Diffenderfer v. CENTRAL BAPTIST CH. OF MIAMI, FLA., INC., 69-746-Civ-JE.

• Decision Date: 21 August 1970
• Docket Number: No. 69-746-Civ-JE.,69-746-Civ-JE.
• Citation: 316 F. Supp. 1116
• Parties: Florence DIFFENDERFER and Nishan Paul, Plaintiffs, v. CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH OF MIAMI, FLORIDA, INCORPORATED, a nonprofit Florida corporation, Dade County, Florida, a political subdivision of the State of Florida, Porter W. Homer, County Manager, R. K. Overstreet, Tax Collector of Metropolitan Dade County, and Fred O. Dickinson, Jr., as Comptroller of the State of Florida, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

316 F. Supp. 1116

Florence DIFFENDERFER and Nishan Paul, Plaintiffs, v. CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH OF MIAMI, FLORIDA, INCORPORATED, a nonprofit Florida corporation, Dade County, Florida, a political subdivision of the State of Florida, Porter W. Homer, County Manager, R. K. Overstreet, Tax Collector of Metropolitan Dade County, and Fred O. Dickinson, Jr., as Comptroller of the State of Florida, Defendants.

No. 69-746-Civ-JE.

United States District Court, S. D. Florida.

August 21, 1970.

Hollander & Pestcoe, Miami, Fla., for plaintiffs.

Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwody & Cole, Miami, Fla., and Thomas C. Britton, County Atty., for defendants.

Before DYER, Circuit Judge, and MEHRTENS and EATON, District Judges.

DYER, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs, who are citizens and taxpayers of Dade County, Florida, seek in this action a declaration that F.S. § 192.06(4), F.S.A. constitutes an establishment of religion and an inhibition on the free exercise of religion in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution insofar as it authorizes tax exemption of property of the Central Baptist Church used as a commercial parking lot.¹ They also seek an injunction ordering the Dade County Tax Collector to assess and collect taxes on that property. A three-judge court was convened and the case was submitted on stipulated facts and plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. Decision was delayed pending the outcome of Walz v. Tax Commission, 1970, 397 U.S. 664, 90 S.Ct. 1409, 25 L.Ed.2d 697 May 4, 1970, which held there is no violation of the First Amendment religious clauses in a state taxation scheme which exempts from taxation property "used solely for religious worship". In view of Walz we hold the Florida exemption scheme, as it applies to the Central Baptist Church parking lot, constitutional, we deny the motion for summary judgment and the declaratory and injunctive relief sought by the plaintiffs, and we enter judgment for the defendants.

F.S. § 192.06, F.S.A. provides in pertinent part:

The following property shall be exempt from taxation:

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(4) All houses of public worship and lots on which they are situated, and all pews or steps and furniture therein, every parsonage and all burying grounds not owned or held by individuals or corporations for speculative purposes, tombs and right of burial; but any building being a house of worship which shall be rented or hired for any other purpose except for schools or places of worship, shall be taxed the same as any other property.

In a prior state case, Central Baptist Church v. Dade County, Fla., Fla.1968, 216 So.2d 4, Dade County attempted to tax that portion of the church property used as a parking lot. The church resisted successfully, the Supreme Court of Florida holding the lot exempt within the terms of the above quoted statute because it found:

The limited part time rental of a portion of the church lot for commercial parking on weekday business hours is reasonably incidental to the primary use of the church property as a whole for church or religious purposes and is not a sufficiently divergent commercial use that eliminates the exemption as to the commercial parking lot portion of the property.

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The record conclusively reflects the church devotes the net income received by it from rentals of the commercial parking lot area to religious and educational purposes. Id. at 6.

Among the facts which the parties have stipulated to are the following:

All revenues generated from the parking area are used for religious, educational, literary, benevolent, fraternal and/or charitable activities of the church.

None of the expenses of operating the parking area are paid by or from the revenues generated by the parking area.

The church could not operate at its present location without the off-street parking spaces in its lot because of a local ordinance which requires auditoriums to provide a certain number of off-street parking spaces dependent upon seating capacity of the auditorium.

The parking spaces in the lot "are just as necessary for the operation of the Church as the roof over the Church Building."

The property in question is located in downtown Miami and occupies nearly a complete square block. The plaintiffs do not attack the statutory scheme as it applies to the property occupied by the church building itself. They attack the exemption only as it applies (by virtue of the decision in Central Baptist Church v. Dade County, supra) to the 59% of the church property which is used as a commercial parking lot six days of the week. The question we must decide may therefore be framed thusly: Does the holding in Walz v. Tax Commission, supra,—that there is no establishment of religion and no inhibition of the free exercise of religion in a state taxation scheme which exempts from taxation property used "exclusively for religious purposes", i.e., "religious properties used solely for religious worship" —encompass the tax exemption in the instant case as it applies to church property used as a commercial parking lot? We answer affirmatively.

The holding in Walz is confined to exemptions for religious properties used exclusively for religious purposes. Implicit in the Florida Supreme Court's holding in Central Baptist Church v. Dade County, supra, is the conclusion that what appears to be a commercial use of church property is really a religious use because all the proceeds from the lot go to church projects and because the parking lot is necessary to the functioning of the church. The parties in this case have stipulated to this effect. In other words, the instant case may be viewed as coming within the strict terms of Walz because of the finding of the state court and the stipulations here that the commercial use really amounts to a religious use.

However, it is not necessary to pigeonhole the instant case into the strict terms of the solely-for-religious-worship holding of Walz. Read more broadly, Walz stands merely for the proposition that a state is free to provide any tax exemption scheme it wishes (as long as the classifications are not capricious or arbitrary) and that exemptions to houses of worship are included because they do not violate the religious clauses of the First Amendment.

Walz makes no attempt to define what kinds of property may or may not be encompassed by an exemption scheme except to say that property used solely for worship can be included. On oral argument in Walz plaintiff's counsel stated that he was attacking tax exemptions only as applied to "property used exclusively for religious purposes" and...