Downingtown Area SD v. Chester Cnty Bd of Assmt.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.]

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA MIDDLE DISTRICT

DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT : No. 45 MAP 2024 : : Appeal from the Order of the v. : Commonwealth Court at No. 92 : CD 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Chester County Court of Common ASSESSMENT APPEALS : Pleas, Civil Division, at No. 2019- TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.3 : 11728-AB dated January 18, 2022 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT : DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT : No. 46 MAP 2024 : : Appeal from the Order of the v. : Commonwealth Court at No. 93 : CD 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Chester County Court of Common ASSESSMENT APPEALS : Pleas, Civil Division, at No. 2019- TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.2 : 11727-AB dated January 18, 2022 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT :

DISSENTING OPINION

JUSTICE DOUGHERTY DECIDED: May 19, 2026 The text of the Uniformity Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution plainly reflects its animating principles: “All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws.” PA. CONST. art. 8, §1. By adopting the Uniformity Clause, the people of this Commonwealth “placed the seal of their approval upon a system of taxation which has for its corner stone uniformity in the valuation, levy, and collection of all taxes.”

Delaware, L. & W. R. Co.’s Tax Assessment, 73 A. 429, 430 (Pa. 1909). Thus, “[i]t is the duty of the courts in dealing with this subject to enforce as nearly as may be” not only “equality of burden[,]” but also “uniformity of method in determining what share of the burden each taxable subject must bear.” Id. (emphasis added).

Because the majority approves a method for taxing districts to choose which property assessments to appeal pursuant to their authority under Section 8855 of the Consolidated County Assessment Law, 1 which method applies only to a small subset of properties — those that will make the most money for the taxing district — I respectfully dissent. Specifically, I conclude the majority opinion is contrary to our Uniformity Clause jurisprudence in three main respects: (1) by holding monetary thresholds constitutional; (2) by holding the Downingtown Area School District’s (School District) method for selecting properties among those meeting the threshold was constitutional, and relatedly, that “tax-liability deficit” is a valid metric for identifying the most non-uniform assessments; and (3) by asserting “[t]he Uniformity Clause focuses on purposeful differential treatment, not differential impact.” Majority Opinion at 30 (emphasis in original). I address each of those holdings in turn. 2

A taxing district authority may intervene in any appeal by a taxable person under section 8854 (relating to appeals to court) as a matter of right.” 53 Pa.C.S. §8855.

2I note up front that this dissenting opinion overlaps to some extent with Justice Donohue’s dissenting opinion, which I join in full.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 2 I. Monetary Thresholds I begin with the undisputed premise that the Uniformity Clause’s requirements apply to taxing districts’ policies for choosing which assessments to appeal. Most relevantly, in Valley Forge Towers Apartments N, LP v. Upper Merion Area School District, we struck down a policy where the school district concentrated on appealing commercial properties only. See 163 A.3d 962 (Pa. 2017). In doing so, we distilled two principles from our prior case law: “First, all property in a taxing district is a single class, and, as a consequence, the Uniformity Clause does not permit the government, including taxing authorities, to treat different property sub-classifications in a disparate manner.” Id. at 975, citing Clifton v. Allegheny Cty., 969 A.2d 1197, 1212 (Pa. 2009), and Westinghouse Elec. Corp. v. Bd. of Prop. Assessment, Appeals & Review of Allegheny Cty., 652 A.2d 1306, 1314 (Pa. 1995) (“all real estate is a constitutionally designated class entitled to uniform treatment and the ratio of assessed value to market value adopted by the taxing authority must be applied equally and uniformly to all real estate within the taxing authority’s jurisdiction”). “Second, this prohibition applies to any intentional or systematic enforcement of the tax laws, and is not limited solely to wrongful conduct.” Id., citing Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 913 A.2d 194, 201 n.10 (Pa. 2006) (explaining “similarly situated taxpayers should not be deliberately treated differently by taxing authorities[,]” and “the term ‘deliberate’ does not exclusively connote wrongful conduct, but also includes any intentional or systematic method of enforcement of the tax laws”).

In line with those precepts, we rejected the school district’s argument that a conventional rational-basis standard applied. See id. at 977. Although the General Assembly has “power to classify, even in matters of taxation, so that a taxpayer generally must demonstrate that the classification ‘is unreasonable and not rationally related to any

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 3 legitimate state purpose[,]’” we explained that “property taxes are ‘different’ because ‘real property is the classification.’” Id., quoting Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1211-12 (emphasis in original). Thus, “all real estate in a taxing district is constitutionally entitled to uniform treatment.” Id., citing Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1212 (“this Court has consistently interpreted the uniformity requirement of the Pennsylvania Constitution as requiring all real estate to be treated as a single class entitled to uniform treatment”). With that legal background, we held “it follows that a taxing authority is not permitted to implement a program of only appealing the assessments of one sub-classification of properties, where that sub- classification is drawn according to property type — that is, its use as commercial, apartment complex, single-family residential, industrial, or the like.” Id. at 978.

In Valley Forge, we also rejected an argument forwarded by amici that the appellants’ pleadings “were insufficient in that all assessment appeals reduce the [coefficient of dispersion 3] and, in that sense, enhance uniformity.” Id. at 979. We explained that “argument overlooks that the Uniformity Clause can be independently harmed by a systematic course of disparate treatment relative to a particular sub- classification of property.” Id. We elaborated that “[a]lthough the aim of every such appeal is to conform the property’s assessment with the [common level ratio (CLR) 4], the members of the sub-class are aware that they alone have been targeted for scrutiny solely due to their membership in the sub-class; moreover, they alone must bear the costs of defending against the appeal and of any follow-up litigation in court[.]” Id. Nor were we swayed by the fact the school district’s method would result in a greater tax-revenue

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 4 increase. See id. at 979-80 (“The government must be concerned with ensuring a rough equalization of tax burdens under a structure in which taxes are imposed, adjusted, and collected equitably. . . . Where there is a conflict between maximizing revenue and ensuring that the taxing system is implemented in a non-discriminatory way, the Uniformity Clause requires that the latter goal be given primacy.”).

Today, the majority holds the School District’s use of a monetary threshold (i.e., its consideration of properties to appeal only if they would potentially result in total annual additional tax revenue of $10,000) is permissible under the Uniformity Clause. It reasons that “[w]here a taxing district’s policy along these lines does not create a prohibited subclass of properties defined by an impermissible characteristic such as type, use, neighborhood, or residency status of the owner, it tends to enhance uniformity by selecting for appeal the properties whose assessments are the most nonuniform in terms of their tax-liability deficit.” Majority Opinion at 9 (footnotes omitted). The majority expands on its position, stating that “[b]ringing these assessments in line with the CLR means the property’s assessment ratio is still less than about half of the other properties in the county, but it is no longer an outlier. This, in turn, enhances fairness to the remaining taxpayers who would otherwise need to pay more of the cost of government than their proportionate share, as the taxing district would otherwise have to raise its millage to meet budgetary needs.” Id. “Furthermore,” the majority believes, “a taxing district’s use of a monetary threshold to ensure its efforts are not a net drain on the public fisc reflects an effort by the district to handle public funds in a responsible and judicious manner based on a cost-benefit analysis.” Id. at 9-10 (footnote omitted). It notes that in Valley Forge, we left open the possibility that the Uniformity Clause might permit monetary thresholds.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 5 Although I acknowledge our clarification in Valley Forge “that nothing in this opinion should be construed as suggesting that the use of a monetary threshold . . . or some other selection criteria would violate uniformity if it were implemented without regard to the type of property in question or the residency status of its owner[,]” 163 A.3d at 979, I emphasize this statement was mere dicta, clarifying the bounds of the case before us. See id. (“Such methodologies are not presently before the Court.”). With the issue before us now, I would hold that the School District’s monetary threshold cannot be squared with the other principles announced in Valley Forge.

On its face, the School District’s monetary threshold creates (at least) two subclasses of property: those whose reassessments would net an additional $10,000 of tax revenue for the School District, and those whose reassessments would be less valuable to the School District. To put it another way, the policy separates properties based on the appreciation of their value, as demonstrated by Valbridge’s table below, showing the threshold value increase needed for properties in each municipality to meet the $10,000 threshold:

Ex. M-5 at 2 (unpaginated). 5 Thus, in West Bradford Township, for example, the properties were split into two subclassifications: those that had risen at least $617,831 in Valbridge was the third-party the School District used to identify properties to appeal.

When asked to explain the column for “Threshold Value Increase” in Exhibit M-5, Valbridge employee Reaves Lukens testified, “[i]n order to generate $10,000 in additional (continued…) [J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 6 value, and those that had not. And under the School District’s policy, only those in the former category were subject to the possibility of an assessment appeal. Not to mention, of course, that these dollar amounts varied by municipality, creating subclassifications within the subclassifications created by the $10,000 threshold. See N.T., 11/17/21, at 35 (Lukens affirming that “depending upon what township you’re in, the same property in one township might trigger a reassessment while in another township it wouldn’t”). Thus, only certain property owners are subject to the burdens associated with school district assessment appeals, see Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 979, based on subclassifications defined by their property’s value increase and municipality. 6 In fact, as pointed out by the majority, “the evidence suggests over 100 properties out of the 28,000 situated within the School District met the $10,000 threshold.” Majority Opinion at 15. That means that only 0.4% to 0.7% of the properties in the School District were even exposed to the possibility of a Section 5588 assessment appeal. Cf. PA. CONST. art. 8, §1 (“All taxes . . . shall be levied and collected under general laws”). 7 revenue . . .[,] the value pick up needs to be at or exceed that amount in that column.”

N.T., 11/17/21, at 35. Lukens did not explain why the “ratio” in the chart was set at 51.30%, but to be clear, the parties stipulated to CLRs for each of the relevant years: 49.3% for 2020, 47% for 2022, and 45% for 2022. See id. at 6.

Majority Opinion at 9 (emphasis added). However, the majority does not provide a reason for its implicit holding that some subclasses of real property are acceptable notwithstanding our wealth of case law to the contrary. See, e.g., Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 977; Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1212 (“[T]his Court has consistently interpreted the uniformity requirement of the Pennsylvania Constitution as requiring all real estate to be treated as a single class entitled to uniform treatment”); id. at 1213 (“judicial review of uniformity challenges to a statutory scheme of property taxation often needs only to focus on . . . a rule is impractical and finds no support in the Uniformity Clause’s text or history.”

Majority Opinion at 16. In my view, the relevant sentence from the Commonwealth Court’s opinion — “the School District’s decision to undertake a piecemeal implementation of this [monetary threshold] policy, deliberately leaving many other underassessed properties alone, has created disparate treatment that is anathema to the Uniformity Clause” — is being taken out of context. Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 303 A.3d 1104, 1114 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2023).

Where the Commonwealth Court reasoned the School District implemented its policy in an arbitrary fashion, I do not read this portion of its opinion as suggesting the School District had to appeal all properties meeting the threshold. Instead, it appears the Commonwealth Court believed that where the School District knew other properties met the monetary threshold, it needed to apply its policy in some principled, non-arbitrary manner. In the very next sentence, the Commonwealth Court concluded: “This random application of a monetary threshold created a lack of uniformity in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution.” Id. (emphasis added). Regardless, I would leave this issue for another day, as I would not foreclose the possibility that 53 Pa.C.S. §8855 is itself unconstitutional precisely because it allows interested taxing authorities like school districts to selectively appeal only certain assessments.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 8 whether the statute results in a ‘classification’ — because in the property taxation context, any disparity in tax liability, beyond the expected practical inequities, most likely constitutes a violation of the Uniformity Clause”) (emphasis added); Downingtown Area Sch. Dist., 913 A.2d at 201 n.9 (contrasting the Pennsylvania Constitution with the federal charter by explaining “the United States Constitution does not require equalization across all potential sub-classifications of real property”) (emphasis added); Westinghouse, 652 A.2d at 1314 (“all real estate is a constitutionally designated class entitled to uniform treatment”); Deitch Co. v. Bd. of Prop. Assessment, Appeals & Review of Allegheny Cty., 209 A.2d 397, 402 (Pa. 1965) (“the uniformity requirement of the Constitution of Pennsylvania has been construed to require that all real estate is a class which is entitled to uniform treatment”); McKnight Shopping Ctr., Inc. v. Bd. of Prop. Assessment, Appeals & Review of Allegheny Cty., 209 A.2d 389, 392 (Pa. 1965) (“it is clear that all real estate is the class entitled to uniform treatment”) (emphasis in original). To be sure, we have never created an exception to that rule for real estate that has risen substantially in fair market value, just because such an exception would financially benefit taxing authorities who could recover greater tax revenues by targeting those properties. 8

