Vincent Milewski v. Town of Dover
Vincent Milewski v. Town of Dover
Concurring Opinion
(concurring).
¶ 100. I respectfully concur in the mandate. I
¶ 101. I concur only in the mandate principally because of the lead opinion's unprecedented decision to rely on the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine," a term absent from the briefing in this case. The perils of addressing unbriefed issues are illustrated by the lead opinion's discussion. A review of existing case law demonstrates that the unconstitutional conditions doctrine is more complex than the lead opinion's analysis suggests, and that it has most typically, if not always, according to the Supreme Court, arisen in cases which involve government benefits. See, e.g., Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., 570 U.S._, 133 S. Ct. 2586, 2594 (2013) ("We have said in a variety of contexts that 'the government may not deny a benefit to a person because he exercises a constitutional right.'. . . Those cases reflect an overarching principle, known as the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, that vindicates the Constitution's enumerated rights by preventing the government from coercing people into giving them up." (emphasis added)); id. at 2596 ("Virtually all of our unconstitutional conditions cases involve a gratuitous governmental benefit of some
¶ 102. Perhaps this doctrine should be applied in this case (which does not involve a governmental benefit), but I would prefer to see briefing and argument on that question before establishing a rule in Wisconsin. Experience teaches that broad legal statements untethered to the specific facts of the case, like those present in the lead opinion's section on the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, can easily metastasize in our legal system and become "virtual engine [s] of destruction for countless legislative judg
¶ 103. Aside from this deficiency, other aspects of the lead opinion suffer from the same proclivity for overbroadness. For instance, the lead opinion is not content to reject the argument that home intrusions of the type involved under the specific facts at issue are minor; it instead concludes that no governmental entry into a home under any hypothetical set of circumstances can ever be minor. See lead op., f 57. The statement sounds impressive, but I do not understand the need for such sweeping remarks. While the lead opinion may be entirely correct, I am not willing to decide an infinite number of potential future cases without briefing and argument. To take another example, while the lead opinion could easily quote well-established Fourth Amendment maxims for some of the principles it cites in its opinion, it instead chooses to reword them in ways that could be easily misunderstood. See, e.g., lead op., ¶ 37 ("[C]onsent removes the search from Fourth Amendment scrutiny.").
¶ 104. In sum, while I would like to join the lead opinion, I cannot do so for fear of its potential effects on existing case law and the ways in which it could be cited in the future.
¶ 106. I am authorized to state that Justice MICHAEL J. GABLEMAN joins this opinion.
I do not necessarily reject all of the principles provided in the lead opinion's discussion. I simply disagree with the lead opinion's use of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine to resolve this case.
Dissenting Opinion
0dissent-ing).
¶ 107. I would affirm the judgment of the circuit court and the decision of the court of appeals in favor of the Town of Dover.
¶ 108. The legislature has declared that if a real property owner wishes to contest the amount of an assessment at the board of review or circuit court, the property owner must, on the reasonable written request of the assessor, allow the assessor an "actual view" of the real property. See Wis. Stat. §§ 70.47(7)(aa), 70.32(1).
¶ 109. The statutory words "actual view" have been interpreted as including both an interior and exterior view of the real property.
¶ 110. The lead opinion asserts that the legislature has conferred on the Milewskis an unconstitutional choice of Option A or Option B:
¶ 111. If the Milewskis choose Option A, they consent to an assessor's viewing the interior of their home (thereby forgoing their Fourth Amendment right to bar the government from their home) and can contest the amount of the assessment in a hearing before the Board of Review and a court (thereby exercising their Fourteenth Amendment due process right to a hearing to contest the amount of the assessment).
¶ 112. If the Milewskis choose Option B, they refuse to allow an assessor to view the interior of their home (thereby exercising their Fourth Amendment right to bar the government from their home) and
f 113. I conclude that an assessor's entry into the interior of the home is a search under the Fourth Amendment. I further conclude, as did the circuit court and court of appeals, that Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) and § 74.37(4)(a), the challenged statutes, do not violate the Milewskis' Fourth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment rights (or analogous state constitutional rights).
f 114. Section 70.47(7)(aa) governs proceedings before the board of review and bars a person who refuses to allow an assessor to view property from appearing or testifying before the board or contesting the amount of the assessment:
(aa) No person shall be allowed to appear before the board of review, to testify to the board by telephone or to contest the amount of any assessment of real or personal property if the person has refused a reasonable written request by certified mail of the assessor to view such property.
¶ 115. Section 74.37(4)(a) governs proceedings before the circuit court and bars a claim or action for an excessive assessment unless the property owner complied with the procedure for objecting to assessments prescribed in § 70.47(7)(aa):
(a) No claim or action for an excessive assessment may be brought under this section unless the procedures for objecting to assessments under s. 70.47, except under 70.47(13), have been complied with....
¶ 117. Although the lead opinion describes its task as "straightforward," it engages in a lengthy, overly complex discussion. It focuses on numerous intricacies, including the special needs exception to the Fourth Amendment and the messy, ill-understood "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine.
f 118. My analysis of the issues proceeds as follows:
f 119. Part I sets forth two realities essential to understanding the instant case: The Milewskis did not surrender their Fourth Amendment rights; the assessor never entered the home. The Milewskis retain rights under the statutes to a due process hearing in which to contest their assessment; they exercised these rights.
¶ 120. In Part II, I examine Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) and determine that the legislative directions to assessors regarding the methods of valuation express a
¶ 121. Part III examines the legislature's reasonable, constitutional inducement to property owners to consent to an assessor's actual view of the real property by imposing a reasonable, constitutional restraint on the property owner's ability to contest the amount of an assessment. The legislative provisions advance significant, legitimate governmental objectives.
¶ 122. In Part IV, I analogize the challenged tax statutes to Wisconsin's Implied Consent Law by which the State has imposed a choice on drivers. The effect of this constitutional choice is to discourage a driver's exercise of a Fourth Amendment right to be free from intrusive government searches of the person by a blood draw.
¶ 123. In Part V, I show that the challenged tax statutes are but a specific application of the unremarkable principle that a taxpayer must make full disclosure of material information to a taxing authority or face civil tax consequences for failing to divulge the information. This principle of "make a full disclosure or lose a claim or defense" also exists in other areas of the law.
¶ 124. Part VI concludes the analysis by probing the meaning of the mandate of the lead opinion.
)—I
¶ 125. The reader should approach the instant case keeping two realities firmly in mind:
¶ 126. One. the Town's assessor did not enter the interior of the Milewskis' home. No search of the
¶ 127. No assessor forced his or her way into the home, enlisted the aid of law enforcement officers to enter the home, or otherwise interfered with the Milewskis' exercise of their right to deny an assessor entry into the home. No physical occupation or entry without a warrant
¶ 128. Two, the Milewskis have received full due process hearings in three courts—in the circuit court, in the court of appeals, and in this court. Furthermore, the Milewskis retained and exercised rights under the statutes to a hearing in which they challenged the assessment as excessive on specified grounds.
f 129. The lead opinion misleadingly suggests that the Milewskis have been subjected to a tax and "have been forbidden any process by which to challenge it." Lead op., f 24. Three courts have addressed the Milewskis' objections to the assessment of their home and their challenge to the statutes at issue. The Milewskis went the "whole nine yards" and lost on the merits in two courts.
¶ 130. Moreover, the lead opinion misleadingly suggests that as a result of the challenged statutes, the Milewskis lose "the ability to contest their increased tax burden." Lead op., ¶¶ 24 n.9, 68. But property owners who refuse to allow an assessor an actual view of the real property may nevertheless avail themselves of procedures to challenge the legitimacy, nature, and scope of the assessment.
f 131. Indeed, the Milewskis availed themselves of their statutory right to a hearing challenging the assessment as excessive. The Milewskis brought claims against Gardiner Appraisal Service, LLC, the Town's assessor. They had a due process hearing in circuit court in which they sought damages from the
¶ 132. The court of appeals affirmed the circuit court's dismissal of these retaliatory assessment claims against Gardiner Appraisal Service, holding that there was no evidence that Gardiner Appraisal Service intentionally violated the law by performing the assessment in a retaliatory manner.
¶ 134. To be clear, the Milewskis were afforded due process of law. The Milewskis challenged in the courts the tax assessment system that led to the assessment of their real property. The Milewskis also had statutory rights to the Board of Review's determination of whether the assessment of their property was excessive and retaliatory and whether the request for an actual view of their property violated statutory requirements.
¶ 135. Two realities: No search of the Milews-kis' home occurred. The Milewskis had a hearing under the statutes, and they challenged the assessment as excessive in court proceedings.
I—I h-H
¶ 136. The task of prescribing a uniform method for valuing property for taxation purposes lies with the legislature. Since the 19th century, the legislature has directed assessors how to value real property. The present statute is Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1).
¶ 138. The lead opinion concludes that an assessment can be based either on an actual view or on the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain, and that the legislature has not expressed a preference for one method over the other. The inevitable result of this reading is that the property owner can dictate the valuation methodology by refusing to allow an assessor an actual view of the real property.
¶ 139. The lead opinion at ¶ 51 reaches this interpretation by relying solely on the text of the phrase "from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain" in the first sentence of Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1):
70.32 Real Estate, How Valued (1) Real property shall be valued by the assessor in the manner specified in the Wisconsin property assessment manual provided under [Wis. Stat. §] 73.03(2a) from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain.... (Emphasis added.)
f 140. This narrow, either/or reading of the statute based on the text of only one phrase in a lengthy statutory provision contravenes the basic rule of statutory interpretation that a statute be interpreted in context.
¶ 141. Section 70.32(1) of the Wisconsin Statutes provides in full as follows:
Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) Real property shall be valued by the assessor in the manner specified in the Wisconsin property assessment manual provided under s. 73.03(2a) from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain, at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale. In determining the value, the assessor shall consider recent arm's-length sales of the property to be assessed if according to professionally acceptable appraisal practices those sales conform to recent arm's-length sales of reasonably comparable property; recent arm's-length sales of reasonably comparable property; and all factors that, according to professionally acceptable appraisal practices, affect the value of the property to be assessed. (Emphasis added.)
¶ 142. A reading of the full text of Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) demonstrates that the legislature has given assessors several instructions about valuation of real property that inform the interpretation of the statute's phrase "actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain":
*118 • The legislature has instructed assessors to value real property according to the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual.
• The legislature has instructed assessors to value real property according to "professionally acceptable appraisal practices."
• The legislature has instructed assessors to use a hierarchy of valuations to value real property.
