| Polar Tankers v. City of Valdez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued April 1, 2009 Decided June 15, 2009 | |
| Full case name | Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez |
| Citations | 557 U.S. 1 ( more ) 129 S. Ct. 2277; 174 L. Ed. 2d 1 |
| Case history | |
| Prior | judgment for plaintiff 3AN-00-09665 CI (Alaska Super. 2006); reversed and remanded, 182 P.3d 614 (Alaska 2008); reversed and remanded. |
| Holding | |
| The tonnage clause forbids a city with a port to levy a property tax on ships using the harbor | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg; Alito (all but Part II–B–2) |
| Concurrence | Roberts (in part), joined by Thomas |
| Concurrence | Alito (in part) |
| Dissent | Stevens, joined by Souter |
Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez, 557 U.S. 1 (2009), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the tonnage clause of the United States Constitution.
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The City of Valdez in Alaska imposed a property tax that, in practice, applied only to large oil tankers. Polar Tankers, a ConocoPhillips subsidiary, sued, arguing that the tax violated the Tonnage Clause of the Constitution, which forbids a state, "without the Consent of Congress, [to] lay any Duty of Tonnage."
The Supreme Court agreed with Polar Tankers. The court noted that the original meaning of the clause was as a term of art for a tax imposed that varies with "the internal cubic capacity of a vessel," but emphasized that a consistent line of cases had read the clause broadly, "forbidding a State to do that indirectly which she is forbidden ... to do directly." [1] Those cases, the court concluded, stood for the proposition that the tonnage clause's prohibition reaches any taxes or duties on a ship, "whether a fixed sum upon its whole tonnage, or a sum to be ascertained by comparing the amount of tonnage with the rate of duty[,] ... regardless of [the tax or duty's] name or form ... which operate to impose a charge for the privilege of entering, trading in, or lying in a port." [2]
With this premise in mind, the court concluded that because Valdez taxes "ships and to no other property at all[,] ... in order to obtain revenue for general city purposes[, this was] ... the kind of tax that the Tonnage Clause forbids Valdez to impose without the consent of Congress, consent that Valdez lacks."