Majority Opinion at 22 n.25. To be clear, that is not the classification created by the monetary threshold; the subclassification I discuss is properties meeting the monetary threshold based on their increase in fair market value. And I repeat that “I would leave this issue [regarding the constitutionality of Section 8855] for another day[.]” Supra at 7- n.7. Indeed, the subclassification articulated by the majority would not be a relevant subclassification for purposes of a Uniformity Clause analysis — “those parcels the School District chooses to appeal” would be the result of the School District’s exercise of its Section 8855 authority, while here, the Uniformity Clause is concerned with the School District’s use of subclassifications when deciding which properties to appeal. Regardless, by redefining the “subclassification” in the broadest terms, the majority manufactures a “tension whereby taxes inevitably become non-uniform as time goes on, but any attempt to correct the same via Section 8855 cannot help but ‘treat’ some properties differently by correcting their assessments and bringing them into line with the CLR.” Majority Opinion (continued…) [J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 9 Nor does the majority explain what makes increase in fair market value a permissible characteristic, while type, use, neighborhood, and residency status are “impermissible[.]” Majority Opinion at 9. Indeed, in Clifton (discussed in more detail infra), we expressly rejected classifications based on distinctions in the appreciation or depreciation of property values. There, we explained that even if classifications were permissible in the property-taxation context, the taxing authority (Allegheny County in that case) “d[id] not base its supposed classification on any legitimate distinction” where it “permit[ted] the inevitable vicissitudes of the real estate market to define the ‘classification’ at issue, and then attempt[ed] an after-the-fact explanation why such non- uniform treatment [wa]s allowable.” Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1229. We further explained the county’s justifications of promoting stability and predictability “cannot justify a taxing scheme that routinely taxes property owners with declining or stagnant property values at a higher rate of assessed-to-actual value than property owners with stable or at 22 n.25. And because “[t]he constitutional text focuses on taxes being uniform,” the majority posits, “[t]his requires us to resolve the aforementioned tension in favor of uniformity of tax rate over uniformity of obligation to defend against an assessment appeal.” Id. (emphasis in original). But our Constitution does not speak in terms of tax rates only: “All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws.” PA. CONST. art. 8, §1 (emphasis added). Indeed, for well over a century, we have interpreted this language as imposing a “duty [upon] the courts in dealing with this subject to enforce as nearly as may be equality of burden and uniformity of method in determining what share of the burden each taxable subject must bear.” Delaware, L. & W. R., 73 A. at 430 (emphasis added). The majority’s suggestion that the Uniformity Clause is concerned with tax rates at the expense of assessment methodologies implicitly overrules this “corner stone” of our law requiring “uniformity in the valuation, levy, and collection of all taxes.” Id.; see also Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 978 (“systematic disparate enforcement of the tax laws based on property sub-classification, even absent wrongful conduct, is constitutionally precluded”); id. at 979 (“The government must be concerned with ensuring a rough equalization of tax burdens under a structure in which taxes are imposed, adjusted, and collected equitably.”). Of course, “when taxes become nonuniform due to market forces,” the government has a duty to take corrective action.

Majority Opinion at 22 n.25. But that cannot mean that taxing authorities are allowed to commit other violations of the Uniformity Clause to do so.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 10 appreciating property values.” Id. (additionally reasoning the classification was not rationally related to the purported governmental interest). If “property owners with declining or stagnant property values” is an impermissible classification, id., then so too is its inverse: “property owners with rising property values.” In sum, no distinction could legitimately support any subclass of real property, where our case law forbids such subclassification across the board. But even if classifications were permitted in this context (they’re not), classification based on changes in market value is, to use the majority’s term, “prohibited.” Majority Opinion at 9. 9 I would therefore hold the School District’s monetary threshold unconstitutional.

II. Unconstitutional Application of the School District’s Policy Even assuming, arguendo, that monetary thresholds can comply with the Uniformity Clause, the School District’s application of its policy was still unconstitutional here, where it did not meaningfully apply the threshold at all. 10 Instead, it simply selected the properties with the greatest value increases by dollar amount (because those would lead to the greatest return). See Dissenting Opinion at 7 (Donohue, J.) (“Under this framework, monetary thresholds merely serve as a guise for policies seeking to appeal Plus, as Justice Donohue aptly observed in her Opinion in Support of Reversal in GM Berkshire Hills LLC v. Berks County Board of Assessment, “[s]uch [monetary] thresholds could easily serve as methods of circumventing our holdings in cases such as Clifton and Valley Forge Towers, as they could be set at amounts that would largely target only certain neighborhoods (i.e., those known to contain more expensive homes), property uses (large apartment buildings vs. small single-family homes), or types (commercial vs. residential).” 290 A.3d 238, 253 n.5 (Pa. 2023) (Donohue, J., OISR) (“Under both Clifton and Valley Forge Towers, such pretextual thresholds would run afoul of the Uniformity Clause, regardless of whether they were intentionally created.”).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 11 only those properties with the highest value.”). Any justification for a monetary threshold based on the School District’s need to ensure its ability to recoup the costs of the appeal does not apply when selecting among properties above that threshold. And here, the only selection criterion for properties above the threshold, which the majority blesses, was simply to “maximize the return” for the School District. Majority Opinion at 25. Under that criterion, the threshold becomes irrelevant — the threshold could have been $100 (a facially neutral threshold that could easily apply to all types of property), yet the same properties would have been selected. But in my view, selecting properties for more burdensome tax treatment based purely on maximizing return to the taxing authority is anathema to the Uniformity Clause. See Delaware L. & W. R. Co.’s Tax Assessment, 73 A. at 430 (“It is the duty of the courts . . . to enforce as nearly as may be equality of burden and uniformity of method in determining what share of the burden each taxable subject must bear.”) (emphasis added).

Even if we chose to read Valley Forge narrowly as allowing some subclassification of real property when deciding which assessments to appeal, a subclassification based on increased actual value, by dollar amount, is intolerable under our Uniformity Clause jurisprudence. As explained above, in Clifton we disapproved of Allegheny County’s use of “inevitable vicissitudes of the real estate market to define the ‘classification’ at issue[.]”

Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1229. Likewise, in other taxation contexts, we do not allow taxing authorities to discriminate based on monetary value. Indeed, only ten years ago, we decided Mount Airy #1, LLC v. Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, which involved a tax imposed by the General Assembly in the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act. See 154 A.3d 268 (Pa. 2016). The statute required, inter alia, that casinos located outside of Philadelphia pay a municipal local share assessment of either 2% of their Gross Terminal Revenue (GTR) — i.e., amounts received by slot machines minus

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 12 amounts paid out to players — or a lump sum of $10 million, whichever was greater. See id. at 271. This meant that those casinos that earned GTRs at or below $500 million always paid $10 million dollars, while those that earned GTRs above $500 million always paid above $10 million. See id. We held the General Assembly’s revenue-based classification violated uniformity.

In doing so, we explained: When the validity of a tax classification is challenged, the relevant inquiry is whether the classification is based upon some legitimate distinction between the classes that provides a non-arbitrary, reasonable, and just basis for the disparate treatment. We must decide whether there exists “some concrete justification” for treating the relevant group of taxpayers as members of distinguishable classes subject to different tax burdens. Absent such a justified distinction between the classes, the imposition of substantially unequal tax burdens upon similarly situated persons violates the Uniformity Clause. Id. at 274 (citations omitted, emphasis added).

Relying on multiple of this Court’s precedents, we explained “[t]he basic principle that ‘[t]he money value of any given kind of property . . . can never be made a legal basis of subdivision or classification for the purpose of imposing unequal burdens on [similarly situated] classes,’ . . . has endured through the years.” Id. at 275 (emphasis added), quoting In re Cope’s Estate, 43 A. 79, 81-82 (Pa. 1899); also citing Amidon v. Kane, 279 A.2d 53 (Pa. 1971) (tax purporting to apply flat rate to income, as established by federal standards and with federal exemptions, violated uniformity); Saulsbury v. Bethlehem Steel Co., 196 A.2d 664 (Pa. 1964) (striking down ordinance imposing tax on individuals engaged in an occupation with gross earnings of $600 or more); Kelley v. Kalodner, 181 A. 598 (Pa. 1935) (graduated income tax violates uniformity).

In line with those cases, we concluded “the General Assembly essentially created a variable-rate tax, fashioning one rate for non-Philadelphia casinos with GTR below $500 million, and another for non-Philadelphia casinos with GTR greater than $500 million.” Id.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 13 at 276. We held “[o]ur case law teaches that such quantitative distinctions lack uniformity because any ‘classification that is based solely on a difference in quantity of precisely the same kind of property is necessarily unjust, arbitrary, and illegal.’” Id., quoting Cope’s Estate, 43 A. at 81 (emphasis added). Further, we were not swayed by the Department of Revenue’s rationale that the tax scheme was rational because it would provide a significant source of new revenue. See id. at 278. “This is beside the point[,]” we concluded. Id. “Were we to hold that the legislature’s mere desire to increase tax revenue empowers it to impose non-uniform taxes, we would nullify the Uniformity Clause.” Id. Here, where the subclassification for selection of properties to appeal is based on the amount a property has appreciated in actual value, I do not see how the School District’s methodology can comply with these precedents. I recognize that Mt. Airy #1 involved a rate challenge rather than a challenge to assessment appeal methodology, but I see no reason why its rule would not apply in equal force here, especially where our law imposes more stringent rules about classifications in the real property context. See Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1212 (“Property taxation[ ] is different.”). In either context, the Uniformity Clause does not allow taxing authorities to discriminate against property owners based on the value of their property when imposing burdens.

In the same vein, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s assertion that tax- liability deficit is an acceptable metric for identifying the most nonuniform properties in a district. As defined by the majority, “[a] property’s ‘tax-liability deficit’ is the difference between the property’s current tax liability and what that liability would be if the property’s assessment ratio — that is, the ratio of the property’s assessed value to its fair market value, see Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 966 n.1 — were to be conformed to the CLR.”

Majority Opinion at 8 n.8. But uniformity is about everyone paying their “fair share of the

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 14 cost of government.” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 979. It is for that reason that we require tax liability to be proportionate to value. See id. at 973 (“it [is] an established feature of Pennsylvania uniformity jurisprudence that ‘all real estate is a constitutionally designated class entitled to uniform treatment and the ratio of assessed value to market value adopted by the taxing authority must be applied equally and uniformly to all real estate within the taxing authority’s jurisdiction’”) (emphasis added), quoting Westinghouse, 652 A.2d at 1314; Downingtown Area Sch. Dist., 913 A.2d at 199 (“a taxpayer is entitled to relief under the Uniformity Clause where his property is assessed at a higher percentage of fair market value than other properties throughout the taxing district”) (emphasis added); Appeal of F.W. Woolworth Co., 235 A.2d 793, 795 (Pa. 1967) (“uniformity has as its heart the equalization of the ratio among [a]ll properties in the district”) (emphasis added); Commonwealth ex rel. Dep’t of Justice v. A. Overholt & Co., 200 A. 849, 853 (Pa. 1938) (“when taxes are levied upon property there must be an apportionment with reference to a uniform standard, or they degenerate into mere arbitrary exactions”) (emphasis added), quoting Cooley, 2 Constitutional Limitations at 1040 (8th Ed.); Del., L. & W. R. Co.’s Tax Assessment, 73 A. at 430 (Uniformity Clause requires that “[t]he large property owner and the small holder pay upon the same ratio”) (emphasis added). In this context, we have no reason to apply a blunt dollar-amount metric like tax-liability deficit to measure uniformity (or lack thereof) rather than a metric that accounts for one’s proportionate share.