• As judicially interpreted, the legislature has expressed a preference for valuation on the basis of an actual view of the real property, although the legislature has recognized that valuation requires attention to other enumerated statutory factors and the judgment and expertise of the assessor.
f 143. The first statutory direction to assessors in Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) is that real property be valued in the manner specified in the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual. The Manual is published annually by the Department of Revenue. The legislature envisions the Manual as setting forth accepted assessment methods and reflecting advances in the science of assessment, court decisions, and other information considered valuable to local assessors. Wisconsin Stat. § 73.03(2a) provides in relevant part as follows:
The manual shall discuss and illustrate accepted assessment methods, techniques and practices with a view to more nearly uniform and more consistent assessments of property at the local level. The manual shall be amended by the department from time to time to reflect advances in the science of assessment, court decisions concerning assessment practices, costs, and statistical and other information considered valuable to local assessors by the department.
| 144. Assessors must adhere to the Manual, but when an assessment is based on a directive in the
¶ 145. The Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual mandates that "actual view requires a detailed viewing of the interior and exterior of all buildings and improvements and the recording of complete cost, age, use, and accounting treatments." See Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 10-55.
¶ 146. The lead opinion maintains that there is no need for an interior inspection of the Milewski home. Lead op. ¶¶ 51-52. Wrong! There is!
¶ 147. An assessor for the Town of Dover was last in the interior of the Milewskis' residence in 2004. According to its affidavit, Gardiner Appraisal Services could not verify whether any remodeling had been performed since then. Thus, when the assessor at
¶ 148. A second reason a view of the interior of the Milewskis' home was especially crucial is that the Town was conducting a full revaluation of all real property in the Town's jurisdiction. A full revaluation refers to an assessment of all the real property in the Town. See Wis. Stat. §§ 70.045, 70.05(5). A full revaluation is required periodically "to meet the requirements of fair and uniform assessment." Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 4-1.
f 149. Accordingly, the assessor in the instant case, Gardiner Appraisal Services, performed the appraisal of the Milewskis' house while doing a full revaluation of all the real property in the Town of Dover to establish new, equitable assessments for all real properties. The written contract between the Town of Dover and Gardiner Appraisal Services required, inter alia, that "[the] assessorQ will view the exterior and interior of all structures unless denied access after mailing a request to owner by certified mail."
¶ 150. Requiring assessors to undertake an actual view of the real property in a revaluation is a valid and reasonable application of Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1), the Manual, and professional appraisal practices.
¶ 151. The second direction in Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) to assessors regarding valuation is that the
¶ 152. The Department of Revenue is directed to illustrate accepted assessment methods in the Manual. Wis. Stat. § 70.03(2a).
¶ 153. Viewing the interior of a building is surely a "professionally acceptable appraisal practice." Gar-diner Appraisal Service's brief and affidavit cite (and include excerpts from) the Appraisal Institute's
1 155. Further emphasizing the importance of an exterior and interior view of real property as a professionally acceptable appraisal practice, the text goes on to explain that if a site visit was not made, the appraisal report must clearly and conspicuously describe the "extraordinary assumption that the site and building characteristics are as described even though the appraiser has not confirmed that information through a site visit." The Appraisal of Real Estate at 220.
¶ 156. This expressed, explicit distrust of an appraisal conducted without an exterior and interior view strongly supports the proposition that an on-site inspection is a professionally accepted appraisal practice; valuations made without on-site inspections should be the exception and not the rule for professional appraisers.
¶ 158. The third legislative direction in Wis. Stat. § 70.31(1) to assessors regarding valuation of real property is that they comply with the hierarchy of valuation methodologies. Assessors are obligated to follow what is known as the Markarian three-tier hierarchy to value real property.
¶ 159. First tier: An assessor must base the assessment of the subject property on a recent arm's-length sale of the property, if available.
¶ 160. Of course, a recent arm's-length sale ordinarily represents a consideration by the buyer of the interior and exterior of the real property. Rational prospective homebuyers would inspect the real prop
¶ 161. Second Tier: If the subject property was not recently sold, an assessor must base the assessment of the subject property on sales of reasonably comparable property.
¶ 162. The sales comparison approach is "based on the premise that similar properties will sell for similar prices on the open market." Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 9-24. The Manual requires using the sale price of properties that are "similar to the subject property in age, condition, use, type of construction, location, design, physical features and economic characteristics." Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 9-24. An important consideration in determining whether properties are comparable is the improvements.
¶ 163. Third Tier: If no sales of reasonably comparable properties are available, an assessor may assess the subject property using other assessment methodologies, such as cost and income.
f 164. A final direction to assessors comes from case law interpreting Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) and its precursors. The court has recognized that the legislature has expressed a preference for assessments based on an actual view of the real property and that the legislature has also concluded that valuation requires attention to other enumerated statutory factors and requires the judgment and expertise of the assessor.
¶ 165. In the 1860s, the precursor to Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) referred to an "actual view" and enumerated various factors to be considered in valuation, including "all buildings" and "improvements of every description thereon."
f 166. In considering the statute that included the disjunctive phrase, the court accepted the idea that the legislature expressed a preference for an actual view. The court did not, however, invalidate the assessment when the assessor failed to undertake an actual view. The court acknowledged that" [i]t may be that a valuation from actual view is always possible, but it is not always practicable." Boorman v. Juneau County, 76 Wis. 550, 553, 45 N.W. 675 (1890). The Boorman court surmised that the assessor was acquainted with the property from prior years.
¶ 168. The lead opinion's narrow, either/or reading of Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) breaches a contextual reading and breaks with precedent. The lead opinion's allowing the property owner in effect to dictate the valuation methodology impairs the functioning of the tax assessment system.
¶ 169. Because the legislature has established a preference for an actual view in valuation of real property, the legislature has also attempted to influence a property owner to permit an assessor an actual view of the real property. Indeed, the legislature's decision to induce real property owners to permit an assessor's actual view supports the proposition that the legislature prefers that assessors have an actual view of the real property.
Ill
¶ 170. To advance the significant, legitimate governmental objective of uniformity and equity, the leg
¶ 171. I turn to the state constitutional requirement of uniformity. The Uniformity Clause of the Wisconsin Constitution dates back to the 1848 Constitution. It provides in relevant part that "[t]he rule of taxation shall be uniform but the legislature may empower cities, villages or towns to collect and return taxes on real estate located therein by optional methods. ..." Wis. Const. art. VIII, § 1. See lead op., ¶ 3.
¶ 172. The Uniformity Clause requires that taxes be fairly allocated among taxpayers. Comparable properties in the district are to be assessed uniformly.
¶ 173. The Uniformity Clause requires the same measuring stick to be applied to comparable properties. "Satisfying the Uniformity Clause requires ... a uniform method of determining the value of [] property . . . . " Lead op., ¶ 48.
f 174. The valuation of real property depends to a large extent on the condition and quality of both the exterior and interior of the real property. Thus, the requirement of an actual view strongly relates to the state constitutional requirement of uniformity.
¶ 176. The lead opinion asserts that the Town "contradict[s] itself' by arguing that the Uniformity Clause requires an "actual view" and then nevertheless proceeds to assess the Milewski real property using other assessment methodologies. Lead op., ¶ 51. The lead opinion concludes that "[i]f proceeding under this alternative was not consistent with the Uniformity Clause, then the Town indicts itself for violating the constitution . . . ." Lead op., ¶ 51.
¶ 177. The lead opinion stumbles. The Town's argument is not contradictory: Once the Town proceeded to assess real property using an "actual view," it applied the same methodology throughout the Town complying with the Uniformity Clause and the revaluation process. The Milewskis prevented the use of the same methodology for their property. When the Milewskis refused to allow the assessor an actual view of the real property, they prevented the Town from complying with the mandate under the Uniformity Clause to apply a uniform method of valuation. They prevented the Town from treating similarly situated property owners similarly. The Town had no choice but to use a different method for valuing the Milewskis' real property.
¶ 178. The Town must nevertheless assess the Milewskis' property. The Milewskis cannot escape assessment and taxation by refusing to allow the assessor
¶ 179. To achieve even-handedness among real property owners when a property owner refuses to allow an assessor an actual view of the real property, the legislature imposes reasonable, constitutional restrictions on the ability of property owners to contest the amount of an assessment. The Town of Dover describes achieving this goal of even-handedness among real property owners in terms of avoiding the "free-rider" as follows:
If most homeowners allow the assessor into their homes to get an accurate assessment, but some homeowners are allowed to force the assessor to make his or her assessment without that crucial information and are still allowed to try to decrease their assessment by challenging it in other respects, the probable consequence is that wealthy homeowners will be able to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by hiding their interior improvements.35
¶ 180. Unless the assessor has access to the interior of the real property, the taxing entity is at a significant disadvantage in justifying its assessment when challenged by the property owner.
f 181. When a property owner challenges an assessment, there is a rebuttable presumption that the assessment is correct.
¶ 182. In the instant situation, the property owners (and their expert) know the interior of the real property but the Town (and its expert) do not. If the Town does not have evidence regarding the interior of the real property, the Town cannot rebut the property owners' evidence. To avoid this situation, the legislature has restricted the property owner's ability to contest the amount of the assessment if the property owner refuses the assessor an actual view.
¶ 183. According to the lead opinion, a property owner can, without any adverse consequences, refuse an assessor an actual view of the real property and apparently can still contest the amount of the assessment. The result is two-fold: (1) The property owner and the Town (which represents all property owners) are not on an equal, fair, level "playing field" in debating the amount of the assessment; and (2) the decision maker will not have the full information that the assessor could provide (if he or she had an actual view) upon which to determine the amount of the assessment. As the court of appeals concluded, "[t]he interior view of the home is one of the most important pieces of evidence that the tax assessor must consider when making an assessment. No other means are as effective to provide an accurate valuation." Milewski v.
¶ 184. An assessment decision resting on only one side's (the property owner's) presentation of evidence relating to the interior of the property is very apt to be erroneous. The law recognizes the importance of a decision's being based on full and complete information.
¶ 185. The lead opinion asserts that the Milewskis may suffer adverse consequences, "substantial impediments," and "evidentiary consequences" as a result of refusing the assessor an actual view, but the lead opinion does not reveal them; they are kept a secret, not to be divulged by the lead opinion. See lead op., ¶ 26 n.ll. See also my discussion in Part VI of this dissent, asserting that the meaning of the mandate is clandestine.
