Amos v. Glynn County Bd. of Tax Assessors, 02-15103.

• Citation: 347 F.3d 1249
• Decision Date: 20 October 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-15103.,02-15103.
• Parties: Robert P. AMOS, Ellen D. Amos, George E. Cashin, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. GLYNN COUNTY BOARD OF TAX ASSESSORS, Defendant-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, Glynn County Board of Education, City Commission of the City of Brunswick, in Their Official Capacities, Defendants-Appellees, Glynn County Board of Equalization, Glynn County Tax Commissioner, et al., Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

347 F.3d 1249

Robert P. AMOS, Ellen D. Amos, George E. Cashin, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. GLYNN COUNTY BOARD OF TAX ASSESSORS, Defendant-Appellee-Cross-Appellant Glynn County Board of Education, City Commission of the City of Brunswick, in Their Official Capacities, Defendants-Appellees Glynn County Board of Equalization, Glynn County Tax Commissioner, et al., Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants.

No. 02-15103.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

DECIDED October 20, 2003.

Leon Eugene Highsmith, Brunswick, GA, Douglas Wayne Alexander, St. Simmons,

GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees.

G. Todd Carter, Whelchel, Brown, Readdick & Bumgartner, James A. Bishop, Jr., The Bishop Law Firm, Aaron W. Mumford, William Gary Moore, M. Lynn Frey, Brunswick, GA, Frank C. Bedinger, III, Hawkins & Parnell, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants and Defendants-Appellees.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before BARKETT and MARCUS, Circuit Judges, and MILLS^*, District Judge.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Appellants Robert and Ellen Amos, along with seventeen other Glynn County property owners,¹ have taken this interlocutory appeal from the district court's order denying their motions for class certification and preliminary injunction. Appellees, Glynn County Board of Tax Assessors, along with several other Glynn County agencies,² in turn, cross-appeal from the district court's denial of their motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Because we conclude that the Tax Injunction Act stripped the district court of subject matter jurisdiction over this lawsuit, we REVERSE the district court's denial of the appellees' motion to dismiss, VACATE its order denying class certification and preliminary injunction, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

The essential background and procedural facts are these. The appellants own residential property on St. Simons Island, an upscale coastal development located in Glynn County, Georgia. This lawsuit arises out of a grievance they have with the way Glynn County assessed their ad valorem property taxes in the year 2000. Glynn County's system for assessing property taxes and adjudicating assessment disputes is complex, and we therefore begin with an overview of that system.

The Glynn County Board of Commissioners, the governing body of the county, appoints the Glynn County Board of Tax Assessors (the "Board"), which is responsible for assessing the county's property taxes. To that end, the Board appoints a Chief Tax Appraiser, whose office conducts the actual assessments. The Board must complete its review of the Chief Tax Appraiser's assessments by June 1 of each year, at which point the Board must notify any taxpayers whose assessments have been changed within five days. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-302.

A taxpayer who is dissatisfied with the Board's reassessment of his property may appeal through the process set forth in O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311. The first step in that process is to appeal to the Board itself within 30 days of the date of the notice. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-306(b)(2). The Board has 180 days to decide the appeal. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(3). If the Board fails to decide an appeal within 180 days or decides not to change the taxpayer's assessment, the taxpayer's appeal is automatically forwarded to the Board of Equalization ("BOE"). See id. In addition, if the Board changes the taxpayer's assessment but the taxpayer is still unsatisfied, he may appeal to the BOE by notifying the Board within 21 days of the date the Board sends notice of its decision. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(2)(C).

The BOE is a quasi-judicial entity responsible for adjudicating tax appeals in the county. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311. There are two such boards of equalization in Glynn County. Each is composed of three members and has jurisdiction over all property tax appeals involving questions of taxability, valuation, entitlement to homestead exemptions, or uniformity of tax valuation within the county. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(1)(A). Within 15 days of receiving notice of an appeal, the BOE must set a date for a hearing to be held within 20 to 30 days of the date of the notification of the hearing. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(6).