If we use tax-liability deficit as the measuring stick for lack of uniformity, higher value properties are more likely to be considered more nonuniform just because they have a higher tax liability to begin with. For example, imagine a single-family home that is assessed at only 25% of its fair market value (using round numbers, imagine it is assessed at $100,000 but its actual value is $400,000), versus an apartment complex

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 15 that is assessed at 40% of its fair market value (imagine it is assessed at $4 million but its actual value is $10 million). If the CLR were 50% (assuming the CLR applies rather than the established predetermined ratio), the home would be underassessed by $100,000 ($400,000 multiplied by 50%, minus $100,000), and the apartment complex would be underassessed by $1 million ($10 million times 50%, minus $4 million). The apartment complex is paying closer to its proportional share, but if tax-liability deficit is the metric used to select properties to appeal, it will be chosen over the single-family home every time. 11 The majority opines that “[i]f market forces change so that single- family residences rise in value compared to commercial properties, it is expected that more residential properties will be appealed at that juncture.” Majority Opinion at 28. But the majority does not show its math. I question the likelihood that if an average single- family home one day meets the $10,000 threshold, it would be selected for appeal where many commercial properties would almost certainly have a higher tax-liability deficit, even if they did not “rise in value compared to” single-family residences, as the Majority

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 16 speculates might occur someday. Id.; accord Dissenting Opinion (Donohue, J.) at 6 (“Short of the entire collapse of all elements of the commercial realty sectors, it is hard to imagine when, if ever, the market will fluctuate in such a manner that the average single- family residence will be able to generate revenue comparable to that of commercial properties.”). 12

The mere fact that all appealed properties were commercial does not per se create a violation of the Uniformity Clause.”); Punxsutawney Area Sch. Dist. v. Broadwing Timber, LLC, 2019 WL 5561413, at *9 (Pa. Cmwlth. Oct. 29, 2019) (“[T]hat the District’s practice thus far has resulted in appeals of commercial or commercially-used properties is not determinative where that practice is implemented or carried out without regard to the type or ownership of a property. . . . So far, no sale of residential properties has resulted in a high enough realty transfer tax to warrant review, and Broadwing has not presented evidence to the contrary. That is not to say that none will in the future[.]”) (emphasis in original); E. Stroudsburg Area Sch. Dist. v. Meadow Lake Plaza, LLC, 2019 WL 5250831, at *6 (Pa. Cmwlth. Oct. 17, 2019) (“We conclude that the $10,000 threshold is reasonable and does not violate the uniformity requirement of the Pennsylvania Constitution, despite the fact that in this particular instance, only commercial properties in the School District met that threshold.”); In re Springfield Sch. Dist., 101 A.3d 835, 849 (Pa. 2014) (“The fact that the $500,000 threshold would mostly subject commercial properties to assessment appeals does not warrant a different conclusion.”). It is not a fluke that these policies result in the disproportionate appeals of commercial/non-residential properties. I question how long our courts can, with a straight face, say that maybe someday these policies will apply equally to single-family homes.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 17 Additionally, nothing in the School District’s policy requires that the other properties in the district must be appealed before the subject properties can be re-appealed.

Theoretically, only high-value properties could be subject to appeals year after year, even if their fair market value increases at a slower rate than their neighbors. 13 While this system keeps select, high-value properties assessed based on their actual value, it improperly leaves the majority of other properties in the School District under-assessed in perpetuity. See, e.g., Narehood v. Pearson, 96 A.2d 895, 899 (Pa. 1953) (“the intentional, systematic undervaluation by state officials of taxable property of the same class belonging to other owners contravenes the constitutional right of one taxed upon the full value of his property”) (citation omitted). Thus, I would hold the School District’s application of its policy violated the Uniformity Clause, and I disagree with the majority’s holding that tax-liability deficit is an appropriate metric for lack of uniformity.

III. Differential Treatment Versus Differential Effect The majority acknowledges our precedents “establish that the Uniformity Clause prohibits intentional or systematic differential treatment of subclasses of property, whether the governmental conduct is ‘wrongful’ or not.” Majority Opinion at 30. “But[,]” it continues, “that does not mean the Uniformity Clause imports the concept of ‘disparate impact’ wholesale from civil rights law and applies it the same way.” Id., citing Punxsutawney, 2019 WL 5561413, at *5. Instead, according to the majority:

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 18 The Uniformity Clause focuses on purposeful differential treatment, not differential impact. A neutral, systematic treatment of all properties might affect different properties differently due to their economic value, which varies as the economy and markets fluctuate. To violate the Uniformity Clause, the classification would have to be drawn in a way that indicates the members of one class will be treated differently regardless of such changes, which did not occur here.

Id. at 30-31 (emphasis in original).

Although I do not contend the “Uniformity Clause imports the concept of ‘disparate impact’ wholesale from civil rights law[,]” id. at 30, I disagree with the majority insofar as it suggests that differential impact is irrelevant or that the policy would have to be drawn to facially discriminate against members of a subclass in order for the Uniformity Clause to kick in. In my view, such a holding is irreconcilable with our holding in Clifton.

In that case, taxpayers challenged Allegheny County’s base year method 14 for property valuation, where after a series of litigation, assessments for 2006 and subsequent years were to be based on properties’ values from a 2002 base year.

Although we held the base year method was not facially unconstitutional, we held its application in Allegheny County led to a lack of uniformity. See Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1221- 22. In doing so, we explained that typically, a taxpayer bringing a uniformity challenge “must demonstrate that: (1) the enactment results in some form of classification; and (2) such classification is unreasonable and not rationally related to any legitimate state purpose.” Id. at 1211. We also explained that “when a method or formula for computing a tax will, in its operation or effect, produce arbitrary, unjust, or unreasonably “Under a base year system of valuation, a county performs a countywide reassessment of all real property in the base year, and then uses each property’s base year assessment as that property’s basis for taxation in the base year, as well as its basis (i.e., assessed value) in subsequent years. . . . In the base year, a property’s assessed value may be 100% of its actual value, and thus, assessments of all real estate in the county are based on actual, fair market value for the base year. Each year thereafter, however, a given property’s market value may change, but its assessment ordinarily remains static, fixed at its base year level until the next countywide reassessment.” Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1203 (citations omitted).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 19 discriminatory results, the uniformity requirement is violated.” Id. (emphasis added). And as noted above, we clarified that property taxation is different because “real property is the classification[,]” meaning in property tax challenges, a court “often needs only to focus on the first prong of the uniformity analysis — whether the statute results in a ‘classification’ — because in the property taxation context, any disparity in tax liability, beyond the expected practical inequities, most likely constitutes a violation of the Uniformity Clause.” Id. at 1212-13 (emphasis in original).

We held that the taxpayers failed to lodge a successful facial challenge, explaining a base year system might not implicate the Uniformity Clause “if, for example, a county conducted adequate periodic reassessments, or if it could be shown that property values in a particular county remained relatively unchanged, or those values had virtually the same rate of change.” Id. at 1224. But based on the evidence presented at trial, we held that the indefinite base year assessment system used in Allegheny County “resulted in significant disparities in the ratio of assessed value to current actual value[.]” Id. at 1222.

We observed “[t]he disparity is most often to the disadvantage of owners of properties in lower-value neighborhoods where property values often appreciate at a lower rate than in higher-value neighborhoods, if they appreciate at all.” Id. We relied on “the proportionality principle, which forms the basis of the uniformity requirement, [and] requires that taxpayers pay no more or less than their proportionate share of the cost of government.” Id. at 1224 (“To ensure proportionality, all property must be taxed uniformly, with the same ratio of assessed value to actual value applied throughout the taxing jurisdiction.”). We explained the evidence showed property values in Allegheny County changed over time and at varying rates in different neighborhoods, so the frozen values applied under the base year method resulted in disparities. See id. at 1225.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 20 In light of Clifton, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s assertion “[t]he Uniformity Clause focuses on purposeful differential treatment, not differential impact.”

Majority Opinion at 30 (emphasis in original). Viewed through Clifton’s lens, although the initial treatment of property owners in Allegheny County was not differential when the county first established the 2002 base year (everyone was assessed at their 2002 fair market value), the base year method violated uniformity because it had a differential impact when property values changed at varying rates within the County and the base values stayed the same. Likewise, Clifton disproves the majority’s assertion that “[a] neutral, systematic treatment of all properties might affect different properties differently due to their economic value, which varies as the economy and markets fluctuate[,]” but “[t]o violate the Uniformity Clause, the classification would have to be drawn in a way that indicates the members of one class will be treated differently regardless of such changes[.]” Id. at 30-31. “[S]uch changes” in economic values are exactly what caused the Uniformity Clause violation in Clifton, notwithstanding the facially neutral policy. See also GM Berkshire, 290 A.3d at 250 (Mundy, J., OISA) (“If pronounced inequalities become pervasive, relief compelling a countywide reassessment may be available.”); Mount Airy #1, 154 A.3d at 277 (we may not “overlook the patently discriminatory effect of a particular tax merely because the General Assembly employed a formula that, at first blush, does not resemble a traditional variable-rate tax”); Beattie v. Allegheny Cty., 907 A.2d 519, 523-24 (Pa. 2006) (in case about administrative exhaustion, affirming Commonwealth Court decision that if “a discriminatory effect [against lower value homes] exists from the systematic application of the [c]ounty’s mass appraisal system, the adequacy of the statutory remedy provided to taxpayers must be evaluated, for if it is inadequate the trial court may be permitted to exercise its equity jurisdiction”).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 21 In my view, even if the School District’s policy were facially neutral (it’s not, because it differentiates between properties above and below the monetary threshold), it clearly has an unequal effect on non-residential properties. Specifically, as of 2019, only one residential property had been appealed under the School District’s policy, which had been in effect since 2012. See Trial Court Opinion, 3/8/22, at 2. Moreover, of the sixteen properties appealed for the tax years at issue in this case, none were residential. See Ex. M-21 at 3 (unpaginated) (chart of final list of properties for appeal showing two were apartment complexes, two were industrial, eleven were commercial, and one was “Restaurants, Stores (retail)”). According to Taxpayers’ expert, Dr. Angelides, single- family residences comprised 84.2% of all properties in the School District during Tax Year 2020 but 0% of the appeals, while commercial properties comprised only 2.9% of all properties in the School District but 75% of appeals, apartments comprised only 0.2% of all properties but 12.5% of appeals, and industrial properties comprised only 0.1% of all properties but 12.5% of appeals. See Angelides Report at 5 (Table 1). 15 Thus, it is patent from the record that although single-family homes comprise the vast majority of properties in the School District, they are being appealed at a strikingly low rate compared to non- residential properties.

But even if one does not believe Taxpayer built a sufficient record here to establish the School District’s policy has a disparate effect on commercial and other non-residential property types, we should not foreclose the possibility a taxpayer could prove a disparate

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 22 effect in other cases using methods similar to those employed in Clifton, analyzing, for example, the coefficient of dispersion and the price-related differential (which is an accepted indicator of inequity between high-value properties and low value properties).

Certainly, as in Clifton, one could foresee how over time, the School District’s policy could impact different neighborhoods differently, if values rise and fall at different rates within the district (which difference could be further exacerbated by the different millage rates among the different municipalities). Or, imagine if this policy continues for another decade, and still the School District appeals only a nominal amount of single-family residences. Unlike the majority, I would leave open the possibility that a differential impact, proven by such means, violates the Uniformity Clause.

IV. Conclusion For all of the above reasons, I respectfully dissent. Moreover, I take this opportunity to reiterate the point I first made in GM Berkshire: “The underlying inequity that arises by permitting clearly outdated, decades-old assessments to continue indefinitely for most properties in a district, while identifying the greatest outliers from those assessments to challenge, could be cured by more frequent county-wide assessments of all properties in each taxing district.” 290 A.3d at 259-60 (Dougherty, J., OISR). This is an ongoing problem requiring a legislative fix. And although “I am cognizant of the political unpopularity frequent and costly county-wide property reassessments likely entail[,]” “the Uniformity Clause prohibits disparate treatment ‘in order to avoid political accountability.’” Id., quoting Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 979.

Chief Justice Todd and Justice Donohue join this dissenting opinion.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 23

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.]

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA MIDDLE DISTRICT

DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT : No. 45 MAP 2024 : : Appeal from the Order of the v. : Commonwealth Court at No. 92 : CD 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Chester County Court of Common ASSESSMENT APPEALS : Pleas, Civil Division, at No. 2019- TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.3 : 11728-AB dated January 18, 2022 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT : DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT : No. 46 MAP 2024 : : Appeal from the Order of the v. : Commonwealth Court at No. 93 : CD 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Chester County Court of Common ASSESSMENT APPEALS : Pleas, Civil Division, at No. 2019- TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.2 : 11727-AB dated January 18, 2022 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT :

DISSENTING OPINION

JUSTICE DONOHUE DECIDED: May 19, 2026 The Majority’s opinion runs counter to the bedrock principles of uniformity and undermines this Court’s precedent. Accordingly, I dissent. 1

The Uniformity Clause provides that “[a]ll taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws.” PA. CONST. art. VIII, § 1. In Valley Forge Tower Apartments v. Upper Merion School District, 163 A.3d 962 (Pa. 2017), we held that, pursuant to the Uniformity Clause, a school district’s policy of selectively reassessing commercial properties violated the Pennsylvania Constitution, reaffirming that “all property must be taxed uniformly ... throughout the taxing jurisdiction.” Id. at 977, 980.

Thus, such reassessment policies must not be directed by “the type of property in question or the residency status of its owner.” Id. at 979. We explained that taxing entities’ objectives should not be limited solely to generating necessary revenues; they must also ensure that taxes are imposed equitably. Id. Accordingly, we reasoned that “[w]here there is a conflict between maximizing revenue and ensuring that the taxing system is implemented in a non-discriminatory way, the Uniformity Clause requires that the latter goal be given primacy.” Id. at 980. However, the Majority has instead decided to invert that principle, setting revenue maximization above the mandates of our Constitution.