¶ 186. Of course, the legislature could have chosen a different path to restrict the non-consenting property owner's rights to contest the amount of an assessment. For example, the legislature could have permitted the non-consenting property owner to appear before the board to contest the amount of the
¶ 187. Without such evidence, in all likelihood, the non-consenting property owner's challenge to the amount of the assessment would be dismissed. The result would be the same as the legislature's simply barring from the outset the non-consenting property owner from contesting the amount of the assessment. The legislature's decision to bar a non-consenting property owner from contesting the amount of the assessment is different in form, but not in substance, from barring a non-consenting property owner from introducing evidence. The legislature has made a sound, constitutional policy choice that this court should not overturn.
f 188. In sum, an interior (and exterior) view of real property (an actual view) is germane to, and has an extremely powerful nexus with, valuation and assessment. The legislature has a strong interest in inducing real property owners to consent to an assessor's actual view of the real property and to treat property owners who do consent differently in contesting the amount of an assessment from property owners who do not consent. The challenged statutes compellingly relate to the governmental interest of uniform taxation and fairness to all property owners.
f 189. With the robust government interest in uniformity and fairness in mind, I examine the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
¶ 190. To recap, according to the lead opinion, the statutes force an unconstitutional choice on property owners: On the one hand, consent to an assessor's viewing the interior of a home (relinquishing a protected Fourth Amendment right) and retain the right
¶ 191. As noted above, there was no search, and the Milewskis have had due process hearings in which they have asserted their challenge to the assessment and the statutes.
¶ 192. Moreover, the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403 (2006). Not all searches violate the Fourth Amendment, only unreasonable ones. The determination of whether a particular search is reasonable must be made by "balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests." Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654 (1979).
¶ 193. Recently, the United States Supreme Court explained the reasonableness standard in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and the balancing of the intrusion and the governmental interests as follows:
Borrowing from our Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, the United States suggests that motorists could be deemed to have consented to only those conditions [a*135 blood draw] that are "reasonable" in that they have a "nexus" to the privilege of driving and entail penalties that are proportional to severity of the violation. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21-27. But in the Fourth Amendment setting, this standard does not differ in substance from the one that we apply, since reasonableness is always the touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis, see Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S. Ct. 1943, 164 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2006). And applying this standard, we conclude that motorists cannot be deemed to have consented to submit to a blood test on pain of committing a criminal offense.
Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160, 2186 (2016).
f 194. The challenged statutes do not require a property owner to relinquish a Fourth Amendment right by permitting an assessor's entry into the home.
¶ 195. Rather, the statutes offer the property owner an incentive, an inducement, to consent to an assessor's entry into the home. An entry in the home is an intrusion. But the level of intrusion for tax assessment purposes is less of an intrusion on personal privacy and dignity than other searches.
¶ 196. A tax assessor would not be rummaging through a real property owner's personal effects, file cabinets, computers, closets, medical cabinets, drawers, locked cabinets or other private materials not germane to valuing the physical attributes of the real property. Moreover, the amount of time taken by an assessor to view the home is ordinarily much shorter than the time taken in a search conducted in the course of a criminal investigation.
f 197. The legislature's inducement to obtain the property owner's consent to the assessor's entry is to require the non-consenting property owner to forgo a hearing at which the owner may contest the amount of the assessment. The inducement is more than reasonable in light of the governmental interests involved.
¶ 198. In examining the procedural due process issue the lead opinion raises, I note that the touchstone of procedural due process is that due process is "flexible and requires only such procedural protections as the particular situation demands."
¶ 200. The legislative restriction upon the Milewskis' right to contest the amount of the assessment is more than reasonable under the circumstances. The statutes do not impose an arbitrary restriction on the property owner and do not violate due process. Considering the countervailing governmental interest in uniform taxation, the challenged statutes do not constitute government action arbitrarily limiting the Milewskis' due process rights.
f 201. In sum, bearing in mind the interests of the real property owner and the public, I conclude that the options the legislature offered to the Milewskis do not impair, to an appreciable extent, the rights involved and do promote, to an appreciable extent, weighty governmental interests.
<!
¶ 202. I conclude that the options the legislature offers the property owner are constitutionally sound government-imposed "tough" choices. I analogize the challenged statutes to Wisconsin's Implied Consent Law, Wis. Stat. § 343.305.
The criminal process, like the rest of the legal system, is replete with situations requiring the making of difficult judgments as to which course to follow. Although a defendant may have a right, even of constitutional dimensions, to follow whichever course he chooses, the Constitution does not by that token always forbid requiring him to choose.43
The lead opinion apparently refuses to accept that such a choice is valid. See, e.g., lead op., ¶ 68 n.29.
f 204. In Wisconsin's Implied Consent Law, the State imposes a choice on drivers. The choice has the effect of discouraging the exercise of a Fourth Amendment right to be free from a government search of a person's body. The Wisconsin Implied Consent Law is constitutional .
¶ 206. The Wisconsin property tax assessment system is, in many ways, strikingly similar to Wisconsin's Implied Consent Law. An entry into a home, like a blood draw, implicates significant privacy concerns; both are intrusions restricted by the Fourth Amendment. Both the tax assessment system and the Implied Consent Law impose civil consequences, not criminal consequences, if the individual exercises his or her Fourth Amendment constitutional right to refuse to consent to the search.
f 207. And although the Fourth Amendment right to refuse a blood draw or a home entry can be exercised, the exercise comes with civil statutory consequences. The civil consequences are supported by
f 208. Considering the apt analogy between Wisconsin's Implied Consent Law and the Wisconsin tax assessment system, I agree with the court of appeals' reasoning in the instant case upholding the constitutionality of the statutory choice imposed on the Milews-kis:
Here, Plaintiffs have the "right" to refuse to allow Gardiner access to their home, but the consequence that flows from the refusal is cessation of the right to challenge the tax assessment and pay without recourse. There is no due process violation; the choice belongs entirely to Plaintiffs.49
V
¶ 209. Another way of depicting the unexceptional aspects of the challenged tax assessment statutes is to analogize them to the unremarkable principle of tax law that a taxpayer must make full disclosure to a taxing authority or face civil tax consequences for failing to divulge information to the taxing authority. The consequence for refusing an assessor's reasonable request for an interior view is not retaliatory or punitive. Rather it is a legal, logical extension
¶ 210. The United States Supreme Court explained this principle in Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309, 404 (1971). In Wyman, the Court explained that disallowing a deduction (which increased the tax, a taking of property according to the lead opinion) was a valid consequence for the taxpayer's refusal to submit proof substantiating the claimed deduction:
[In a federal income tax dispute between a taxpayer and an IRS agent] an Internal Revenue Service agent, in making a routine civil audit of a taxpayer's income tax return, asks that the taxpayer produce for the agent's review some proof of a deduction the taxpayer has asserted to his benefit in the computation of his tax. If the taxpayer refuses, there is, absent fraud, only a disallowance of the claimed deduction and a consequent additional tax. The taxpayer is fully within his "rights" in refusing to produce the proof, but in maintaining and asserting those rights a tax detriment results and it is a detriment of the taxpayer's own making.... [N]oth-ing of constitutional magnitude is involved.
Wyman, 400 U.S. at 389.
¶ 211. Similarly, this court has confirmed that "the privilege of appearing before the board of review and having assessment errors corrected is coupled with a duty of the taxpayer to make full disclosure of information." Hermann v. Town of Delavan, 215 Wis. 2d 370, 393, 572 N.W.2d 855 (1998) (citing Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(a)).
¶ 213. At the turn of the last century, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Joshua Eric Dodge eloquently explained the rationale behind the principle that the taxpayer who has information must disgorge the information (to which the taxing authority does not have access) in order to challenge the assessment, to ensure
[The taxing authority] and the public are entitled that [the taxing authority] shall not be successfully attacked in court without full and frank disclosure from the taxpayer of the superior knowledge which he necessarily has upon the subject. It is perhaps utopian to expect of human selfishness voluntary original information . . ., but when one presents himself to give evidence against the amount which the assessor has fixed in the light, or obscurity, which necessarily surrounds him, it is but right that the taxpayer furnish all the enlightenment in his power without evasion or concealment.. . .
State ex rel. Foster v. Williams, 123 Wis. 73, 76-77, 100 N.W. 1052, 1053 (1904).
¶ 214. By refusing to permit the assessor an interior view of the real property, the property owner fails to make a full disclosure to the taxing entity. Because the property owner fails to make full disclosure, the owner is restricted from contesting the amount of the assessment. By holding the challenged statutes unconstitutional as applied, the lead opinion essentially eviscerates the longstanding full disclosure rule, to the detriment of uniformity and fairness.
¶ 215. In the instant case, the legislature has given notice to property owners that it deems an assessor's actual view of real property material evi
¶ 216. The full disclosure rule exists outside of tax law. For example, if a plaintiff claiming damages for personal injury refuses to disclose his or her otherwise confidential medical records, the plaintiffs claim will be dismissed.
¶ 217. The challenged statutes are, in a sense, a corollary of the well-accepted legal principle that persons who fail to disclose material evidence that is in their possession and that is not readily available to an opposing party may not avail themselves of a judicial forum.
VI
f 218. I conclude by probing the meaning of the mandate of the lead opinion.
¶ 219. The lead opinion remands the matter to the circuit court "for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." Nowhere does the lead opinion discuss the further proceedings; it is not clear what the lead opinion has in mind. See lead op., ¶ 26 ("We express no opinion on whether the Milewskis will be able to carry their burden of proof upon the contest of the Property's value, but that has nothing to do with whether they have the right to hazard the attempt.").
¶ 220. Does the circuit court determine the assessment? Does the circuit court remand the matter to
¶ 221. The Milewskis' brief provides no help in advising what happens should they prevail in this court. The brief seeks merely a declaration that Wis. Stat. §§ 70.47(7)(aa) and 74.37(4)(a) together violate their constitutional rights and this court's reversal of the decision of the court of appeals.
¶ 222. The assessor's brief concludes that, should the Milewskis prevail in this court, their remedy should be a remand of the matter to the Town Board of Review to determine the assessment. The assessor proposes this remedy because the Milewskis' challenge to the amount of the assessment was not heard by the Board and the statutory procedures require the matter be heard first by the Board. Citing Hermann v. Town of Delavan, 215 Wis. 2d 370, 381-83, 572 N.W.2d 855 (1998), the assessor argues that Chapters 70 and 74 are intended to be the exclusive means by which the property owner may contest the amount of the assessment.
f 223. Along the same lines, the Town urges that, should it lose, "the remedy should be an opportunity to challenge the assessment before the" board of review. But the Town adds that the Milewskis should not have the opportunity to "use any information that they have withheld, i.e., regarding the interior of the home."
