| Polar Tankers v. City of Valdez | ||||||
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Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued April 1, 2009 Decided June 15, 2009 |
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| Full case name | Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez | |||||
| Prior history | judgment for plaintiff 3AN-00-09665 CI (Alaska Super., 2006); reversed and remanded 182 P.3d 614 (Alaska, 2008); reversed and remanded US | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| The tonnage clause forbids a city with a port to levy a property tax on ships using the harbor | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Alito, in various parts | |||||
| Concurrence | Roberts, joined by Thomas | |||||
| Concurrence | Alito | |||||
| Dissent | Stevens, joined by Souter | |||||
Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2009, involving the tonnage clause of the United States Constitution.
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."