We recognized in Valley Forge that taxing entities must use and acquire public funds wisely to “obtain[] needed revenues” to support important objectives; however, we stressed that “[t]he government must be concerned with ensuring a rough equalization of tax burdens under a structure in which taxes are imposed, adjusted, and collected equitably.” Id. at 979. This means that while taxation may not always be perfectly equitable across all subclasses of realty, the policies of a taxing entity must be to effectuate as equitable a system of taxation as possible. See Clifton v. Allegheny Cnty., 969 A.2d 1197, 1212 (Pa. 2009) (“Taxation, however, is not a matter of exact science; hence absolute equality and perfect uniformity are not required to satisfy the constitutional

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 2 uniformity requirement. Some practical inequalities are obviously anticipated, and so long as the taxing scheme does not impose substantially unequal tax burdens, rough uniformity with a limited amount of variation is permitted.”) (citations omitted). Thus, we recognized that the “two objectives do not necessarily conflict.” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 980. That is not to say that the conflict does not exist—our rationale clearly states otherwise—but rather that in practice the conflict will arise. When this conflict between inequitable taxation and revenue generation goes too far, the resolution is clear—we follow our Constitution. In other words, when business decisions to maximize revenue are given more weight than the goals of the Uniformity Clause, a taxing policy is patently unconstitutional. Id. at 980. Unfortunately, ignoring our stated prioritization, the Majority’s takeaway from Valley Forge is simply that “maximizing revenue and ensuring non- discriminatory implementation of the taxing system do not necessarily conflict[.]” Majority Op. at 10 n.11. Thus, the Majority is of the mind that there is no conflict between these two goals. Its rationale supports the notion that so long as a taxing entity is seeking to maximize revenue, however they do so is effectively irrelevant.

According to the Majority, there is no indication that the School District “was motivated to appeal the subject property because of its type, usage, or where its new owner lived; rather, it was a transparent attempt to obtain more tax money by conforming the property’s assessment to the [common-level ratio (‘CLR’)].” Majority Op. at 21 (emphasis added). While the Majority may be correct that this is the practical “purpose of Section 8855[,]” 2 id., the “statutory right to appeal assessments … alone Section 8855 provides: A taxing district shall have the right to appeal any assessment within its jurisdiction in the same manner, subject to the same procedure and with like effect as if the appeal were taken by a taxable person with respect to the assessment, and, in addition, may take an appeal from any decision of the board (continued…) [J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 3 cannot justify action which the Uniformity Clause prohibits.” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 978. Thus, a tax policy cannot solely be intended for the purpose of maximizing revenue regardless of the consequences. If that were the case, then this Court would never have found any taxing policy in violation of the Uniformity Clause. But the Majority has seen fit to approve any taxing scheme if the taxing entity seeks to maximize revenue and does not publicize its intention to only seek reassessment of those properties that will provide the government with the most money.

In discussing the methodology of the School District’s consultant, the Majority endorses the practice of “maximiz[ing] the return” so long as the properties selected for reassessment are those “expected to yield the greatest collective return to the school district.” Majority Op. at 23. The simplest way to do this, of course, would be to only reassess those properties of the highest value. It comes as no surprise that commercial, industrial, and apartment complex properties are all higher value properties compared to single-family residential properties. 3 Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 966 (noting that commercial property values are “generally higher than those of single-family homes”).

The Majority recognizes precisely this fact. See Majority Op. at 27. In explaining why only commercial properties have been reassessed under the School District’s policy, the Majority notes that this is “due to the value of such properties,” but “[i]f market forces change so that single-family residences rise in value compared to commercial properties, or court of common pleas as though it had been a party to the proceedings before the board or court even though it was not a party in fact. A taxing district authority may intervene in any appeal by a taxable person under section 8854 (relating to appeals to court) as a matter of right.

53 Pa.C.S. § 8855.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 4 it is expected that more residential properties will be appealed at that juncture[.]” Id. at 26-27. The likelihood of the market value of the typical single-family residence increasing to a valuation comparable to that of commercial properties is effectively non-existent.

Thus, under the Majority’s revenue maximization justification, single-family residences could never be reassessed, and this would satisfy the Majority’s understanding of the Uniformity Clause. 4

My principal concern is the Majority’s holding that tax policy decisions can be driven solely by the government’s desire to maximize revenue. This renders monetary thresholds completely irrelevant. See infra pp. 6-7. By setting revenue maximization as the goal, all that matters is the actual value of the properties themselves, not whether it can reach a fictitious monetary threshold. Because the value of commercial properties are generally much higher than the average single-family residence, the Majority’s methodology ensures that single-family residential properties will never be selected for reassessment.

We see this borne out in the instant case. Despite single-family residences comprising 84.2% of all properties in the jurisdiction, see infra p. 7 & note 5—and, as the Majority highlights, there may have at least “thirty single-family residences that met the $10,000 threshold,” Majority Op. at 31 n.32—no such properties were appealed. That is because when the policy is revenue maximization, the government is bound to select the highest value properties.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 5 The Majority fully acknowledges that the School District’s policy resulted in zero appeals of residential properties in the relevant tax year. Id. at 27 (observing that no residential properties were appealed in the “tax year 2020”). Under this same policy, in fact, we only have a reference to a single other instance of a residential property being reassessed “a number of years ago.” N.T., 6/2/2021, at 18. That appeal was notable to the president of the School District’s board at the time, as it “surprised” her that a residential property could generate $10,000 more in revenue. See id. at 20 (“[F]rom my perspective, I was surprised the house could generate that much more in revenue.”). The Majority has no problem with this result because, in its view, the result of a policy is irrelevant to the Uniformity Clause. All that matters is that a taxing entity does not publicly state its policy to subject a subclass of property to differential treatment. Majority Op. at (“The Uniformity Clause focuses on purposeful differential treatment, not differential impact.”) (emphasis in original).

Again, based on its view that maximization of revenue is a singularly appropriate tax policy justification, the Majority explains that [a] neutral, systematic treatment of all properties might affect different properties differently due to their economic value, which varies as the economy and markets fluctuate. To violate the Uniformity Clause, the classification would have to be drawn in a way that indicates the members of one class will be treated differently regardless of such changes, which did not occur here.

Id. In other words, single-family residential properties have less market value compared to commercial properties and thus, until that changes, only commercial properties will be reassessed under the School District’s policy. Short of the entire collapse of all elements of the commercial realty sectors, it is hard to imagine when, if ever, the market will fluctuate in such a manner that the average single-family residence will be able to generate revenue comparable to that of commercial properties. However, because the

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 6 Majority finds the School District’s policy to be “facially neutral,” id. at 25, the effect or intention behind the School District’s policy can be completely ignored.

Coupled with its flawed conclusion that tax equalization is not to be prioritized over maximizing revenue, the Majority proclaims, for the first time in this Court’s history, that the use of monetary threshold tax policies is lawful. It is this policy that the Majority finds to be “facially neutral” for purposes of the instant matter; or rather, it finds that such a policy does not violate the Uniformity Clause “without more[.]” Majority Op. at 10. I can only assume that the “more” the Majority is referring to is an express policy to subject only one subclass of realty to a monetary threshold. Otherwise, it would seem that it has justified the use of any monetary threshold, regardless of the amount. Even here, where single-family residences make up 84.2% of all properties in the jurisdiction, 5 the Majority finds no problem where none of those properties are subject to appeal. N.T., 11/17/2021, at 77. This blessing results from the Majority’s position that the maximization of revenue is an acceptable selection criterion without regard to the constitutional mandate to prioritize equalization of tax burdens among all classes of real property. However, in endorsing this maximization of revenue rationale, the Majority renders monetary thresholds entirely irrelevant. If all that matters is the maximization of revenue, then what purpose does a monetary threshold serve? Under the Majority’s rationale, regardless of the chosen threshold, the same properties will be selected for appeal—those that generate the most revenue. Under this framework, monetary thresholds merely serve as a guise for policies seeking to appeal only those properties with the highest value.

It is axiomatic that the values of commercial properties are “generally higher than those of single-family homes, and hence, raising their assessments would result in a Apartment, commercial, and industrial buildings make up 3.2% of all properties in the School District, and yet these properties comprise 100% of the School District’s 2019 appeals. N.T., 11/17/2021, at 78.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 7 greater tax-revenue increase[.]” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 966. To the Majority, so long as a taxing entity seeks to maximize revenue under the guise of a monetary threshold, the government can put into place a taxing scheme that results exclusively in appeals of commercial properties. The Majority has manufactured a loophole to uniformity. It endorses a method of taxation that will result in the appeal of only commercial properties so long as the government does not publicize its intent to do so. That is precisely what happened here. We cannot blind ourselves to the reality of a taxing scheme that exclusively targets commercial properties for assessment appeals.

The School District is doing indirectly what it cannot do directly, i.e., selectively appealing commercial properties. Even if the School District had good intentions and sought to be fiscally responsible, “any intentional or systematic enforcement of the laws” that “treats commercial properties differently from other types of parcels” is unconstitutional. Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 975. The $10,000 threshold which was driven by the goal to maximize revenue caused the School District’s third-party consultant to focus almost exclusively on commercial properties. Here, the consultant limited his review of single-family residential properties to only those that were 3,500 square feet or more, which eliminated an unknown—though likely considerable—number of such properties for consideration. N.T., 11/17/2021, at 27. This was all in an effort to maximize revenue, the “hard and fast rule,” the Majority is so quick to endorse. Accordingly, the School District’s consultant was effectively required to treat commercial properties as the only targets for appeal. This policy clearly results in decisions that discriminate against one subclass of property, and thus, it is in violation of the Uniformity Clause.

Based on the above, I conclude that the School District’s policy violates the Uniformity Clause. Accordingly, I dissent.

Chief Justice Todd and Justice Dougerty join this dissenting opinion.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] [MO: Mundy, J.] - 8

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA MIDDLE DISTRICT TODD, C.J., DONOHUE, DOUGHERTY, WECHT, MUNDY, BROBSON, McCAFFERY, JJ.

DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL : No. 45 MAP 2024 DISTRICT : : Appeal from the Order of the : Commonwealth Court at No. 92 CD v. : 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the Chester : County Court of Common Pleas, CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Civil Division, at No. 2019-11728-AB ASSESSMENT APPEALS : dated January 18, 2022 TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.3 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 : APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT : DOWNINGTOWN AREA SCHOOL : No. 46 MAP 2024 DISTRICT : : Appeal from the Order of the : Commonwealth Court at No. 93 CD v. : 2022 dated October 6, 2023, : Reversing the Order of the Chester : County Court of Common Pleas, CHESTER COUNTY BOARD OF : Civil Division, at No. 2019-11727-AB ASSESSMENT APPEALS : dated January 18, 2022 TAX PARCEL NO.: 33-5-43.2 : : ARGUED: September 11, 2025 : APPEAL OF: DOWNINGTOWN AREA : SCHOOL DISTRICT :

OPINION JUSTICE MUNDY DECIDED: May 19, 2026 An owner of real property challenges the policy and practice of a school district in deciding which properties’ assessed values to appeal pursuant to Section 8855 of the Consolidated County Assessment Law (the “Assessment Law”). 1 The Commonwealth Court sustained the challenge, and we allowed further review. The questions presented include whether taxing districts may implement a policy that uses a monetary threshold to select properties for appeal, and if so, whether the school district applied its policy in a permissible manner in the present case.

I. Background Marchwood Apartments (Taxpayer), appellee herein, owns an apartment complex consisting of two parcels operating as a single economic unit (collectively, the subject property). The parcels are located within appellant Downingtown Area School District, which has a policy under which it only appeals property assessments that may result in additional tax revenues of at least $10,000 per annum. The policy does not limit the number of appeals the School District may lodge in each tax year, and it instructs the district to appeal without regard for the type or use of the parcel. It has been in effect since 2012, and during that time appeals initiated by the School District have included properties classified as industrial, farm, commercial, residential, and apartment complex.

For tax year 2020, the School District’s consultant, Valbridge Property Advisors, identified fifteen parcels that met the monetary threshold. Thereafter, the district added the subject property to make sixteen total, none of which was a single-family home. The School District appealed all sixteen assessments to the county board of assessment appeals. See 53 Pa.C.S. § 8855 (authorizing appeals by taxing districts of properties within their boundaries that they believe are assessed too low). After the board denied the School District’s appeal of the subject property, the district sought judicial review.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 2 The county court held a de novo hearing at which the parties stipulated to the fair market value of the subject property for the relevant tax years – which by then also included 2021 and 2022. 2 The issue was whether the appeal policy was constitutional, on its face and as applied. Taxpayer presented the testimony of Reaves Lukens, III, the Valbridge employee who identified the properties to appeal for the School District, and Dr. Peter Angelides, an expert in economics and city planning who testified regarding a study he authored purporting to show most properties in the School District were residential and some of them satisfied the threshold. The county court reversed the board’s decision. It reasoned that the policy uses a purely economic approach that does not discriminate according to property type, and that residential, commercial, apartment complex, and industrial properties had all been appealed pursuant to it. It thus set the subject property’s fair market value per the parties’ stipulation. See supra note 2.