¶ 224. Whether the circuit court or the Board of Review determines the assessment, I agree with the Town and the assessors that neither the Milewskis nor any of their witnesses should be able to use any information that they have regarding the interior of
f 225. For the reasons set forth, I write separately in dissent.
¶ 226. I am authorized to state that Justice ANN WALSH BRADLEY joins this dissent.
Five justices agree with the mandate set forth in Justice Daniel Kelly's opinion (which appears as the first opinion in the instant case). The mandate is that the decision of the court of appeals is reversed and the cause is remanded. Only Justice Rebecca G. Bradley joins Justice Kelly's opinion. Chief Justice Patience D. Roggensack joins Justice Kelly's mandate, writing separately in concurrence. Justice Annette K. Ziegler (joined by Justice Michael J. Gableman) joins Justice Kelly's mandate, writing separately in concurrence. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley joins this dissent.
Justice Kelly's opinion is referred to as a lead opinion because four justices do not agree with or join its reasoning.
As Justice Ann Walsh Bradley recently explained in State v. Weber, 2016 WI 96, ¶ 83 n.1, 372 Wis. 2d 202, 887 N.W.2d 554 (Ann Walsh Bradley, J., dissenting), although "the term 'lead' opinion ... is undefined in our Internal Operating Procedures, its use here is consistent with past description. We have said 'that a lead opinion is one that states (and agrees with) the mandate of a majority of the justices, but represents the reasoning of less than a majority of the participating justices.'" (quoting State v. Lynch, 2016 WI 66, ¶ 143, 371 Wis. 2d 1, 885 N.W.2d 89 (Abrahamson & Ann Walsh Bradley, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (citing Hoffer Props., LLC v. DOT, 2016 WI 5, 366 Wis. 2d 372, 874 N.W.2d 533)).
The parties disagree whether the Milewskis made a facial or an as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of the statutes. The lead opinion agrees with the Milewskis that their challenge is an as-applied challenge. Lead op., ¶¶ 69-71.1 am not persuaded. I caution, as the United States Supreme Court has cautioned, that "the distinction between facial and as-
The Milewskis bear a heavy burden. See Tammy W.-G. v. Jacob T., 2011 WI 30, ¶ 46, 333 Wis. 2d 273, 299, 797 N.W.2d 854 ("In a facial challenge, the challenger must persuade us that the 'heavy burden
The Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual interprets "actual view" of property to include an "interior view." See Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 4-3, 10-55, 21-18 to 21-20 (2017).
All subsequent references to the Manual are to the 2017 version. For a discussion of the Manual, see ¶¶ 143-145, infra.
At least as early as the 1860s the legislature has required assessors to value real property upon actual view. Marsh v. Bd. of Supervisors, 42 Wis. 502, 514 (1877). The Marsh court
Chief Justice Patience Roggensack's concurrence offers an unexpected and surprising interpretation of the phrases "actual view" and "view such property" in Wis. Stat. §§ 70.32(1) and 70.47(7)(aa), respectively. The concurrence contends that these phrases do not refer to an interior view of the real property. This interpretation (not proffered by the parties) does not resolve the issue of the constitutionality of the statutes at issue when the property owner does not allow an assessor a view of the exterior of the real property, which is curtilage. See Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984); State v. Dumstrey, 2016 WI 3, 366 Wis. 2d 64, 873 N.W.2d 502.
See, e.g., Minn. Stat. §§ 273.20, 274.01(b) (2016); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 58A, § 8A (2016).
Justice Annette Ziegler's concurrence appropriately outlines some difficulties with the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine, but much more can be said about the unworkability of the doctrine and the flaws in the lead opinion's discussion of this doctrine.
"[T]he tax appeal administrative procedures of chs. 70 and 74 of the Wisconsin statutes are a highly evolved and carefully interwoven set of statutes providing a comprehensive remedy for individuals seeking redress for excessive assessments." Hermann v. Town of Delavan, 215 Wis. 2d 370, 394, 572 N.W.2d 855 (1998).
The circuit court observed that no search occurred:
Circuit Court: [Milewski] here very nicely says: You can come —you can come in the yard, you can look around, but you can't go in. They don't go in, do they?
Milewski's Attorney: No, they do not.
Circuit Court: So there's no Fourth Amendment violation at all.
Milewski's Attorney: There's no search.
Wisconsin Stat. § 70.05(4m) limits the availability and scope of an assessor's entry to view a property:
A taxation district assessor may not enter upon a person's real property for purposes of conducting an assessment under this chapter more than once in each year, except that an assessor may enter upon a person's real property for purposes of conducting an assessment under this chapter more often if the property owner consents. Aproperty owner may deny entry to an assessor if the owner has given prior notice to the assessor that the assessor may not enter the property without the property owner's permission.
Any request to view the interior of the property must be reasonable, made in writing, and delivered by certified mail. Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa).
Wisconsin Stat. § 66.0119 provides for "special inspection warrants" for many purposes, including "property assessment."
In Camara v. Mun. Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), the Court required a municipal health inspector to obtain a warrant to conduct routine interior inspections for evidence of building code violations.
Compare G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338, 358 (1977) (concluding that the government's nonconsen-sual search of a business office and seizure of furnishings, books, and records contained therein was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment absent a warrant or exigent circumstances).
The Wisconsin statutes include protection against intentional (retaliatory) assessments. Should an assessor attempt to punish a property owner by imposing a punitive assessment, the assessor risks not only a fine but liability for the amount of the excess tax imposed on the property owner.
Wisconsin Stat. § 70.503 provides for civil liability of an assessor as follows:
Civil liability of assessor or member of board of review. If any assessor, or person appointed or designated under s. 70.055 or 70.75, or any member of the board of review of any assessment district is guilty of any violation or omission of duty as specified in ss. 70.501 and 70.502, such persons shall be liable in damages to any person who may sustain loss or injury thereby, to the amount of such loss or injury; and any person sustaining such loss or injury shall be entitled to all the remedies given by law in actions for damages for tortious or wrongful acts. . . .
Wisconsin Stat. § 70.501 provides for an assessor's forfeiture to the state:
Fraudulent valuations by assessor. Any assessor, or person appointed or designated under s. 70.055 or 70.75, who intentionally fixes the value of any property assessed by that person at less or more than the true value thereof prescribed by law for the valuation of the same, or intentionally omits from assessment any property liable to taxation in the assessment district, or otherwise intentionally violates or fails to perform any duty imposed upon that person by law relating to the assessment of property for taxation, shall forfeit to the state not less than $50 nor more than $250.
See Milewski v. Town of Dover, No. 2015AP1523, unpublished slip op., ¶¶ 22-25 (Wis. Ct. App. May 4, 2016).
Any request to view the property must be reasonable, made in writing, and delivered by certified mail. Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa). The Milewskis do not assert that they were unable to permit a view at the suggested time. Indeed, had this been their reason for refusing the assessor a view of the interior of the home, the Milewskis would have been given a chance to reconsider their refusal, even after seeing the proposed assessment. See Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 21—16.
See Wis. Carry v. City of Madison, 2017 WI 19, ¶ 20, 373 Wis. 2d 543, 892 N.W.2d 233 ("We examine the statute's contextualized words, put them into operation, and observe the results to ensure we do not arrive at an unreasonable or absurd conclusion.").
See, e.g., Berkos v. Shipwreck Bay Condo. Ass'n, 2008 WI App 122, ¶ 8, 313 Wis. 2d 609, 758 N.W.2d 215 ("Also relevant to a statute's plain meaning is prior case law interpreting the statute.")
Walgreen Co. v. City of Madison, 2008 WI 80, ¶ 19, 311 Wis. 2d 158, 752 N.W.2d 687.
Metro. Holding Co. v. Bd. of Review, 173 Wis. 2d 626, 632, 495 N.W.2d 314 (1993).
That an actual view requires an assessor to view the interior of real property is an observation echoed throughout the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual. For example, at 6-12, the Manual explains that "data collected on each property should be complete, accurate, and consistent," requiring, inter alia, that the assessor "[v]iew the interior of the building, recording physical data." The Manual explains further that "[p]hysical characteristics such as age, condition, design, layout, quality of construction materials, and workmanship all have an effect on the value of improvements." Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at 9-20. These characteristics necessarily depend on an interior view.
Gardiner Appraisal Service is a party in the instant case and filed a brief.
Defendant-Respondent, Gardiner Appraisal Service, LLC's, Response Br. at 8.
The Appraisal Institute describes itself as "the world's leading organization of professional real estate appraisers," and "has led the way in fostering and promoting the highest standards of [appraisal] practice through its designation programs, peer review process, education, research and publishing endeavors." See http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/about/.
This text has been cited in numerous Wisconsin cases in which an appraisal or appraisal technique has been at issue. See, e.g., Walgreen Co. v. City of Madison, 2008 WI 80, ¶ 3, 311 Wis. 2d 158, 164-65, 752 N.W.2d 687, 690 ("This holding is consistent with the nationally recognized principle that '[a] lease never increases the market value of real property rights to the fee simple estate.' Appraisal Institute, The Appraisal of Real Estate 473 (12th ed. 2001)."); ABKA Ltd. P'ship v. Bd. of Rev. of Vill. of Fontana-on-Geneva Lake, 231 Wis. 2d 328, 354, 603 N.W.2d 217 (1999) (Wilcox, J., dissenting) (citing The Appraisal Institute, The Appraisal of Real Estate 478 (11th ed. 1996)); Vivid, Inc. v. Fiedler, 219 Wis. 2d 764, 781, 580 N.W.2d
Reference was also made to another Appraisal Institute publication titled Summary Appraisal Report: Residential (2013) for similar statements.
Fannie Mae, to which the Gardiner Appraisal Services affidavit refers, also requires the inspection of the interior and
" 'An assessor has an obligation to follow the three tier assessment analysis.'" Regency West Apartments LLC v. City of Racine, 2016 WI 99, ¶ 26, 372 Wis. 2d 282, 888 N.W.2d 611 (quoting Adams Outdoor Advert., Ltd. v. City of Madison, 2006 WI 104, ¶ 47, 294 Wis. 2d 441, 717 N.W.2d 803). See also Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual at ch. 9.
See Adams Outdoor Advert., Ltd. v. City of Madison, 2006 WI 104, ¶ 34,294 Wis. 2d 441, 717 N.W.2d 803 ("Evidence of an arms-length sale of the subject property is the best evidence of true cash value.") (citing State ex rel. Keane v. Bd. of Review, 99 Wis. 2d 584, 590, 299 N.W.2d 638 (Ct. App. 1980)).
