The Supreme Court and State Taxation: 2000-2001. The Court Revisits Its Long-Standing Rules

In the October 2000 Term, the United States Supreme Court continued its recent trend of deciding relatively few cases. Only 81 oral argument slots - representing 86 cases - were filled, and those cases resulted in even fewer signed opinions: 77. The Court unanimously decided two cases involving state or local taxation issues during the 2000 Term. This was a slight decrease from the Court's consideration of three state tax cases during the 1999 Term and three state tax cases during the 1998 Term. The Court continues to deny certiorari in a large number of cases involving state and local tax issues. During the 2000 Term, the Court denied 24 petitions presenting state or local tax questions. At the time of this writing, 49 of the argument slots are already filled for the 2001 Term, but of the 59 cases docketed, none involves state or local taxation. During the 2000 Term, however, the Court did consider two state and local tax cases that merit attention. In Director of Revenue v. CoBank ACB, the unanimous Court relied on an extensive account of the evolution of a federal statute to determine whether Congress granted state tax immunity to a federal instrumentality thereunder. In Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, the Court unanimously rejected an Indian tribe's effort to tax transactions between non-Indians on fee land within a reservation. In these two cases, the Court readdressed two of its long-standing rules related to particular forms of state and local taxation. In doing so, the Court gave both a strict and flexible reading to its own rules with potentially far-reaching implications on the treatment of other state and local tax measures.