A divided three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court reversed. See Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cnty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 303 A.3d 1104 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2023). The majority observed that while this Court was evenly divided on the permissibility of using a monetary threshold in GM Berkshire Hills v. Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals, 290 A.3d 238 (Pa. 2023), the Commonwealth Court had held in that matter, and in prior decisions, 3 that such a threshold is lawful because it reflects an effort to be fiscally responsible and does not amount to purposeful

2020); In re Springfield Sch. Dist., 101 A.3d 835 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2014); Weissberger v. Chester Cnty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 62 A.3d 501 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2013).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 3 discrimination. However, the majority found that even if the appeal policy itself was valid, the School District implemented it in an arbitrary manner. The court identified aspects of the record suggesting there were more properties that satisfied the monetary threshold and the original fifteen were chosen arbitrarily; the School District offered no explanation for adding the subject property to the list of fifteen identified by the consultant; and the School District had arbitrarily elected not to appeal a property that met the threshold because that property’s attorney was described as “aggressive.” See Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1114 (“This random application of a monetary threshold created a lack of uniformity in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”).

President Judge Cohn Jubelirer filed a dissenting opinion, agreeing that the policy was valid, and concluding it was validly applied. She disagreed to the extent the majority implied all properties surpassing the threshold must be appealed. She also read the record differently than the majority. She concluded it was unclear whether the School District was aware of the additional properties that met the monetary threshold, the majority selectively read portions of Mr. Lukens’s testimony, and the subject property was added to the list because it was recently sold and met the threshold. As for the implication that the School District did not appeal a property because its attorney was “aggressive,” she cast that as an oversimplification of the record. She explained the attorney was known to aggressively pursue the dark-store theory which, if successful, would have lowered the property’s assessment and caused the School District to lose money, thus making an appeal risky. Id. at 1123-24. 4

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 4 This Court allowed further appeal to consider whether the Commonwealth Court erred (1) by holding that the School District must appeal “all potentially underassessed properties” in order to comply with the Uniformity Clause, or (2) by holding that the School District’s implementation of its appeal policy was arbitrary on the present record. See Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cnty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals Tax Parcel No.: 33-5-43.3, 320 A.3d 661, 662 (Pa. 2024) (per curiam).

II. Governing law Under the Assessment Law, property owners may appeal their assessments when they believe the property’s assessed value is too high. See 53 Pa.C.S. §§ 8844 (relating to administrative appeals to a county assessment board), 8854 (relating to appeals to court). Taxing districts such as school districts, see id. § 8802 (defining “taxing districts” to include school districts), are also authorized to appeal the assessments of properties within their boundaries, when they believe an assessment is too low. See id. § 8855.

Although the Assessment Law gives taxing districts discretion to decide which properties to appeal, the exercise of that discretion is limited by the Uniformity Clause, which states: All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws.

PA. CONST. art. VIII, § 1.

This Court’s decision in Valley Forge Towers Apartments N v. Upper Merion Area School District, 163 A.3d 962 (Pa. 2017), illustrates one such limitation. In Valley Forge, a school district had enacted a policy of only appealing assessments of commercial properties, while not appealing assessments of other types of properties such as single- family homes. The school district claimed it had a neutral motivation: the greater prospect of recouping appeal costs through enhanced tax revenue from commercial properties.

We held that targeting specific types of property created a subclass of properties within

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 5 the school district that were treated differently than the others, and the appeal policy was accordingly discriminatory in violation of the Uniformity Clause. See id. at 978-80 (relying on Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 913 A.2d 194 (Pa. 2006), and Clifton v. Allegheny Cty., 969 A.2d 1197 (Pa. 2009)). We clarified that nothing in this opinion should be construed as suggesting that the use of a monetary threshold . . . or some other selection criteria would violate uniformity if it were implemented without regard to the type of property in question or the residency status of its owner. Such methodologies are not presently before the Court.

Id. at 979 (footnote omitted). Six years later, in Berkshire, this Court was evenly divided on whether a school district’s policy was non-uniform where a property’s assessment would only be appealed if it was recently purchased as shown by data provided by the State Taxation Equalization Board (STEB), 5 and it appeared to be underassessed by at least $150,000 – that is, the recent sales price times the common-level ratio (CLR), minus the current assessed value, was at least $150,000. 6 The prospect of having only recently- purchased properties be eligible for appeal was of particular concern to the Justices who The STEB was established by the State Tax Equalization Board Law. See 71 P.S.

§§ 1709.1500-1709.1521 (formerly 72 P.S. §§ 4656.1-4656.17). Among other functions, it examines local tax assessment records and other public records, and it compiles data showing the prices at which parcels of real property in each school district have been sold. See 71 P.S. § 1709.1508.

§ 1709.1516a(b). The CLR utilized in Berkshire was the Berks County CLR for 2017, which was computed as the arithmetic mean of the individual sales ratios for every sale reported to the STEB by Berks County during calendar year 2017, excluding outliers. See 48 Pa. Bull. 3392 (June 2, 2018). The parties stipulated that Chester County’s CLR in 2020, 2021, and 2022 was .493, .47, and .45 respectively. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 6.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 6 favored reversal in that matter. See id. at 253-54 (Opinion in Support of Reversal by Donohue, J.) (expressing that the district’s practice of only considering recently- purchased properties created a subclassification by omitting most properties in the district, and observing that, under the policy, two identical townhouses side-by-side would receive differential treatment if only one was recently sold).

III. Use of a monetary threshold Unlike the Wilson School District’s policy in GM Berkshire Hills, the Downingtown Area School District’s policy here does not require that the district, in every tax year, limit its consideration to recently-purchased properties. The policy states in full: Purpose The [School] Board has the responsibility to equalize the cost of providing a quality education among all property taxpayers. The Board is limited in its ability to do this by property assessment procedures and an established appeal process operated under the jurisdiction of Chester County Government.

Guidelines Where in the interest of all property taxpayers an appeal can reasonably be made, the Board will do so under the following conditions: 1. The Chief Financial Officer shall annually review recent real estate transactions and/or work with a third party firm to identify properties that may be underassessed.

2. The administration shall provide to the Board a list of tax parcels which have been identified for consideration for a district-initiated real estate tax assessment appeal for the current year. Subject to review and approval of the Board, only property [sic] that may potentially result in total annual additional tax revenue of $10,000 or more to be collected in the aggregate by the taxing districts within the Downingtown Area School District as a result of an appeal will be included on this list.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 7 3. Upon recommendation of the Board, a resolution shall be put before the Board approving tax assessment appeals on such properties as may be appropriate. Notification will then be given to the Chester County Assessment Office of the district’s intent to appeal the property’s assessment. The annual appeal deadline is August 1st.

Downingtown Area Sch. Dist. Policy Manual § 600, Code 605.1 (Aug. 8, 2012) (Policy 605.1), reprinted in RR. 186a, and Brief for Appellant at Appx. E (emphasis added).

The emphasized text above, being in the disjunctive, allows the School District to hire a consultant to identify appealable properties instead of reviewing only recent property transactions. Accord N.T., 4/14/2021, at 28, reprinted in RR. 288a (deposition testimony of David Matyas, the School District’s business manager). During the relevant timeframe, the School District worked with a third-party consultant, the aforementioned Mr. Lukens of Valbridge Property Advisors. The evidence he gave at the county court’s de novo hearing is discussed as needed below, but for present purposes he did not testify that the list of appealable assessments he presented to the school district was limited to recently-purchased properties. 7 Mr. Lukens did, however, confirm that per Policy 605.1, he used a minimum $10,000 tax-liability-deficit threshold, meaning he would not select properties whose expected increase in tax revenues was less than $10,000. 8 That being

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 8 the case, the initial question presented herein is whether use of such a threshold, in and of itself – i.e., without any other constraint, including any limitation regarding how recently the property was purchased – is permissible under the Uniformity Clause. If not, the Commonwealth Court’s order granting relief to Taxpayer should be affirmed on that basis alone without reaching any other issue.

Where a taxing district’s policy along these lines does not create a prohibited subclass of properties defined by an impermissible characteristic such as type, use, neighborhood, or residency status of the owner, 9 it tends to enhance uniformity by selecting for appeal the properties whose assessments are the most nonuniform in terms of their tax-liability deficit. 10 Bringing these assessments in line with the CLR means the property’s assessment ratio is still less than about half of the other properties in the county, but it is no longer an outlier. This, in turn, enhances fairness to the remaining taxpayers who would otherwise need to pay more of the cost of government than their proportionate share, as the taxing district would otherwise have to raise its millage to meet budgetary needs. Accord Brief for Amicus Easton Area Sch. Dist. & Salisbury Twp. Sch. Dist., at 9. And it is the counterpart to the uniformity precept, established in our cases, that overassessed properties must be allowed to lower their assessments to the CLR.

See Keebler Co. v. Bd. of Rev. of Taxes of Phila., 436 A.2d 583, 583 (Pa. 1981); see also Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1228 (acknowledging that appeals of both overassessed and underassessed properties enhance uniformity by forcing them into conformity with the CLR). Furthermore, a taxing district’s use of a monetary threshold to ensure its efforts Nothing in this opinion addresses whether “recently sold” is a prohibited subclass.

See Brief at 19 (referring to this practice as lodging a “suppressive appeal”).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 9 are not a net drain on the public fisc reflects an effort by the district to handle public funds in a responsible and judicious manner based on a cost-benefit analysis. 11 We previously suggested the Uniformity Clause might permit this type of selection methodology, see Valley Forge Towers, 163 A.3d at 979, and we now hold that the use of a monetary threshold, without more, does not violate the Uniformity Clause.

With that said, we also acknowledge a distinction between the threshold utilized by the Wilson School District in Berkshire and the one used by the Downingtown Area School District in this controversy. The Wilson School District appealed properties it believed were underassessed by a certain pre-determined amount, namely, $150,000, 12 regardless of the cumulative millage rate at which the property was taxed. 13 By contrast, the School District here bases its selection on whether an appeal would yield $10,000 in additional taxes in the aggregate by all taxing districts in which that property sits. The expected additional annual tax revenue equals the underassessment multiplied by the cumulative millage rate. By simple arithmetic, then, a property must be underassessed by at least $10,000 divided by the cumulative millage rate to be selected for appeal per See Valley Forge Towers, 163 A.3d at 980 (expressing that maximizing revenue and ensuring non-discriminatory implementation of the taxing system do not necessarily conflict); accord Kennett Consol. Sch. Dist. v. Chester Cty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 228 A.3d 29, 41 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2020) (“Here, the District was using a monetary threshold only for the purpose of making prudent fiscal decisions, and not for the purpose of discriminating against sub-classes of properties.”), appeal dismissed, 259 A.3d 890 (Pa. 2021); Weissenberger v. Chester Cty. Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 62 A.3d 501, 506 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2013) (“Judicious use of resources to legally increase revenue is a legitimate governmental purpose.”).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 10 Policy 605.1. 14 The higher the cumulative millage rate, the less the underassessment must be to yield an extra $10,000 per year. 15 The monetary thresholds used by the School District here and by the Wilson School District in Berkshire are both designed to ensure that appeals are not taken against properties that would yield an increase in tax revenues less than the public cost of litigating the appeal. But where a school district encompasses multiple boroughs or townships with different millage rates, the amount by which a property must be underassessed to be selected will vary depending on where within the School District the property is situated. We mention this because Taxpayer argues Policy 605.1 violates uniformity on this basis. See Brief for Appellee at 42-44 (positing this scheme creates property subclassifications which are treated differently).

The upshot of the mathematical calculations outlined above is that no matter which type of threshold a school district chooses – an underassessment threshold or a tax- liability-deficit threshold – there will be some other numerical measure that does not fully The amount of the underassessment is the amount the School District seeks to raise the assessment: the current fair market value multiplied by the CLR, minus the current assessment. This assumes the CLR varies by more than 15% from the established predetermined ratio (EPR) – which it does in this case – because where such variance is 15% or less the county court is required by statute to use the EPR as the multiplier instead of the CLR. See 53 Pa.C.S. § 8854(a)(3); see also id. § 8844(e)(2). We have previously questioned the constitutionality of Section 8854(a)(3). See Downingtown, 913 A.2d at 202 (describing the provision as giving rise to “an internal, systemic defect” in the statutory scheme, arguably rendering it unconstitutional on its face because, “as a mere consequence of the lodging of an assessment appeal, the benefit of equalization that is otherwise required is lost over a thirty-percent range” of deviation between the CLR and the EPR); accord Berkshire, 290 A.3d at 244 (Opinion in Support of Affirmance).