Rosen v. City of Milwaukee, 72 Wis. 2d 653, 686, 242 N.W.2d 681 (1976) ("Important considerations in determining whether particular property is sufficiently similar to the property being assessed to warrant reliance on its sale price as evidence of market value include its location, including the distance from the assessed property, its business or residential advantages or disadvantages, its improvements, size and use.").
See, e.g., Adams Outdoor Advert., Ltd. v. City of Madison, 2006 WI 104, I 34, 294 Wis. 2d 441, 717 N.W.2d 803 ("Only if there has been no arms-length sale and there are no reasonably comparable sales may an assessor use any of the third-tier assessment methodologies.") (citing State ex rel. Keane v. Bd. of Review , 99 Wis. 2d 584, 590, 299 N.W.2d 638 (Ct. App. 1980)); Great Lakes Quick Lube, LP v. City of
See Wis. Stat. ch. 18, § 31 (1871) (cited in March v. Board of Supervisors, 42 Wis. 502 (1877)). This statute states that real property shall be valued by the assessor from actual view and does not mention an alternative "best information" but enumerates factors to be considered. It provides as follows:
§ 31. Real property shall be valued by the assessor from actual view at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale, and which the assessor shall believe the owner, if he desires to sell, would accept in full payment. In determining the value the assessors shall consider as to each piece, its advantage or disadvantage of location, quality of soil, quantity and quality of standing timber, water privileges, mines, minerals, quarries, or other valuable deposits known to be available therein,*126 and all buildings, fixed machinery and improvements of every description thereon, and their value. Real property held under lease from any religious, scientific, literary or benevolent association, but otherwise exempt, shall be assessed to the lessee. The assessor having fixed the value shall enter the same opposite the proper tract in the assessment roll. Property omitted from assessment the previous year by mistake, shall be entered twice, designating one entry as omitted for the year 18—. (Emphasis added.)
See Wis. Stat. ch. 48, § 1052 (1889), which provides as follows:
Real property shall be valued by the assessor either from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain, at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale. In determining the value the assessor shall consider, as to each piece, its advantage or disadvantage of location, quality of soil, quantity of standing timber, water privileges, mines, minerals, quarries, or other valuable deposits known to be available therein, and their value. Real property held under lease from any religious, scientific, literary or benevolent association, but otherwise exempt, shall be assessed to the lessee. The assessor, having fixed the value, shall enter the same opposite the proper tract or lot in the assessment roll. (Emphasis added.)
More recently, the court of appeals concluded that an actual view was not required to conduct a comparable sales analysis because the village assessor had been familiar with
Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. v. City of Milwaukee, 374 Wis. 2d 348, ¶ 37, 374 Wis. 2d 348, 893 N.W.2d 24 (quoting U.S. Oil Co., Inc. v. City of Milwaukee, 2011 WI App 4, ¶ 25, 331 Wis. 2d 407, 794 N.W.2d 904 (2010)).
Brief of Defendant-Respondent Town of Dover and Board of Review for the Town of Dover at 17.
Walgreen Co. v. City of Madison, 2008 WI 80, f 17, 311 Wis. 2d 158, 752 N.W.2d 687; Adams Outdoor Advertising, Ltd. v. City of Madison, 2006 WI 104, ¶ 26, 294 Wis. 2d 441, 717 N.W.2d 803.
Wis. Stat. § 70.47(13); Bonstores Realty One, LLC v. City of Wauwatosa, 2013 WI App 131, ¶ 9, 351 Wis. 2d 439, 839 N.W.2d 893 (citing Wis. Stat. § 903.01 for the proposition that an evidentiary presumption shifts the burden to the challenger).
See, e.g., Elias v. State, 93 Wis. 2d 278, 285, 286 N.W.2d 559 (1980) ("The responsibility of the sentencing court is to acquire full knowledge of the character and behavior pattern of the convicted defendant before imposing [the] sentence.").
Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 39 (1996) ("Reasonableness, in turn, is measured in objective terms by examining the totality of the circumstances."); State v. Gaulrapp, 207 Wis. 2d 600, 607, 558 N.W.2d 696 (Ct. App. 1996) ("[T]he Fourth Amendment's touchstone is reasonableness, which is measured in objective terms by examining the totality of the circumstances.").
"[T]he purpose for the [governmental] interference bears upon the intrusiveness of government action. A criminal investigation is generally more intrusive than an administrative or
State ex rel. Strykowski v. Wilkie, 81 Wis. 2d 491, 512, 261 N.W.2d 434, 444 (1978) ("[D]ue process is satisfied if the statutory procedures provide an opportunity to be heard in court at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. ... Due process is flexible and requires only such procedural protections as the particular situation demands.") (citing Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 333 (1976)).
Cty. of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 845 (1998); accord Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 558 (1974) ("The touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government.").
McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 213 (1971), reh'g granted, judgment vacated sub nom. Crampton v. Ohio, 408 U.S. 941 (1972) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted) ("The contention is that where guilt and punishment are to be determined by a jury at a single trial the desire to address the jury on punishment unduly encourages waiver of the defendant's privilege to remain silent on the issue of guilt, or, to put the matter another way, that the single-verdict procedure unlawfully compels the defendant to become a witness against himself on the issue of guilt by the threat of sentencing him to death without having heard from him.").
See Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S. Ct. 1552, 1566 (2013) ("States have adopted implied consent laws that require motorists, as a condition of operating a motor vehicle within the State, to consent to BAC testing if they are arrested or otherwise detained on suspicion of a drunk-driving offense."); Birchfield, 136 S. Ct. at 2185 ("Our prior opinions have
The use of refusal evidence at trial has been held not to violate due process. North Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553 (1983); State v. Albright, 98 Wis. 2d 663, 298 N.W.2d 196 (Ct. App. 1980); State v. Crandall, 133 Wis. 2d 251, 394 N.W.2d 905 (1986).
Although the Implied Consent Law seeks waiver of a Fourth Amendment right in exchange for retaining the "privilege of an operator's license," and, according to the lead opinion, the tax assessment system seeks waiver of a Fourth Amendment right in exchange for retaining a due process right to challenge the assessment, the analogy is apt.
The United States Supreme Court has not distinguished between a privilege and a right for these purposes. See, e.g., Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 404 (1963) ("Nor may the South Carolina court's construction of the statute be saved from constitutional infirmity on the ground that unemployment compensation benefits are not appellant's 'right' but merely a 'privilege.' It is too late in the day to doubt that the liberties of religion and expression may be infringed by the denial of or placing of conditions upon a benefit or privilege."); Bd. of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 571 (1972) ("[T]he Court has fully and finally rejected the wooden distinction between 'rights' and 'privileges' that once seemed to govern the applicability of procedural due process rights."); Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 374 (1971) ("But this Court now has rejected the concept that constitutional rights turn upon whether a governmental benefit is characterized as a 'right' or as a 'privilege.' "); Kerry v. Din, 135 S. Ct. 2128, 2143 (2015) (Breyer, J., dissenting) ("Justice SCALIA's response—
See Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160, 2185 (2016) ("It is another matter, however, for a State not only to insist upon an intrusive blood test, but also to impose criminal penalties on the refusal to submit to such a test. There must be a limit to the consequences to which motorists may be deemed to have consented by virtue of a decision to drive on public roads."); Camara v. Mun. Ct., 387 U.S. 523, 540 (1967) ("We therefore conclude that appellant has a constitutional right to insist that the inspectors obtain a warrant to search and that appellant may not constitutionally be convicted [of a crime] for refusing to consent to the inspection.") (emphasis added).
See Birchfield, 136 S. Ct. at 2173 ("The States and the Federal Government have a paramount interest... in preserving [public highway] safety....") (internal quotation marks and quoted source omitted).
Milewski v. Town of Dover, No.2015AP1523, unpublished slip op., ¶ 21 (Wis. Ct. App. May 4, 2016).
In Hermann v. Town of Delavan, 215 Wis. 2d 370, 376, 572 N.W.2d 855, a group of taxpayers brought a claim under Wis. Stat. § 893.80 alleging that the Town's method of assessment was unfair and non-uniform. Because the taxpayers'
The legislature has barred taxpayers from challenging tax assessments for personal property if the taxpayer failed to make full disclosure. See, e.g., Vill. of Westby v. Bekkedal, 172 Wis. 114, 121-22, 178 N.W. 451, 454 (1920) (taxpayer who did not comply with statutory requirement to attend hearing and disclose all income subject to assessment was estopped from challenging the assessment); State ex rel. Foster v. Williams, 123 Wis. 73, 75, 100 N.W. 1052, 1052 (1904) (1903 Wis. Laws ch. 284, § 2, barred the taxpayer from questioning the board's valuation unless the taxpayer made full disclosure before the board, under oath, of all his or her personal property liable to assessment in the district and the value thereof; holding that evasive answers do not constitute a full disclosure).
Less persuasive, but worth mentioning as some support for the constitutionality of the challenged statutes, is that the challenged statutes may be considered analogous to several prerequisites a property owner must meet to contest the assessment:
*145 • Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(a): A person who owns land and improvements to that land may not object only to the valuation of that land or only to the valuation of improvements to that land.
• Wis. Stat. § 74.37(4)(b): No claim or action for an excessive assessment may be brought or maintained unless the tax for which the claim is filed is timely paid.
• Wis. Stat. § 74.3(4)(c): No claim or action for an excessive assessment may be brought or maintained if the assessment of the property for the same year is contested under enumerated sections of chapter 70.
• The real property owner must exhaust administrative remedies. See Northbrook Wis., LLC v. City of Niagara, 2014 WI App 22, ¶ 25, 352 Wis. 2d 657, 843 N.W.2d 851 ("That North-brook failed to avail itself of the opportunity to object before the Board of Review does not mean its right to due process was violated.").
Lister v. Sure-Dry Basement Sys., 2008 WI App 124, 313 Wis. 2d 151, 758 N.W.2d 126 (dismissal of homeowner's action against contractor was warranted for homeowner's failure to supply physician's report); Steinberg v. Jensen, 194 Wis. 2d 439, 480, 534 N.W.2d 361 (1995) (Geske, J. concurring)
Wisconsin Stat. § 905.04(4)(c) provides: "There is no privilege under this section as to communications relevant to or within the scope of discovery examination of an issue of the physical, mental or emotional condition of a patient in any proceedings in which the patient relies upon the condition as an element of the patient's claim or defense, or ... in any proceeding in which any party relies upon the condition as an element of the party's claim or defense."
