is an unconstitutional special law, because by anchoring the 300,000 population classification to the specific date of April 1, 1999, it does not operate uniformly among all cities that reach the 300,000 population threshold as is required by general law....
...Accordingly, the trial court erred in finding the ordinance was validly enacted and in granting summary judgment for the City. Therefore, the case must be reversed and the cause remanded to grant summary judgment in favor of the appellants/taxpayers. McGrath,
789 So.2d at 1169. ANALYSIS The issue in this case is whether section
218.503(5)(a), which authorizes only certain municipalities to impose a parking tax, constitutes a special law in violation of the Florida Constitution. Section
218.503(5)(a) comes before this Court "clothed with a presumption of constitutionality," Department of Legal Affairs v....
...rst place would clearly undercut the purposes of article VII, section 9(a). (Emphasis supplied.) [6] In this case, it is undisputed that the City's parking tax constitutes a non-ad valorem *148 tax that was authorized by the Legislature's passage of section 218.503(5)(a). Therefore, the only question in this case is whether section 218.503(5)(a) constitutes a special law....
...237, 240 (1934) (citations omitted); State ex rel. Gray v. Stoutamire,
131 Fla. 698,
179 So. 730 (1938); State ex rel. Buford v. Daniel,
87 Fla. 270,
99 So. 804 (1924). See generally 10 Fla. Jur.2d Constitutional Law § 330 (1979). Id. To determine whether section
218.503(5)(a) constitutes a special law, we must decide whether the law is designed to operate upon particular municipalities through its restrictive classification system, and whether the classification in this case, which limits application...
...es a class open only to Marion County, now and in the future. Because the statutory classification scheme is wholly arbitrary, having no reasonable relationship to the subject of the statute, the statute is not a valid general law. Id. In this case, section 218.503(5)(a) falls squarely within the definition of a special law as articulated by this Court in Fort, Walker, and Classic Mile....
...Limiting the statute to only those municipalities with populations of more than 300,000 on April 1, 1999, is tantamount to restricting the statute to those particular municipalities that met this population threshold on that particular date. Second, section 218.503(5)(a) does not operate uniformly among similarly situated municipalities because it does not uniformly apply to all municipalities that have a population of 300,000 or more; rather, section 218.503(5)(a) applies only to those municipalities that have a population of 300,000 or more on or before April 1, 1999....
...Furthermore, because of the anchoring date, Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville will always remain within the qualifying population classification, even if their populations fall in the future to below 300,000. Therefore, the population classification in section
218.503(5)(a) lacks uniformity in application. Third, section
218.503(5)(a) employs an arbitrary classification scheme because it contains "a statutory classification scheme incapable of generic application to members of a class, and fixed so as to preclude additional entities from satisfying the requirements for inclusion within the statutory classification at some future point in time." Classic Mile,
541 So.2d at 1158 n. 4. Section
218.503(5)(a) is incapable of generic application to all municipalities that have a population of 300,000 or more because municipalities that reach this population threshold after April 1, 1999, are not eligible for inclusion in the class....
...Metropolitan Dade County,
464 So.2d 535 (Fla.1985), and State v. City of Miami Beach,
234 So.2d 103 (Fla.1970), upheld legislation substantially similar to that at issue in this case. Although City of Miami Beach involved a population classification, the statute in that case was not substantially similar to section
218.503(5)(a)....
...No reasonable explanation has been advanced for the limiting date, nor can we conceive of one. This Court has consistently held that this type of closed class restriction will constitute an invalid special law passed in violation of the Florida Constitution. Thus, we conclude that section 218.503 constitutes an invalid special law. However, because we do not address the effect of the 2001 amendments to section 218.503, on remand the parties may have the opportunity to brief and argue the effect, if any, of the 2001 amendments to section 218.503(5) on the issues in this case, including whether the City meets the amended criteria to qualify it to impose the tax under the amended statute....
...NOTES [1] The amendment became effective on July 1, 1999. See ch. 99-251, § 132, at 2839, Laws of Fla. The Legislature passed the amendment on April 30, 1999, and the Governor signed the amendment into law on June 8, 1999. [2] The Governor signed a law amending section 218.503(5)(a) and (c) on November 30, 2001. See Ch.2001-354, Laws of Fla. The law amends section 218.503(5)(a) and (c) as follows: (5)(a) The governing authority of any municipality having with a resident population of 300,000 or more on or after April 1, 1999, and which has been declared in a state of financial emergency pursuant to thi...
...[4] McGrath contends that Tampa had a resident population of 297,505 on April 1, 1999, and that Jacksonville is not a municipality within the meaning of the statute. Compare art. VIII, § 6(e), Fla. Const.; art. VIII, § 9, Fla. Const. (1885) (Jacksonville is a consolidated government treated as a county), with §
218.503(5), Fla. Stat. (2000) (the parking tax may be imposed only by a "municipality") and §§
218.502,
218.503(3), Fla....
...years" refers to the two-year time period before the statute was enacted, or the two years prior to the tax being imposed. If only the City of Miami met this additional statutory limitation, this would of course only further appellees' argument that section 218.503(5)(a) constitutes a special law....
...nty,
702 So.2d at 1254. In other words, under no circumstances may the Legislature pass a special law authorizing a local government to impose non-ad valorem taxes. [7] Moreover, we reject the City's contention that the sunset provision contained in section
218.503(5)(c) somehow cures the fact that the statute constitutes a special law....