However, we have not yet been asked to adjudicate a challenge to its validity.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 11 align among all properties. If a school district elects to utilize an underassessment threshold, the resultant tax-liability-deficit threshold will be different depending on the property’s location. On the other hand, if it chooses a tax-liability-deficit threshold, as the School District has done here, it will necessarily be employing (at least by implication) a different minimum underassessment threshold depending on the location of the property, as Taxpayer points out. When the various municipalities encompassed by the school district have different millage rates, there simply is no way, mathematically speaking, for all such numbers to align. 16 But the existence of these different millage rates is a function of local law as enacted in different municipalities – presumably based on the different services provided by those municipalities – and it would be a strained reading of the Uniformity Clause to conclude it permits the use of a monetary threshold only where, by happenstance, the cumulative millage rate is identical for all properties within the school district’s boundaries.

We recently reaffirmed that the “government must be concerned with ensuring a rough equalization of tax burdens under a structure in which taxes are imposed, adjusted, and collected equitably.” Valley Forge Towers, 163 A.3d at 979. This “rough equalization” admits of some play in the joints as necessary to comport with mathematical reality, given that “[t]axation is a practical, and not a scientific problem.” Glen Alden Coal Co. v. Schuylkill Cnty. Comm’rs, 27 A.2d 239, 243 (Pa. 1942); see also Beattie v. Allegheny Cnty., 907 A.2d 519, 529-30 (Pa. 2006). A tax-liability-deficit metric aligns at least as well as an underassessment metric with the Uniformity Clause’s textual directive to make taxes “uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority This problem could be avoided, facially at least, if the School District only cared about the tax-liability deficit to itself based on its own millage rate rather than the overall tax- liability deficit based on the cumulative millage rate. Even if that happened, though, the overall tax-liability deficit needed to meet the threshold would still be different as between properties in different townships.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 12 levying the tax,” PA. CONST. art. VIII, § 1, so that one taxpayer does not foist part of his share of the cost of government upon his neighbors. In this regard, we have observed for more than a century that while “every tax is a burden, it is more cheerfully borne when the citizen feels that he is only required to bear his proportionate share of that burden measured by the value of his property to that of his neighbor.” Del. L. & W. R. Co’s Tax Assessment, 73 A. 429, 430 (Pa. 1909); see Deitch Co. v. Bd. of Prop. Assessment, Appeals & Review of Allegheny Cty., 209 A.2d 397, 401 (Pa. 1965) (affirming the uniformity principle that “a taxpayer should pay no more or no less than his proportionate share of the cost of government”). Accordingly, having held that the Uniformity Clause does not categorically preclude the use of a monetary threshold, we also reject Taxpayer’s contention that the different minimum underassessment figures required for properties in different townships within the School District’s borders causes the district’s methodology to run afoul of our organic law. 17 IV. How the threshold was applied in this case Having concluded the Uniformity Clause does not categorically preclude a taxing district from deciding which properties to appeal by using an express monetary threshold along the lines of the one at issue in this case, we must also consider the way the School District applied its written policy, as the second issue we accepted for review involves Amicus Pennsylvania Apartment Association proposes that instead of a monetary threshold, school districts could use a threshold based on the assessment ratio. It suggests, for example, school districts could appeal all properties with an assessment ratio under 85%. See Brief at 14-16. Because the CLR may be far lower than .85, amicus may be understood as suggesting a school district appeal all properties whose assessment ratio is less than 85% of the CLR – in other words, properties with an assessment ratio deviation from the CLR of at least 15%. See generally Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1216 (discussing deviations from the median, mean, or weighted mean assessment ratio, and the coefficient of dispersion as a measure of the average such deviation). We do not deny that that approach may be viable under the Uniformity Clause. However, we need not definitively address its merits here because its potential validity has no impact on whether a monetary threshold is also allowable.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 13 whether Policy 605.1 was carried out in a discriminatory manner. Examining the record, the Commonwealth Court listed four ways in which it found that the School District applied its policy in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner: (1) the School District appealed sixteen properties while knowing there were many additional parcels that satisfied the monetary threshold, (2) the School District did not appeal a commercial property that met the monetary threshold “for the sole reason that its counsel was aggressive” – a selection criterion the intermediate court described as “discriminatory on its face and unacceptable as a matter of sound public policy,” (3) the subject property was not on Mr. Lukens’s original list of properties to be appealed, and the School District offered no explanation for its subsequent addition to the list, and (4) Mr. Lukens testified he lacked any “hard and fast rule” with respect to the methodology he used to identify properties, and he could not explain the flexible “rules” he used, stating only that he was trying to maximize the return to the School District. See Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1113. We now turn to these facets of the record.

A. More than sixteen properties satisfied the threshold The first basis on which the intermediate court disapproved the School District’s application of Policy 605.1 involved the fact it did not appeal all properties with a projected tax-liability deficiency of at least $10,000. See id; see also id. at 1114 (faulting the School District for undertaking “piecemeal implementation” of its policy by appealing only sixteen properties while “leaving many other underassessed properties alone”). The Commonwealth Court seems to have held, in effect, that any taxing district which decides to use a monetary threshold must appeal all properties that satisfy the threshold or none at all. Although the court did not cite any authority suggesting the Uniformity Clause imposes that specific requirement, its conclusion seems based on a passage from Downingtown Area School District v. Chester County Board of Assessment Appeals, 913

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 14 A.2d 194 (Pa. 2006), where this Court stated, “similarly situated taxpayers should not be deliberately treated differently by taxing authorities.” Id. at 201; see Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1113 (quoting this passage). In Downingtown, we indicated that that concept supported a property owner’s attempt to lower its assessment using the traditional common-law procedure of submitting evidence of comparable properties, regardless of the average assessment ratio prevailing in the county as a whole. See Downingtown, 913 A.2d at 200-02. But until now it has never been relied upon in analyzing how a taxing district must apply an otherwise permissible monetary threshold.

The Commonwealth Court’s holding in this regard, if left in place, would lead to an unreasonable result. Taxing districts “cannot reasonably appeal every property within their borders,” Berkshire, 290 A.3d at 244 (OISA), and the same holds true for all properties meeting a given threshold that happens to sweep in dozens of properties within the taxing district. Here, the evidence suggests over 100 properties out of the 28,000 situated within the School District met the $10,000 threshold. See, e.g., N.T. 11/17/2021, at 25, reprinted in RR. 55a (testimony of Mr. Lukens); accord Brief for Appellee at 32-33 & n.3, 36. Under the Commonwealth Court’s ruling, a taxing district would be unable to employ an otherwise valid financial threshold to narrow down the list of properties to examine further, and then appeal only the most non-uniform of those properties. If the taxing district only has capacity to appeal a certain number of properties per year – which is likely true of all taxing districts given their finite resources18 – it would have to make a lucky guess at a threshold dollar amount that would yield exactly that number of properties

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 15 and no more. 19 Such a rule is impractical and finds no support in the Uniformity Clause’s text or history.

It follows that the School District here did not violate uniformity solely by virtue of its failure to appeal all properties meeting the $10,000 minimum. 20 If the School District had decided to select properties from the list by looking only at one subgroup of properties based on property type or owner residency status, that would obviously violate the uniformity prohibition identified in Valley Forge. But there is no allegation in the present case that the School District did this either directly or through its agent, Valbridge. 21 B. The decision not to appeal the Lowe’s property When Mr. Lukens initially compiled the list of fifteen properties, it included one entry for parcel number 40-02-0095.0000 on the tax map, which was a Lowe’s Home Improvement store. This created some confusion because the list reflected “P-Patch Partners” as the owner rather than Lowe’s, and it gave P-Patch’s address. It turned out

See Brief at 9-10.

Mr. Lukens testified that one problem with appealing too many properties is a risk that all expenditures would be nullified if this Court declared Section 8855 unconstitutional on its face. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 19-25, reprinted in RR. 49a-55a. That is an entirely different concept from trying to fly under the radar.

Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1113 (emphasis added).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 16 P-Patch owned a commercial property with a similar tax map number: 40-02-0095.0200.

When this discrepancy was brought to Mr. Lukens’s attention, he recommended appealing the P-Patch property rather than the Lowe’s property.

Mr. Lukens clarified at the de novo hearing that there was a typographical error in the parcel number, and it was never Valbridge’s intention to include Lowe’s on the list.

See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 59, reprinted in RR. 89a. But he had also given the School District a separate reason to leave Lowe’s off the list: he knew the attorney handling tax appeals for Lowe’s, who was “very aggressive on the dark store theory.” Hearing Exhibit M-6 (email from Mr. Lukens to the School District and its solicitor); see also N.T., 11/17/2021 at 41-42, reprinted in RR. 71a-72a. Mr. Lukens testified such an appeal would have been risky because if the dark store theory were to be credited by a reviewing court – a very real possibility in his mind – the Lowe’s assessment could decrease, which would cost the School District money for a fruitless appeal and lower its revenue. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 42, reprinted in RR. 82a; see also id. at 40 (explaining the Lowe’s property had “a high risk of blowing up in your face on appeal because you could argue it’s over assessed based on the dark store theory”). Finally, Mr. Lukens clarified this would be true regardless of whether he was personally familiar with the attorney handling tax appeals for Lowe’s. See id. at 43-44, reprinted in RR. 73a-74a.

The Commonwealth Court described this situation as one in which a property was not appealed solely because its lawyer was “aggressive.” But a fair reading of the record shows Mr. Lukens was centrally concerned that the dark-store theory would prevail and cost the School District money. The attorney being “aggressive on the dark store theory” gave rise to a perceived “high risk” the property’s assessment would be decreased. The record does not suggest Mr. Lukens’s concern was pretextual or that he recommended against appeal of the Lowe’s property for a hidden reason.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 17 As previously mentioned, the Assessment Law gives taxing districts discretion in deciding whether to expend public funds to appeal a particular property, or to refrain from doing so: A taxing district shall have the right to appeal any assessment within its jurisdiction in the same manner, subject to the same procedure and with like effect as if the appeal were taken by a taxable person with respect to the assessment . . ..

53 Pa.C.S. § 8855. There is nothing arbitrary or discriminatory when a taxing district considers the risks and potential rewards of appealing a specific property, and ultimately decides not to go forward on the grounds that the financial risk to the district is too high.

This is the very type of reasoning, centered on a cost-benefit analysis and an intent to expend public funds wisely, that we approved above when concluding the use of a monetary threshold is not constitutionally prohibited.

Taxpayer argues, however, that this type of consideration is not specifically connected with the School District’s monetary-threshold scheme for selecting properties.

See Brief for Appellee at 38. Taxpayer does not explain why that makes the exclusion of the Lowe’s property unconstitutional. As developed in Part IV(A) above, a financial threshold merely narrows down the list of properties within the taxing district to those meriting further investigation as candidates for appeal because they may result in a net gain for the taxing district. It does not obligate the district to appeal each and every candidate property. Moreover, we reject Taxpayer’s premise. Considering financial risk is quite clearly intertwined with the district’s use of a financial threshold, as explained in the preceding paragraph. If the district perceives, as it did here, that the state of the law taken as a whole makes the appeal of a specific property risky although that property was initially identified under the monetary threshold, nothing in the Uniformity Clause prohibits it from deciding not to go forward with an appeal in light of that risk.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 18 C. Addition of the subject property The School District hired Valbridge in April 2019, and Mr. Lukens ultimately provided the School District with a list of fifteen properties the following month. Shortly thereafter, in June 2019, Taxpayer purchased the subject property for $82,000,000.

Assuming this approximated the property’s fair market value, its assessed value when conformed to the CLR for tax year 2020 would have been $40,400,000, which was $7,600,000 more than its actual assessed value. 22 This, in turn, meant that if the assessment was raised to the CLR, it would yield $240,000 in additional taxes every year, of which $200,000 would flow to the School District. 23 Seeing that this figure easily met the $10,000 threshold, the School District added the subject property to the list of fifteen properties, making sixteen total.

The Commonwealth Court disapproved of this late addition on the sole basis that the School District “offered no explanation” for it. Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1113.

Because the court did not indicate the School District’s action failed to comply with statutory requirements, it appears to have proceeded under the assumption that an appeal taken without an expressed rationale violates the Uniformity Clause. For its part, Taxpayer does not argue the addition of the subject property was improper on that basis, but rather, because it was purchased after Valbridge completed its analysis, which demonstrates that the subject property was selected based on a “methodology different from the procedure used to select the original list of fifteen properties.” Brief for Appellee at 38.

See Hearing Exhibit M-5, reprinted in RR. 191a. As noted above, the CLR for tax year 2020 was .493. See supra note 6.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 19 The record does not support the Commonwealth Court’s premise that the School District gave no explanation for adding the subject property to the list. The record indicates the School District’s solicitor learned about the $82,000,000 sale and contacted the School District’s accounting supervisor, Alicia Krebs, to see if the district wanted to add it to the list. Ms. Krebs then verified the sale on the county’s website, and presented the information to the district’s business manager, David Matyas, who added the property to the extant list of fifteen properties. See N.T., 4/6/2021, at 22, 28, reprinted in RR. 410a, 416a (deposition testimony of Ms. Krebs). Given the enormous amount of new revenue that the School District could expect from a successful appeal of the subject property, it is obvious that Mr. Matyas made a business decision that it would be worth expending the School District’s funds to appeal the subject property – and he confirmed this in his own deposition. See N.T., 4/14/2021, at 23-24, reprinted in RR. 283a-284a; Brief for Appellant at 36. Thus, even though the subject property was not initially identified by Mr. Lukens, given that the transaction occurred after he compiled his list, there is no support for the premise that the School District gave no reason for its selection.