Opinion of the Court
¶ 1. Vincent Milewski and Morganne MacDonald (collectively, the "Milewskis") own a home in the Town of Dover. They want to challenge a tax assessor's recent revaluation of their property. But they also want to prevent the tax assessor from inspecting the interior of their home as a part of that process. The Town says our statutes require them to pick one or the other because they cannot do both.
¶ 2. The Milewskis bring us a discrete question, but we see that the answer will play out against an intricate and delicately balanced set of tax statutes and constitutional provisions. Although the following background provides little more than a broad sketch of Wisconsin's system of real property taxation, it should be enough to place the Milewskis' question in an understandable context.
A. Wisconsin's tax assessment scheme
¶ 3. Article VIII, section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution, known as the Uniformity Clause, requires the uniform taxation of real property,
¶ 4. If the property owner is dissatisfied with the assessor's valuation, he may bring his objection to the local board of review. Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(a).
No person shall be allowed to appear before the board of review, to testify to the board by telephone or to contest the amount of any assessment of real or personal property if the person has refused a reasonable written request by certified mail of the assessor to view such property.
Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa). At the board of review hearing, the owner may present evidence in support of what he believes to be the proper valuation. Wis. Stat. § 70.47(8). Based on that evidence, the board of review decides whether to adjust the assessor's valuation.
¶ 5. Some property owners, however, may want a circuit court, rather than the town's board of review, to make the initial determination of whether the assessor's valuation is accurate. Such an owner may file a claim for excessive assessment in the circuit court under Wis. Stat. § 74.37(2). He must still, however, follow the pre-hearing procedures for challenging the valuation before the board of review, as outlined above: "No claim or action for an excessive assessment may be brought under this section unless the procedures for objecting to assessments under [§] 70.47 .. . have been complied with." Wis. Stat. § 74.37(4)(a). After completing these pre-hearing procedures, the owner asks the board of review for a hearing waiver. Wis. Stat. § 70.47(8m). Once granted, the owner may file his complaint in the circuit court.
B. The Town of Dover Revalues the Milewskis' Property
| 6. In 2013, the Town of Dover reassessed all the properties in its jurisdiction and contracted with Gar-diner Appraisal Service, LLC ("Gardiner") to assign a value to each such property. Gardiner's attention eventually turned to the Milewskis' home (the "Property"), which had a pre-2013 assessed value of $273,900, and an estimated fair market value of $277,761. Gardiner sent the Milewskis a notice stating that it "must view the interior of your property for the Town wide revaluation program which is in progress" and that "[a]n assessor will stop to view your property on Tues, Aug 20 at 6:10 pm."
¶ 8. A few months later, the Milewskis received a certified letter from Gardiner stating that the assessor had not "viewed the interior of your buildings" and asked that they schedule a time for him to do so. The Milewskis sent the Town a letter objecting to the requested interior inspection. Gardiner made no further attempt to view the interior of the Property and assessed it at a value of $307,100—a 12.12 percent increase from the previous assessment of $273,900.
¶ 9. After learning of the new assessment, Mr. Milewski attended open book sessions to review the assessed values of other properties in the subdivision.
C. The Milewskis Protest the Revaluation of the Property
¶ 10. The Milewskis filed an "Objection Form for Real Property Assessment" with the Town, and about two weeks later, they appeared at the November 25, 2013 Dover Board of Review ("BOR") hearing, where they intended to object to the assessment of their Property. However, because the BOR determined they had refused "a reasonable request by certified mail of the assessor to view [their] property," the BOR refused to hear their objection.
¶ 11. The Milewskis paid their 2013 property taxes and filed a Notice of Claim and Claim with the Town Clerk under Wis. Stat. § 74.37, alleging the Property assessment was excessive and that the Town had violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The Town denied the Milewskis' claim by taking no action on it within 90 days. See Wis. Stat. § 74.37(3)(a). The Milewskis later followed the same procedure for their 2014 property taxes, with the same result.
¶ 12. The Milewskis commenced this case with a complaint that included a claim for excessive assessment under Wis. Stat. § 74.37, and a claim that Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) and Wis. Stat. § 74.37(4)(a), as applied to the Milewskis, are unconstitutional because they conditioned their right to challenge the assessor's
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
¶ 13. Summary judgment is appropriate when there are no genuine disputes as to any material facts and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Wis. Stat. § 802.08(2). We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, applying the same methodology as the circuit court. Belding v. Demoulin, 2014 WI 8, ¶ 13, 352 Wis. 2d 359, 843 N.W.2d 373. While our review is independent from the circuit court and court of appeals, we benefit from their analyses. See Preisler v. Gen. Cas. Ins. Co., 2014 WI 135, ¶ 16, 360 Wis. 2d 129, 857 N.W.2d 136.
¶ 14. A facial challenge to a statute's constitutionality also presents a question of law that we review de novo. Aicher v. Wis. Patients Comp. Fund, 2000 WI 98, ¶ 18, 237 Wis. 2d 99, 613 N.W.2d 849. We presume statutes are constitutional; the party asserting the constitutional infirmity must establish its argument beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Wood, 2010 WI 17, ¶ 15, 323 Wis. 2d 321, 780 N.W.2d 63.
f 15. The Milewskis say they are not contesting the constitutionality of the statutes in question, only how they were applied to them. In such a challenge
III. DISCUSSION
¶ 16. The Milewskis understand themselves to be on the horns of a dilemma. The Town told them they must either submit to a tax assessor's inspection of the interior of their home or lose the right to challenge the revaluation of their Property. The Milewskis say the Town may not make them ransom their due process rights with a search of their home. The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, they say, protect the sanctity of their home as well as their right to contest the Town's revaluation.
¶ 17. The Town sees no dilemma. Instead, it sees only a polite request to enter a home to perform the reasonable task of determining how much it is worth so that the Town may properly allocate the tax burden,
¶ 18. The task before us is straightforward. First, we must determine whether the Milewskis' situation affects the constitutionally-protected rights they asserted. So we will examine whether there is a due-process right to contest a tax assessor's valuation of real property, and whether a tax assessor's noncon-sensual, warrantless inspection of the interior of a home would be an unreasonable search. Second, if this situation really does implicate two constitutionally-protected rights, we will inquire into whether the exercise of one can be conditioned on surrender of the other. And finally, if this conditioning is impermissible, we must determine whether it results from an inexorable statutory command, or is instead the result of how the Town applied the statutes to the Milewskis.
A. Rights Claimed by the Milewskis
1. Due Process
¶ 19. The Milewskis were unable to challenge the revaluation of their Property before the Board of
¶ 20. The Milewskis say the Town may not impose a tax that is not ultimately subject to judicial review without violating their due-process rights. A due-process challenge requires the complainant to establish two components. First, she must prove she has been deprived of a recognized right. Aicher, 237 Wis. 2d 99, ¶ 80. And second, she must prove that she has not been afforded process commensurate with the deprivation. Id. The focus of such claims is not on whether the State may infringe the right in question, but whether it has engaged the proper procedure in doing so. "In procedural due process claims, the deprivation by state action of a constitutionally protected interest in 'life, liberty, or property' is not in itself unconstitutional; what is unconstitutional is the deprivation of such an interest without due process of law." Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 125 (1990). This constitutional guarantee protects an individual from the erroneous exercise of the State's authority. "Procedural due process rules are meant to protect persons .. . from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property." Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 259 (1978). "Such rules 'minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations of life, liberty, or property by enabling persons to
¶ 21. The United States Constitution specifically extends the guarantee of due process to the deprivation of property: "No state shall. . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . ." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Our Wisconsin constitution provides that "[a] 11 people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Wis. Const. art. 1, § 1. Although the text of the U.S. and Wisconsin constitutional provisions differ, they "provide identical procedural due process protections." Cty. of Kenosha v. C & S Mgmt., Inc., 223 Wis. 2d 373, 393, 588 N.W.2d 236 (1999).
¶ 22. For constitutional purposes, a tax is a deprivation of property: "[E]xaction of a tax constitutes a deprivation of property ... ." McKesson Corp. v. Div. of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Dep't. of Business Regulation of Fla., 496 U.S. 18, 36 (1990). Consequently, a state imposing a tax "must provide procedural safeguards against unlawful exactions in order to satisfy the commands of the Due Process Clause." Id.
¶ 23. We know the nature of these safeguards well: "The elements of procedural due process are notice and an opportunity to be heard, or to defend or respond, in an orderly proceeding, adapted to the nature of the case in accord with established rules." State v. Thompson, 2012 WI 90, ¶ 46, 342 Wis. 2d 674,
[W]e have described the root requirement of the Due Process Clause as being that an individual be given an opportunity for a hearing before he is deprived of any significant property interest,. .. [but] it is well established that a State need not provide predeprivation process for the exaction of taxes.
McKesson Corp., 496 U.S. at 37 (internal citations and marks omitted).
¶ 24. The Milewskis have been subjected to a tax—a deprivation of property—but they have been forbidden any process by which to challenge it. So, absent an adequate explanation for how this came to pass, they have been denied their Fourteenth Amendment due-process rights.
¶ 25. This argument conflates two important, but distinct, principles. The right to a hearing is not the same thing as the burden of proof one must satisfy by the end of that hearing. Nor do the concepts protect the same interests. The former ensures access to a neutral magistrate to resolve disputes and is constitutionally guaranteed. The latter is a prudential recognition that he who seeks to change the status quo must overcome its inertia, and is subject to adjustment based on policy considerations.
¶ 26. We agree with the Town that the Milewskis must be prepared to offer evidence sufficient to overcome the assessor's conclusion if they hope to change the Property's valuation. A challenger must "in good faith presentí] evidence to such board [of review] in support of such objections and [make] full disclosure before said board, under oath of all of that person's property liable to assessment in such district and the value thereof." Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(a). This obligation
2. Freedom From Unreasonable Searches
I 27. We next determine whether a tax assessor's warrantless inspection of the interior of a home would
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
U.S. Const. amend. IV. Its Wisconsin counterpart, found in Article I, section 11 of the Wisconsin Constitution,
¶ 28. The constitutionality of a tax assessor's inspection of the interior of a home turns on three questions. First, whether the inspection is a search at all within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Second, whether the inspection (if it is a search) fits within a recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment's operation. And third, if no recognized exception covers the inspection, whether it is nonetheless reasonable.
¶ 29. Whether a tax assessor's "viewing" has constitutional significance depends on what the term "search" meant at the time of the Fourth Amendment's adoption. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 34 (2001) (The court must "assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted."). To obtain a baseline understanding of what manner of intrusion comprises a "search," the United States Supreme Court recently had reference to the English case of Entick v. Carrington.
