GM Berkshire Hills LLC and GM Oberlin Berkshire Hills LLC v. Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals and Wilson School District

Summary

This opinion in support of reversal addresses whether the Wilson School District’s policy for selecting property assessments to appeal violated Pennsylvania’s Uniformity Clause. Justice Donohue concluded that targeting recently sold properties meeting a fixed underassessment threshold created an unconstitutional subclassification of property. The opinion would reverse the Commonwealth Court’s order affirming the Berks County Court of Common Pleas.

Holdings

1. All property in a taxing district is a single class, and the Uniformity Clause prohibits intentional or systematic disparate treatment of property subclasses, regardless of whether the taxing authority's policy is motivated by reasonable administrative or fiscal considerations.
2. The School District's policy created an unconstitutional subclassification consisting of properties recently purchased at prices exceeding an established threshold and therefore violated the Uniformity Clause.
3. Applying the common-level ratio does not cure a policy that selects properties for disparate treatment through an impermissible subclassification, and administrative limitations or revenue-generation goals cannot justify nonuniform taxation.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Wilson School District's policy of selecting for assessment appeals only recently sold properties that appeared to be underassessed by at least $150,000 violated the Uniformity Clause of Article VIII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
2. Whether the use of recent sales data, a quantitative threshold, and the common-level ratio avoided the constitutional prohibition against disparate treatment of property subclasses.
3. Whether practical limitations on the School District's access to property information or its interest in maximizing tax revenue justified the challenged classification.

Disposition

reversed