This leaves the question of whether the School District acted improperly by making the late selection based on the property’s sale where the consultant did not identify it. We note that, through use of the “and/or” phraseology, Policy 605.1 allows the School District to do both: use a consultant to identify underassessed properties and review recent real estate transactions. Even so, the evidence does not indicate that that happened. Ms. Krebs testified that in some prior years, she used to compile statistics on recent property sales and potential underassessments, and present this information to the business manager. But she clarified that once the School District hired Valbridge, she stopped doing that, and she did not do it for the tax years in question here. See N.T., 4/6/2021, at 14-18, reprinted in RR. 402a-406a. Therefore, as far as we can tell from the record,

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 20 the addition of the subject property to the 2020 list was a one-off, where the School District’s solicitor got wind of the sale and informed the district, which then added it to the list in light of the significant amount of money involved.

To evaluate whether the Uniformity Clause prohibits this, we first ask whether, even in the absence of a list of properties, the School District would have been prohibited from appealing the subject property after it learned of the recent sale and the amount paid for the property. The Assessment Law, quoted above, gives the School District discretion to appeal any property it deems worthwhile. Nothing in the record suggests the School District was motivated to appeal the subject property because of its type, usage, or where its new owner lived; rather, it was a transparent attempt to obtain more tax money by conforming the property’s assessment to the CLR. That would appear to be the very purpose of Section 8855.

The Uniformity Clause prohibits the systemic differential treatment of a subclass of property defined, for example, by property type or residency status of the owner, as explained in Valley Forge Towers, or by neighborhood, as explained in Clifton. 24 It does not follow, though, that the Clause prohibits a subclass described simply as “the properties selected by the taxing district for appeal.” If it did, that would mean Section 8855 was facially unconstitutional, which in turn would be in substantial tension with our prior observation that the particular appeal policy utilized by a taxing district generally lies within its sole discretion. See Valley Forge Towers, 163 A.3d at 980; see also id. at 977 (“There are other, nondiscriminatory, methods of deciding which properties to appeal.”).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 21 It would also undermine uniformity because then aggrieved property owners would be able to reduce assessments that are too high, but an aggrieved taxing district would be unable to seek an increase in a property’s assessment that was too low. 25 To the extent Justice Dougherty may be construed to interpret the Uniformity Clause to prohibit differential treatment of a subclass of properties defined simply as those parcels the School District chooses to appeal, see Dissenting Op. at 8-10 (Dougherty, J.), this, as noted, would render Section 8855 unconstitutional on its face.

Appealing those properties is, in one sense, “treating” them differently than non-appealed properties, because their owners must defend an assessment appeal while neighboring property owners do not have that burden. But if those properties are the most non- uniform, as per the School District’s policy here, then leaving them untouched undeniably harms uniformity, as it is directly contrary to the text of the Uniformity Clause which requires that “taxes . . . be uniform.” PA. CONST. art. VIII, § 1 (emphasis added). This is consistent with the core teaching of Clifton: when taxes become nonuniform due to market forces, it is not enough for the government to “treat” all properties the same by taking no action on any of them and relying solely on base-year assessments.

Ultimately, the fact that real property appreciates at different rates sets up a tension whereby taxes inevitably become non-uniform as time goes on, but any attempt to correct the same via Section 8855 cannot help but “treat” some properties differently by correcting their assessments and bringing them into line with the CLR. The confusion in this area of the law appears to stem from the use of the word “treat” or “treatment” in prior cases to mean “tax” or “taxation.” See, e.g., Westinghouse Elec. Corp. v. Bd. of Prop.

Assessment, 652 A.3d 1306, 1314 (Pa. 1995) (indicating the command that “all taxes shall be uniform” means all real estate is a “class entitled to uniform treatment and the ratio of assessed value to market value adopted by the taxing authority must be applied equally and uniformly to all real estate within the taxing authority’s jurisdiction”). That has led to the present state of affairs, where correcting a nonuniform tax rate is seen by some as “treating” the taxpayer differently in violation of the Uniformity Clause.

The constitutional text focuses on taxes being uniform, which we have interpreted to embody a “proportionality principle” that taxpayers should “pay no more or less than their proportionate share of government.” Clifton, 969 A.2d at 1224. This requires us to resolve the aforementioned tension in favor of uniformity of tax rate over uniformity of obligation to defend against an assessment appeal. In Valley Forge, we addressed a different question: whether this latter type of obligation may be imposed using a method that discriminates based on property type. We held it could not. And in Berkshire three Justices concluded there was a constitutional violation where the school district limited its appeals to recently-sold properties. But neither determination dictates that any and all selections of properties to appeal are similarly discriminatory solely because only those property owners, and no others, have their assessment values appealed. And here, selecting the properties with a high enough tax liability deficit to make the appeal a (continued…) [J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 22 Consequently, the School District’s action in targeting the subject property for appeal based on its underassessment did not, in and of itself, violate the Constitution.

Such targeting did not occur based on the property’s type, usage, or any other prohibited characteristic, but solely based on the projected enlargement of tax receipts combined with the School District hearing about it through word of mouth.

With that said, the crux of Taxpayer’s argument seems to be that, once the School District decided to hire a consultant to formulate a list using the $10,000 threshold reflected in Policy 605.1, it was constitutionally precluded from appealing any other properties whose underassessments came to the School District’s attention by some other means. See Brief for Appellee at 38 (arguing that the subject property “was selected for appeal based on a review and methodology different from the process used to select the original list of fifteen properties”). Taxpayer argues that the School District used “a series of varying and arbitrary criteria to prepare its final list.” Id. at 39.

We have already concluded that the School District could have decided to appeal the subject property without reference to the list that Mr. Lukens compiled based on the responsible use of public funds happens to coincide with brining the most non-uniform tax obligations into line with the average assessment ratio prevailing in the district, which clearly enhances tax uniformity.

We acknowledge Justice Dougherty separately finds it discriminatory to appeal properties with the highest tax-liability deficit as opposed to the greatest variation from the CLR. See Dissenting Op. at 15-18. While the Uniformity Clause may permit use of a greatest- variance-from-the-CLR metric, it does not follow that a greatest-tax-liability-deficit litmus must therefore be unacceptable. This latter measure focuses on bringing outliers into conformity with the average ratio prevailing in the taxing district precisely because they are outliers in real-dollar terms. In our view, that conforms with the Clause’s facial directive that “taxes shall be uniform” and is not otherwise impermissibly discriminatory.

If those properties were, by virtue of a successful appeal, subjected to a higher-than- average effective tax rate, we would agree with the dissent. But they are not. They are only subject to the same average tax rate all their neighbors are paying. We believe it is an unduly strict reading of the Uniformity Clause to suggest even that type of corrective action is unconstitutional.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 23 $10,000 threshold reflected in the policy. And we disagree to the extent Taxpayer suggests the criterion used to select the subject property was “arbitrary.” Id. It was not arbitrary, it was based on money.

The “varying” descriptor is somewhat more accurate. Although the same $10,000 threshold was referenced for the subject property, the procedure did vary from that used by Mr. Lukens. Acting as the School District’s agent, he undertook a systematic review of the properties in the school district, narrowed that down to a little over 100 properties that met the threshold, and then picked fifteen of those to include on the list. The School District’s procedure for the subject property was: learn that a specific property in the School District was just purchased for a large amount of money, check whether it meets the $10,000 threshold – which it easily did – and then add it (and only it) to the list. So long as neither one of those procedures was tantamount to unconstitutional discrimination, which we have concluded they were not, we are unaware of any constitutional principle saying that both procedures may not be used in the same tax year to compile the final list of properties to be appealed. 26 D. Lack of a “hard and fast rule” The final reason articulated by the Commonwealth Court for its finding of constitutional error is that Mr. Lukens lacked any “hard and fast rule” with respect to the methodology he used to decide which of the 100-plus properties satisfying the $10,000 threshold should be placed on the list to be presented to the School District, other than Given that the subject property was added to the list by a separate process from the first fifteen, it may be questioned whether Taxpayer has standing to raise objections to any facet of the School District’s methodology other than the use of a $10,000 threshold that the School District admittedly utilized to verify that the subject property should be appealed once it found out about the sale. However, the School District has not objected to Taxpayer’s arguments on that basis, and it does not do so now. See In re Paulmier, 937 A.2d 364, 368 n.1 (Pa. 2007) (standing is not jurisdictional and, as such, objections to standing must be raised and preserved).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 24 that he was trying to “maximize the return to the School District” via new tax revenues.

Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1113.

If Mr. Lukens was indeed trying to “maximize the return,” then he did use a hard and fast rule, to wit: select the fifteen properties that are expected to yield the greatest collective return to the school district. This is borne out by his testimony, which indicates that maximizing the return was the overall goal, subject to the proviso that the process used by Mr. Lukens and his colleagues at Valbridge was not entirely mechanical. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 26, 32-33, reprinted in RR. 56a, 62a-63a. When meeting with colleagues to discuss each parcel that satisfied the threshold, Mr. Lukens would discuss the “relative merits or concerns about the potential” for a given property to generate additional tax revenue. Id. at 32, reprinted in RR. 62a. It was not clear exactly what was included in the “relative merits or concerns about the potential” for each property. The only clue we have from the record is that sometimes a property that initially seemed likely to have a high yield would be risky due to other concerns such as that the dark-store theory, or any other legal theory, might prevail in court which would cause the appeal to fail or backfire.

The Uniformity Clause does not preclude such a methodology. Valbridge selected the most nonuniform properties in the district with respect to one acceptable metric for nonuniformity – tax-liability deficit – and it did so without regard to property type, usage, or owner residency status. Valbridge’s approach maximizes return to the school district, minimizes risk, and brings the most extreme outliers into conformity with the CLR, all of which constitutes a responsible use of public funds and an acceptable way to enhance fairness in how the tax burden is distributed. Although there is some uncertainty here about the exact points discussed in relation to a property’s “relative merits or concerns

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 25 about the potential,” there is no suggestion that they had anything to do with a factor that would be prohibited by the Uniformity Clause.

Taxing districts stand on the solidest ground when their neutral methodologies are spelled out in detail and carefully followed, either directly or through an agent like Valbridge. This applies to a district’s method for generating an initial list of properties meeting the designated threshold, as well as how the district narrows that list down to just the properties it plans to appeal. Careful documentation of both the methodology and its application makes it that much easier for a reviewing court to verify that no prohibited selection criteria were used and no discrimination is at play. It also tends to streamline or disincentivize litigation because there is less ambiguity about the underlying facts.

Measured against this ideal, the School District’s actions in the instant case leave something to be desired, as there are areas of uncertainty such as exactly what types of concerns would cause Valbridge not to place a particular property on the final list.

Nevertheless, it is ultimately the taxpayer’s burden to prove unlawful discrimination, not the taxing district’s obligation to prove it applied its facially neutral threshold in a lawful manner. See Fisher Controls Co. v. Commonwealth, 381 A.2d 1253, 1256 (Pa. 1977) (“A taxpayer complaining that administration of a tax violates its right to be taxed uniformly with others in its class must demonstrate . . . discrimination in the application of the tax” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). The evidence as recounted above is insufficient to establish that in applying Policy 605.1, the School District violated uniformity by failing to employ a “hard and fast rule” to narrow the initial list of properties down to the ones it selected for appeal.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 26 E. Failure to appeal any residential properties for tax year 2020 Taxpayer also challenges the School District’s actions in terms of the way it treated residential properties. 27 Taxpayer points out that for tax year 2020, the district did not appeal any single-family residential properties, even though there were some that met the threshold. See Brief for Appellee at 2, 16, 27. Taxpayer concludes that Policy 605.1 is being used systematically to discriminate against commercial properties. However, nothing in the policy excludes any type of property, and there was uncontested testimony that, through use of the same policy, the School District appealed a residential property in the past. See N.T., June 2, 2021, at 18, reprinted in RR. 457a (deposition testimony of school board president Jane Bartone). Therefore, by its terms and in practice the policy allows for the selection of residential properties that meet the financial threshold.