¶ 30. In Entick, the Jones Court found a close connection between "searches" and the law of trespass. Jones, 565 U.S. at 405. There, Lord Camden admonished that" '[o]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour's close without his leave; if he does he is a trespasser, though he does no damage at all; if he will tread upon his neighbour's ground, he must justify it by law.' " Jones, 565 U.S. at 405 (quoting Entick, 95 Eng. Rep. at 817).
¶ 31. When the government proposes to enter a home to obtain information relevant to levying a tax, we have even more precise historical guidance at hand. "In order to ascertain the nature of the proceedings intended by the fourth amendment to the constitution under the terms 'unreasonable searches and seizures,' it is only necessary to recall the contemporary or then recent history of the controversies on the subject, both in this country and in England." Boyd, 116 U.S. at 624-25. One of those controversies, which still informs our view of the Fourth Amendment, was the practice of granting revenue agents general warrants to search homes for taxable items:
"Vivid in the memory of the newly independent Americans were those general warrants known as writs of assistance under which officers of the Crown had so bedeviled the colonists. The hated writs of assistance*64 had given customs officials blanket authority to search where they pleased for goods imported in violation of British tax laws. They were denounced by James Otis as 'the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book,1 because they placed 'the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.' The historic occasion of that denunciation, in 1761 at Boston, has been characterized as 'perhaps the most prominent event which inaugurated the resistance of the colonies to the oppressions of the mother country.'"
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 583 n.21 (1980) (quoting Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476, 481—82 (1965) (quoting Boyd, 116 U.S. at 616, 625)).
¶ 32. This history tells us that, at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted, a "search" occurred when a government agent trespassed on private property in pursuit of revenue-raising information. Our statutes preserve the home's sanctity against revenue agents by making it clear that tax assessors trespass if they enter a home without consent. See Wis. Stat. § 943.13(4m)(am)4. (no trespass exemption for tax assessors entering residences or buildings within curti-lage); see also Wis. Stat. § 70.05(4m) ("A property owner may deny entry to an assessor if the owner has given prior notice to the assessor that the assessor may not enter the property without the property owner's permission."). So, as Entick observed, and Jones confirmed, if a tax assessor " 'will tread upon his neigh-bour's ground, he must justify it by law.' " Jones, 565 U.S. at 405 (quoting Entick, 95 Eng. Rep. at 817).
¶ 33. This is not, however, how the Town views its proposed inspection of the Milewskis' home. It sees the Fourth Amendment primarily through a proce
¶ 34. The Town's argument, however, gets a little ahead of itself. The question at this stage of the analysis is whether the tax assessor would be performing a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment by viewing the interior of the Milewskis' home. Whether he gives advance notice of when the viewing will occur, or provides assurance that refusing him an audience will cause merely financial penalties, may or may not have something to say about the reasonableness of a search, but it says nothing about whether his "viewing" belongs in the Fourth Amendment "search" category. The Jones Court cast that query in strictly functional terms, declaring that a search occurs when "[t]he Government physically occupie[s] private prop
¶ 35. The Town offered Wyman v. James as an example of how a government agent may enter a home without triggering a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. 400 U.S. 309 (1971). The eponymous Mrs. James applied for, and received, financial benefits under the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program ("AFDC"). Id. at 313-14. The State of New York, in administering the AFDC program for state residents, required periodic home visits by a caseworker to ensure the beneficiaries were putting program funds to the intended uses. See id. at 313-16. Mrs. James filed a civil rights action alleging the home visits were searches that violated the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 314-15.
¶ 36. The Supreme Court did not agree. It acknowledged that the visits had both "rehabilitative and investigative" aspects, but brushed off the latter because it "is given too broad a character and far more emphasis than it deserves if it is equated with a search in the traditional criminal law context." Id. at 317. Concentrating instead on the consensual nature of home visits, and the fact that withholding consent merely stopped the flow of AFDC benefits, the Court found no search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment:
We note, too, that the visitation in itself is not forced or compelled, and that the beneficiary's denial of permission is not a criminal act. If consent to the visitation is withheld, no visitation takes place. The aid then never begins or merely ceases, as the case may be. There is no entry of the home and there is no search.
If however, we were to assume that a caseworker's home visit, before or subsequent to the beneficiary's initial qualification for benefits, somehow (perhaps because the average beneficiary might feel she is in no position to refuse consent to the visit), and despite its interview nature, does possess some of the characteristics of a search in the traditional sense, we nevertheless conclude that the visit does not fall within the Fourth Amendment's proscription. This is because it does not descend to the level of unreasonableness. It is unreasonableness which is the Fourth Amendment's standard.
¶ 37. Wyman provides no assistance in determining whether the tax assessor's proposed view of the interior of the Milewskis' home is a Fourth Amendment search. It does not actually define what manner of activity qualifies as a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. Instead, it asks whether the homeowner has excused the government agent from complying with constitutional requirements at all. The Fourth Amendment, of course, does not prohibit consensual searches. See, e.g., Florida v. Bostick, 501 U.S. 429, 439 (1991) ("The Fourth Amendment proscribes unreasonable searches and seizures; it does not proscribe voluntary cooperation"); see also, United States v. Williams, 521 F.3d 902, 905 (8th Cir. 2008) ("Consensual searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment. . . ."). The Fourth Amendment is no barrier to consensual searches not because the activity is not a search, but because
¶ 38. The Town argues that if the Milewskis and Mrs. James' situations are not sufficiently comparable, we should analogize this case to an analogy employed by the Wyman Court:
It seems to us that the situation is akin to that where an Internal Revenue Service agent, in making a routine civil audit of a taxpayer's income tax return, asks that the taxpayer produce for the agent's review some proof of a deduction the taxpayer has asserted to his benefit in the computation of his tax. If the taxpayer refuses, there is, absent fraud, only a disallowance of the claimed deduction and a consequent additional tax. The taxpayer is fully within his "rights" in refusing to produce the proof, but in maintaining and asserting those rights a tax detriment results and it is a detriment of the taxpayer's own making. So here Mrs. James has the "right" to refuse the home visit, but a consequence in the form of cessation of aid, similar to the taxpayer's resultant additional tax, flows from that refusal. The choice is entirely hers, and nothing of constitutional magnitude is involved.
¶ 39. This analysis offers no guidance and, indeed, illustrates the limited utility of recursive analogies. An analogy is helpful when it illuminates a central proposition by considering it in a different, but logically related, context. Building one analogy on another risks shifting the focus from the central proposition to something peripheral, as occurred here. The
¶ 40. In determining whether a tax assessor conducts a constitutionally-significant search when viewing the interior of a home, we apply the elegantly simple Jones formulation: If a government agent occupies private property for the purpose of obtaining information, he is conducting a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Town's own argument confirms this would be a search. It is the Town's central point that a tax assessor must physically enter the Milewskis' home to conduct an interior view. And by describing the viewing as "a simple requirement that taxpayers disclose the information relevant to the value of their home," the Town admitted the purpose of the assessor's presence would be to obtain revenue-related information. Thus, a tax asses
b. Exception to the Fourth Amendment
¶ 41. The Town asserts that a tax assessor's search of a home fits within the "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment's protection. It refers us to City of Indianapolis v. Edmond for instruction. 531 U.S. 32 (2000). There we find that the United States Supreme Court has recognized a mélange of circumstances in which searches are constitutionally reasonable even in the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing:
[W]e have upheld certain regimes of suspicionless searches where the program was designed to serve "special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement." See, e.g., Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995) (random drug testing of student-athletes); Treasury Emps. v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656 (1989) (drug tests for United States Customs Service employees seeking transfer or promotion to certain positions); Skinner v. Ry. Labor Execs. Assn., 489 U.S. 602 (1989) (drug and alcohol tests for railway employees involved in train accidents or found to be in violation of particular safety regulations). We have also allowed searches for certain administrative purposes without particularized suspicion of misconduct, provided that those searches are appropriately limited. See, e.g., New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 702-704 (1987) (warrantless administrative inspection of premises of "closely regulated" business); Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 507-509, 511-512 (1978) (administrative inspection of fire-damaged premises to determine cause of blaze); Camara v. Mun.*71 Court of City and Cty. of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523, 534-539 (1967) (administrative inspection to ensure compliance with city housing code).
Edmond, 531 U.S. at 37. The Town asks us to add tax assessment searches to this potpourri because revenue collection is a "special need," and the search is "not aimed at all at criminal—or even civil code— enforcement."
¶ 42. Whatever the merits of those exceptions, the Town has not directed our attention to any case suggesting that assessing or collecting taxes is a need so special that it excuses compliance with the Fourth Amendment. Nor have we found any. To the contrary, G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338 (1977), teaches that the Fourth Amendment admits of no "tax revenue" special exception. In that case, the Court considered whether United States revenue agents could enter a corporation's business offices without a warrant to seize various books and records useful to their tax collection efforts. See id. at 352-53. The United States made an argument similar to what the Town offers us: "The respondents argue that there is a broad exception to the Fourth Amendment that allows warrantless intrusions into privacy in the furtherance of enforcement of the tax laws." Id. at 354. It also maintained that "the history of the common law in England and the laws in several States prior to the adoption of the Bill of Rights support the view that the Fourth Amendment was not intended to cover intrusions into privacy in the enforcement of the tax laws." Id. at 355.
¶ 43. After noting the government's unquestionable authority to "lay and collect Taxes," the Court nonetheless recognized that "one of the primary evils
c. Is an "Interior View" a Reasonable Search?
f 44. Because the Fourth Amendment forbids only "unreasonable" searches, we must determine
Under our general Fourth Amendment approach we examine the totality of the circumstances to determine whether a search is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Whether a search is reasonable is determined by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to which it intrudes upon an individual's privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.
Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843, 848 (2006) (internal marks and citations omitted). Because we are addressing the propriety of a potential warrantless home search, we presume it would be unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional. "It is a 'basic principle of Fourth Amendment law' that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable." Payton, 445 U.S. at 586; see also Camara, 387 U.S. at 528-29 ("[0]ne governing principle, justified by history and by current experience, has consistently been followed: except in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is 'unreasonable' unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant.") (citing Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483 (1964); United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48 (1951) overruled on other grounds by Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978); McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451 (1948); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20 (1925)). It is the Town's burden to
¶ 45. The Town does not say there is anything peculiar about the Milewskis' home that requires an interior inspection. In fact, its thesis is quite the contrary—it says that every home in the Town of Dover must be open to a tax assessor's inspection without any particularized demonstration of need. Therefore, we understand the Town to be asking us to adopt a bright-line rule that warrantless home searches, conducted by tax assessors in conformance with the requirements of Wis. Stat. ch. 70, are reasonable as a matter of law.