Notably, once the Board of Equalization returns its decision, the taxpayer may further appeal to Glynn County Superior Court, where he is entitled to de novo review of all of his claims. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(g)(1), (3). If the issues on appeal are purely legal, the taxpayer is entitled to a bench trial within 40 days of filing his appeal. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(g)(4)(A). If the taxpayer's appeal contains fact questions, he is entitled to a jury trial at the first term following the filing of his appeal. See id. From the Superior Court, the taxpayer may appeal upward through the state court system and eventually petition the United States Supreme Court for certiorari review.

Meanwhile, the Board provides the assessments to the Glynn County Tax Commissioner, an independently elected official, who compiles the assessments into a digest and delivers the digest to the State Revenue Commissioner by August 1 each year for examination and approval. Once the State Revenue Commissioner approves the digest, Glynn County is permitted to send out tax bills for the year. Any taxpayer who is in the process of appealing his assessment when the tax bills are sent out is only required to pay 85% of his assessed value and is entitled to a full refund with interest should his actual property tax turn out to be less than he paid. See O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(6)(D)(iii).

Unfortunately, Glynn County's entire tax assessment scheme has not been working well for close to a decade. In theory, all real property in the county should be reassessed at market value every year. But in practice, the Board has not performed a county-wide reassessment since 1995. In the interim, the Board has reassessed certain properties in the county several times, while neglecting to reassess other properties at all. According to the Board, the properties that are reassessed are chosen based on a "sales price ratio study." The study collects sale prices for recently sold properties in the county and compares the sale prices to the former assessment values of the property. The Board uses this information to determine which neighborhood's properties have market values that are most out of line with their assessed values and selects these neighborhoods for reassessment. In 2000, the Board used this method to pick 3,855 properties for reappraisal out of 37,000 eligible residential properties in the county. The appellants' properties were among the 3,855 properties selected.³

Although, from the Board's perspective, the system is designed to promote equality by selecting the most wrongly valued properties for reappraisal, the appellants believe it penalizes them for living in neighborhoods with ever escalating sales prices. They contend that the Board's method unconstitutionally places a disproportionate share of the county tax burden on their shoulders. On May 30, 2001, the appellants filed this class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that Glynn County's tax scheme violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution by denying them due process and equal protection. As relief, they sought a declaratory judgment and permanent injunctive relief barring the appellees from using the allegedly unconstitutional 2000 tax digest in the collection of ad valorem taxes. Specifically, the plaintiffs say that the Board engaged in "piecemeal or spot reappraisals and reassessments of residential property" without addressing uniformity throughout Glynn County, and returned a non-uniform assessment of real property for the year 2000.

However, this was not the first time that the property owners of St. Simons Island had asked for such an injunction. In Haller v. Glynn County Bd. of Assessors, Case No. 00-01246 (Ga.Super.Ct.2000), two of the appellants, Haller and Dewhurst, purporting to act on behalf of the same class of property owners, brought suit in Glynn County Superior Court, Georgia, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, raising the same federal constitutional challenge and seeking the same injunctive relief barring the Board from applying the 2000 tax digest of Glynn County. The Glynn County Superior Court granted that injunction, restraining appellees from billing or collecting taxes on the parcels of Glynn County real property which were reassessed in 2000 in an amount greater than their 1999 value, but its order was later reversed by the Georgia Supreme Court in Glynn County Bd. of Tax Assessors v. Haller, 273 Ga. 649, 543 S.E.2d 699 (2001).

The Georgia Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs had an adequate remedy at law with which to challenge the perceived constitutional infirmities in the 2000 tax digest, and specifically that O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311 et seq., provided the plaintiffs with an altogether sufficient mechanism for appellate review of their tax assessments. The Georgia Supreme Court framed its holding in these terms:

The United States Supreme Court has held that state courts may not award either declaratory or injunctive relief against state taxes under section 1983 when there is an adequate legal remedy. Similarly, we have held that a superior court should not grant an injunction in a tax case when state law provides an adequate remedy at law. O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311 provides a statutory appeals process for taxpayers to challenge a property tax assessment based on the issues of taxability, uniformity, and value. Nothing in the statute prohibits taxpayers from challenging a board's method of conducting spot reassessments as lacking in uniformity, appealing an unfavorable ruling...