This is relevant because the Valley Forge Court clarified a taxing authority is not permitted to “implement a program of only appealing the assessments of one sub- classification of properties, where that sub-classification is drawn according to property type – that is, its use as commercial, apartment complex, single-family residential, industrial, or the like.” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 978 (emphasis added). Here, the policy was not drawn according to property type and there has been no systematic exclusion of residential properties. 28 Nor does the record suggest the monetary threshold was In part of Taxpayer’s argument on this topic, some of the advocacy can be read to suggest Valbridge’s use of different valuation methods as between nonresidential and residential properties was itself unlawful. See Brief for Appellee at 39-40. But cf. id. at n.5 (acknowledging the income approach may be appropriate for valuing apartment complexes while the sales approach is better for single-family residences). Taxpayer did not include any issue along these lines in its statement of matters complained of on appeal. See Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b)(4)(vii) (issues not included in a Rule 1925(b) statement are waived); Commonwealth v. Rogers, 250 A.3d 1209, 1224 (Pa. 2021) (same) (citing Commonwealth v. Lord, 719 A.2d 306, 309 (Pa. 1998)).

In practice it has led to more commercial properties being selected than single-family homes, but that is due to the value of such properties. If market forces change so that single-family residences rise in value compared to commercial properties, it is expected that more residential properties will be appealed at that juncture. Thus, the policy is not invalid solely because it has led to fewer appeals of residential properties than commercial, industrial, and apartment-complex properties, and to none for tax year 2020.

Nor is this conclusion altered by the fact that residential properties constitute most of the individual parcels within the School District.

As part of this claim, Taxpayer also argues that several residential properties met the $10,000 threshold but none were selected for appeal. This contention is based largely on the testimony of Taxpayer’s expert, Dr. Angelides. Referring to his report, see N.T., 11/17/2025, Hearing Exhibit M-11, reprinted in RR. 197a-214a, Dr. Angelides testified he identified several residential properties that would meet the School District’s threshold: one group of five based on sales data as a proxy for current market value, and another group of 25 that had not been sold recently using a hedonic regression analysis to only properties meeting a threshold amount of underassessment without regard to property type, where all appealed properties were commercial but there was no evidence the school district would not have appealed a residential property that satisfied the underassessment threshold), appeal dismissed, 259 A.3d 890 (Pa. 2021); Punxsutawney Area School District v. Broadwing Timber, LLC, 2019 WL 5561413, at *9 (Pa. Cmwlth.

Oct. 29, 2019) (upholding a school district policy that had not “thus far” resulted in the appeal of any residential properties, where the policy itself did not exclude any property by type and so it was possible a residential property would be appealed in the future).

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 28 estimate current market value. 29 He concluded to a reasonable degree of professional certainty that the financial threshold used by the School District excluded residential properties substantially more than it excluded other types of properties. On cross- examination Dr. Angelides admitted his hedonic regression analysis did not seek to ascertain the condition of the property or account for that factor’s impact on market value, nor did it consider that some of the properties in the two groups he identified were subject to preferential tax treatment under Act 319, which would reduce the amount of additional tax revenue that could be obtained by the raising the assessment. 30 This included most of the properties in the first group of five, and all but one of the properties in the second group of 25. See id. at 104-110, 113-15, reprinted in RR. 134a-140a, 143a-145a.

Given the above, the record does not reveal whether most of the properties Dr. Angelides identified would meet the $10,000 threshold once their Act 319 status is accounted for. Taxpayer stresses that Act 319 only exempts the land from taxation, not the improvements, see Brief for Appellee at 46 n.10, but that is beside the point. Without knowing how much of a difference this favorable tax treatment would have made, Taxpayer did not show that any of the Act 319 properties surpassed the threshold.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 29 As well, even though there was one residential property in the group of 25 identified through hedonic regression that was not covered by Act 319, and one or two more in the initial group of five, all that proves is that those two or three parcels should have been within the 100-plus properties initially identified as candidates for appeal. 31 The difficulty for Taxpayer in its present line of reasoning is that those parcels may well have been included in the initial list of candidates, but not finally selected for appeal when Mr. Lukens chose the fifteen properties from the initial list that would generate the most additional tax revenue. Nothing in the record suggests they were not, without which Taxpayer has not demonstrated that the School District arbitrarily refused to consider them on the basis that they were single-family residences.

The above brings into view a distinction worth highlighting. Our cases establish that the Uniformity Clause prohibits intentional or systematic differential treatment of subclasses of property, whether the governmental conduct is “wrongful” or not. See Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 975 (citing cases). But that does not mean the Uniformity Clause imports the concept of “disparate impact” wholesale from civil rights law and applies it the same way. Accord Punxsutawney Area Sch. Dist., 2019 WL 5561413, at *5 (“As to the disparate impact claim, . . . this concept has not been given broad application outside the civil rights context and . . . Valley Forge gave no indication that it meant to expand its scope to encompass tax assessment appeals.” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). The Uniformity Clause focuses on purposeful differential treatment, not differential impact. A neutral, systematic treatment of all properties might affect

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 30 different properties differently due to their economic value, which varies as the economy and markets fluctuate. To violate the Uniformity Clause, the classification would have to be drawn in a way that indicates the members of one class will be treated differently regardless of such changes, which did not occur here. 32 The final claim Taxpayer raises concerning the School District’s failure to appeal any residential properties relates to Valbridge’s use of a 3,500 square foot “cutoff” for single-family residential properties. See Brief for Appellee at 41-42. Taxpayer raises a valid concern. If the 3,500-square-foot rule excluded from consideration even a single

More broadly, it is unclear whether Justice Donohue means to say a monetary threshold is constitutional for a given tax year so long as at least one residence is appealed that year, or perhaps there must be an average of X residences appealed over a multi-year span even if in some of those years no residences are appealed, or alternatively that there must be an equivalent number of parcels of each property type appealed in all years.

Regardless, under the dissent’s view the monetary threshold itself does not seem especially problematic, so long as the second step of selecting the fifteen or so properties from the initial target list of parcels satisfying the threshold is conducted in a different way than Valbridge did in the present case.

For our part, we reiterate that it is the taxpayer’s burden to prove discrimination. See Fisher Controls, 381 A.2d at 1256. If a taxpayer shows a facially-neutral monetary threshold is discriminatory in fact because, for instance, it was enacted with discriminatory intent, or it will never target a certain type of property, or it is discriminatory in some other way (e.g., in Berkshire, three Justices were concerned with a policy that only targeted recently-sold properties) – it will be deemed invalid.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 31 parcel that would otherwise have been appealable under Policy 605.1, this would be constitutionally problematic as it would mean residential properties were arbitrarily given favorable treatment. Here, Mr. Lukens testified he did not evaluate such residential properties because they were of insufficient market value to meet the monetary threshold, and thus, spending the time to evaluate them would have been a waste. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 30-31, reprinted in RR. 60a-61a. 33 Assuming the 3,500-square-foot rule operated in this way, it indicated that the smaller properties’ favorable treatment, i.e., not being included on the list of candidate properties, was not based on their square footage as such, but on the fact they could never have satisfied the $10,000 threshold. Per Mr. Lukens’s explanation, then, the 3,500-square-foot minimum functioned as a work- and time-saving device to avoid performing futile property evaluations, not as a way to exclude properties that would otherwise have been eligible for appeal.

Taxpayer primarily responds by pointing out Mr. Lukens could not recall how he came up with that exact number of square feet. See N.T., 11/17/2021, at 31, reprinted in RR. 61a. But his failure to remember the provenance of the 3,500-square-foot rule does not equate to its substantive invalidity, and Taxpayer has not drawn our attention to any record evidence suggesting the rule excluded any properties that would otherwise have been eligible for appeal under Policy 605.1. This omission is material given that, per our earlier explanation, Taxpayer bore the burden of demonstrating that the School District’s application of its policy was arbitrary and discriminatory.

V. The Equal Protection Clause In its next claim, Taxpayer asserts that the School District’s appeal policy violates the Equal Protection Clause. Taxpayer relies primarily upon the Supreme Court’s ruling There were 553 single-family residences in the School District with at least 3,500 square feet, out of 23,591 single-family residences total. See Hearing Exhibit M-5, reprinted in RR. 190a; Report at 7, reprinted in 203a.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 32 in Allegheny Pittsburgh Coal Co. v. County Commission of Webster County, West Virginia, 488 U.S. 336 (1989).

At issue in Allegheny Pittsburgh was the practice of a West Virginia county tax assessor of assessing recently purchased property on the basis of its purchase price, while making only minor modifications in the assessments of property that had not recently been sold. Properties that had been sold recently were reassessed and taxed at values between 8 and 35 times that of properties that had not been sold. This Court determined that the unequal assessment practice violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1992); see also Murtagh v. Cnty. of Berks, 634 A.2d 179, 180 n.4 (Pa. 1993) (describing Allegheny Pittsburgh as holding that equal protection prohibits the de facto discrimination engendered by a “welcome stranger” policy – whereby a newly purchased property is assessed according to its full price while other properties that have not been purchased remain underassessed), overruled on other grounds, Kowenhoven v. Cnty. of Allegheny, 901 A.2d 1003, 1014 (Pa. 2006). 34 The county court in the present case rejected Taxpayer’s equal protection claim, expressing that the School District’s actions were designed to cure “the very wrong” identified in Allegheny Pittsburgh because Taxpayer “was woefully underassessed,” and if the School District did nothing about it, other taxpayers’ rights would be impacted.

Downingtown Area Sch. Dist., Civil No. 2019-11727-AB, slip op. at 7. This determination was based on the fact that any appeal by the School District seeks to bring the targeted property into conformance with the CLR. Perhaps in light of the trial court’s observations, Taxpayer presently references Allegheny Coal in relation to Policy 605.1 as a whole, rather than its application to the subject property. See Brief for Appellee at 58 (criticizing monetary threshold appeal policies in general). Taxpayer refers to a few generalized

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 33 precepts articulated in Allegheny Pittsburgh, such as that the “intentional systematic undervaluation by state officials of other taxable property in the same class contravenes the right of one taxed upon the full value of his property,” id. at 58-59 (quoting Allegheny Pittsburgh, 448 U.S. at 345), and applies them by contending that the School District’s threshold leaves residential properties systematically undervalued as compared to nonresidential properties. See id. at 59-60. Taxpayer argues, in essence, that under equal protection, a taxing district may not fashion an appeal policy that is blind to property type or usage if that policy, in practice, favors residential properties due to their lower value, as compared to commercial properties, industrial properties, or apartment complexes. This would mean districts must instead appeal each property type with roughly equal frequency to avoid having a disparate impact upon one type of property.

We held in Part III above that a taxing district’s policy, pursuant to which it appeals the most nonuniform properties as measured by their tax-liability deficit without regard to property type, usage, or owner residency status, enhances uniformity and is permissible under the Uniformity Clause. It allows for the most nonuniform assessments to be corrected precisely because they are the most nonuniform, which is consistent with the goal of tax uniformity. Taxpayer’s present contention is a repackaging of the objections it lodged under the Uniformity Clause.

The Equal Protection Clause “sets the constitutional ‘floor’ for the protection of property owners’ rights under the Uniformity Clause.” Valley Forge, 163 A.3d at 973 (citing Downingtown, 913 A.3d at 200-01, 205 n.17). It is less restrictive in that it permits the government to “engage in disparate tax treatment of different sub-classifications of real property, such as residential versus commercial.” Id. at 967 n.4; see also Allegheny Pittsburgh, 488 U.S. at 344 (same). Therefore, Allegheny Pittsburgh’s equal protection analysis concerning “welcome stranger” reassessment policies does not readily transfer

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 34 to facially-neutral appeal policies that are alleged to have a different impact on residential properties than on commercial ones. Where Taxpayer’s argument failed under the Uniformity Clause, it cannot succeed under the Equal Protection Clause.

VI. Difference from other school districts in the county Taxpayer’s final claim is that the School District’s policy violates uniformity because other Chester County school districts utilize different methods and thresholds to identify properties for district-initiated appeals. See Brief for Appellee at 56. In this argument, Taxpayer takes a countywide view and does not focus on alleged nonuniformity subsisting solely within the School District.

The School District did not raise this issue in its petition for allowance of appeal.

We are generally limited to the issues set forth in such a petition, see Briggs v. Sw. Energy Prod. Co., 224 A.3d 334, 350 (Pa. 2020), and Taxpayer has not articulated any reason an exception should be made in the instant case. With that said, we note that the Commonwealth Court did not reach this issue, as it elected not to address “Taxpayer’s remaining constitutional challenges” once it concluded Policy 605.1 was applied in violation of the Uniformity Clause. Downingtown, 303 A.3d at 1115 & n.18. Having reversed the intermediate court’s judgment in this latter respect, we will remand the matter to that tribunal to address in the first instance any remaining issues that Taxpayer raised and preserved for appellate review. 35 VII. Conclusion Accordingly, the judgment of the Commonwealth Court is vacated, and the matter is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

[J-72A-2025 and J-72B-2025] - 35 Justices Wecht, Brobson and McCaffery join the opinion.

Justice Donohue files a dissenting opinion in which Chief Justice Todd and Justice Dougherty join.

Justice Dougherty files a dissenting opinion in which Chief Justice Todd and Justice Donohue join.

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