Tuesday, March 23, 2004 | 8:45 a.m.
In July 2003 anti-tax Republican legislators asked the U.S. District Court in Nevada to overturn the Nevada Supreme Court's disputed decision on taxes and education funding, but the court said it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The federal judges from Nevada said the only ourt suitable to hear the appeal was the U.S. Supreme Court. Well, on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court announced it wouldn't review the Nevada Supreme Court's ruling that temporarily let the Nevada Legislature suspend a provision in Nevada's Constitution requiring a two-thirds vote to raise taxes.
Even though the Legislature received a green light to pass tax increases with a simple majority, lawmakers ultimately passed a tax hike with a two-thirds vote, a situation that should have made irrelevant any legal challenge, including one to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the anti-tax, anti-everything crowd kept at it, trying to get the federal courts involved in what purely is a matter that should be handled by the state. It's been amusing watching the ideological contortions of the appellants, who always decry what they perceive to be federal judicial activism, as they sought outside federal intervention.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision should have ended the legal dispute, but anti-tax legislators will continue with a parallel legal challenge they've initiated in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is scheduled to hear arguments on April 15. The tax-protesting litigants should end this fruitless appeal, one that is wasting the time of the federal courts. Otherwise, they risk a further descent into irrelevancy.
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