¶ 46. The Town says such searches are reasonable for three reasons. First, they are useful in ensuring compliance with our constitution's "Uniformity Clause." Second, the intrusion is relatively minor. And third, a warrant would be a mere formality, which demonstrates such searches are always reasonable.
i. The Uniformity Clause
f 47. The process by which Wisconsin municipalities raise revenues makes a proper valuation of real property not just important, but essential to fulfillment of the constitutional command that "[t]he rule of taxation shall be uniform . . . ." See Wis. Const, art. VIII, § 1. The process begins with the municipality calculating how much revenue it needs from property taxes. See Jack Stark, The Uniformity Clause of the Wisconsin Constitution, 76 Marq. L. Rev. 577 (1993). It then determines the total value of taxable property in the jurisdiction. Id. at 577-78. Finally, it sets the mill
¶ 48. Satisfying the Uniformity Clause requires not just a uniform tax rate, but a uniform method of determining the value of the property to which that rate will apply.
The act of laying a tax on property consists of several distinct steps, such as the assessment or fixing of its value, the establishing of the rate, etc.; and in order to have the rule or course of proceeding uniform, each step taken must be uniform. The valuation must be uniform, the rate must be uniform. Thus uniformity in such a proceeding becomes equality; and there can be*76 no uniform rule which is not at the same time an equal rule, operating alike upon all the taxable property throughout the territorial limits of the state, municipality or local subdivision of the government, within and for which the tax is to be raised.
Knowlton v. Bd. of Supervisors of Rock Cty., 9 Wis. 410, 420-21 (1859). Our statutes prescribe that uniform methodology: "Real property shall be valued by the assessor in the manner specified in the Wisconsin property assessment manual provided under s. 73.03(2a) from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain, at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale." Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1).
¶ 49. The Town asserts its home searches are necessary to carry out the Uniformity Clause mandate. It notes that the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual
¶ 50. The Town and Gardiner are likely right that an interior view of the Milewskis' home would be the most direct method of obtaining the information necessary to perform a revaluation. But this is only one of the statutorily-prescribed methods of developing a valuation: "Real property shall be valued. .. from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain .. .." Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1) (emphasis added). The statute gives the assessor two potential sources of information with which to develop a valuation. It lists those sources in the disjunctive, and suggests no preference for one over the other.
ii. Minor Intrusion
f 53. The home does not stand on the same footing as other spaces protected by the Fourth Amendment: "[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals." Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 133 S. Ct. 1409, 1414, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013). We do not equivocate on this principle. "There can be no doubt that 'the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house' " and that "it is our duty to zealously guard that line." Sobczak, 347 Wis. 2d 724, ¶ 27 (quoting Payton, 445 U.S. at 590).
¶ 54. So when the Town says a tax assessor's uninvited visit is a "relatively minor" intrusion in one's home, we look closely at what he proposes to do there. Gardiner said it would conduct a "detailed viewing of the interior ... of all buildings and improvements and the recording of complete cost, age, use, and accounting
¶ 55. The Town and Gardiner also say such searches are relatively minor intrusions because they are preceded by notice, and the homeowner has an opportunity to schedule the search. It says this procedure even "gives homeowners time to tuck away any personal property they do not want the assessor to see." While this procedural politeness is certainly welcome, it does nothing to detract from the offense given by the search itself. As Boyd recognized, the Fourth Amendment's principles "apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employees of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life." 116 U.S. at 630. The Fourth Amendment is less concerned with the politeness with which the government agent enters a home than it is with the fact he is there at all. "It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty, and private property . . . ." Id.
f 57. The intrusiveness of a search lies on a continuum; a pat-down incident to a Terry stop
iii. Warrant
¶ 58. The Town asserts we may deduce the reasonableness of a tax assessor's search by considering what an application for an administrative search warrant might say. Because the assessor has the duty to inspect the interior of everyone's home, the Town argues, every application for an administrative warrant would be the same, and would simply repeat the contents of the notice already sent to the homeowner. With no requirement to find a particularized need for the search, the argument goes, the warrant application process would be a kabuki play ending with the magistrate's predestined approval. If every application necessarily results in issuance of a warrant, then such searches are categorically reasonable.
¶ 60. The Camara Court disagreed. It noted that in a warrantless inspection regime "the occupant has no way of knowing whether enforcement of the municipal code involved requires inspection of his premises, no way of knowing the lawful limits of the inspector's power to search, and no way of knowing whether the inspector himself is acting under proper authorization." Id. This leaves the building's occupant at the mercy of "the discretion of the official in the field." Id. The warrant requirement exists for the specific purpose of limiting such discretion: "This is precisely the discretion to invade private property which we have consistently circumscribed by a requirement that a disinterested party warrant the need to search." Id. at 532-33. It concluded that a statutorily-prescribed search regime was no substitute for a neutral magistrate's review before intruding in someone's home. "We simply cannot say that the protections provided by the warrant procedure are not needed in this context; broad statutory safeguards are no substitute for individualized review, particularly when those safeguards may only be invoked at the risk of a criminal penalty." Id. at 533.
* * *
f 62. A tax assessor's inspection of a home's interior is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and so it is presumptively unreasonable —and therefore unconstitutional—in the absence of a warrant. The Town has offered nothing that overcomes that presumption, and so we find that a tax assessor's warrantless search of a home would be unconstitutional without consent.
¶ 63. So the Milewskis really did, and do, face a dilemma. They have a right to challenge the revaluation of their Property, as well as a right to prevent the tax assessor from inspecting the interior of their home without consent. The question now is whether the Town may require them to surrender one as the price for exercising the other. We all learned how to address this type of situation when we were children: Two wrongs don't make a right. It would have been a constitutional wrong to perform a warrantless search of the Milewskis' home in search of taxable value, and it was in fact a constitutional wrong to deprive them of their due process rights. Forcing a person to choose between constitutional injuries does not make the one he chooses any less injurious.
¶ 64. The purpose of giving a right constitutional stature is to protect it from legislative or executive suspension. If, instead of setting two rights at odds, a statute flatly banned judicial review of a tax assessor's revaluation of real property, a brief recitation of our due-process catechism would summarily consign it to the realm of unconstitutional acts. Likewise, a legislative act authorizing an unreasonable search of a person's home would experience a similarly swift demise. Because we can so easily dispatch such obvious assaults, it would be odd if what cannot be done directly could yet be accomplished indirectly through the expedient of juxtaposing one constitutional right against another.
It would be a palpable incongruity to strike down an act of state legislation which, by words of express divestment, seeks to strip the citizen of rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution, but to uphold an act*86 by which the same result is accomplished under the guise of a surrender of a right in exchange for a valuable privilege which the state threatens otherwise to withhold.
Frost v. R.R. Comm'n of Cal., 271 U.S. 583, 593 (1926).
f 65. The attempt to negate one constitutional right by pitting it against another is a gambit not unknown to the law. One of the earlier cases to address this situation, Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 394 (1968), considered whether a defendant must choose between his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. There, the FBI had conducted a search that netted a suitcase belonging to one of the defendants, Mr. Garrett, which contained incriminating evidence. Id. at 380-81. Mr. Garret faced the same type of dilemma as the Milewskis. Under the rules then obtaining, a motion to suppress the evidence as unconstitutionally procured would require Mr. Garrett to testify that the suitcase belonged to him, but if he did so and the motion failed, his suppression testimony could be used against him at trial. Id. at 389-91. The Court observed that, in contemplating his litigation strategy, "Garret was obliged either to give up what he believed, with advice of counsel, to be a valid Fourth Amendment claim or, in legal effect, to waive his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination." Id. at 394. He opted for the suppression motion, which
¶ 66. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals considered a similar undeniable tension, but there it was between the First and Fourth Amendments. Bourgeois v. Peters, 387 F.3d 1303 (11th Cir. 2004). Mr. Bourgeois wished to attend a political protest, but the city of Columbus, Georgia required all those entering the protest site to submit to a metal detector search. Id. at 1306-07. The City argued that relinquishing one of the constitutional rights was consensual because no one was under an obligation to attend the protest. See id. at 1324. Those who valued their speech and assembly rights more highly than their right to be free of unreasonable searches, the City said, would voluntarily submit to a search. See id. Those who valued their Fourth Amendment rights more highly would forego attendance at the protest. See id. Either way, the potential attendees knew the price of exercising their rights, and chose accordingly. See id. There is more than an echo of this argument in the Court of Appeals opinion, which reasoned that the Milewskis "were well informed of the repercussions of refusing Gardiner's reasonable request to view the interior of their home, and Plaintiffs chose to abandon their right to challenge the tax assessment before the BOR." Milewski v. Town of Dover, No. 2015AP1523, unpublished slip op., ¶ 21.
¶ 67. The Bourgeois court succinctly described the problem with this type of reasoning: "[T]he very
f 68. The Milewskis exercised their right to deny the tax assessor's request to inspect the interior of their home. For the exercise of that constitutionally-protected right, they lost the ability to contest their increased tax burden.
¶ 70. We find only that Wis. Stat. §§ 70.47(7)(aa) & 74.37(4)(a) were unconstitutionally applied to the Milewskis. The former provision states, in its entirety:
No person shall be allowed to appear before the board of review, to testify to the board by telephone or to contest the amount of any assessment of real or personal property if the person has refused a reasonable written request by certified mail of the assessor to view such property.
Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa). The statute does not, by its express terms, say where the assessor will be when he conducts his "view" of the property. However, it does assume he will be somewhere that requires the owner's consent. If it were otherwise, there would be no need to ask permission—the assessor could simply conduct the "view" without contacting the owner at all. It is not immediately apparent to us that a Venn diagram of "places where an assessor may not be without consent" and "places the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches" would depict completely overlapping circles. To the extent they diverge, the statutory provision is not facially unconstitutional. This question was not addressed directly, and nothing in the parties' briefs indicates such a divergence is not possible, so we reserve for another day the determination of its facial soundness. We hold only that this statute may not be read to require a "viewing" that would violate the Fourth Amendment.
IV. CONCLUSION
¶ 72. Applying Wis. Stat. §§ 70.47(7)(aa) and 74.37(4)(a) in a manner that required submission to a tax assessor's search as a precondition to challenging the revaluation of their property violated the Milews-kis' due process rights as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Article I section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution. Consequently, we reverse the court of appeals and remand to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
By the Court.—The decision of the court of appeals is reversed and the matter is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
We will collectively refer to all the respondents as the "Town," unless the context requires otherwise.
We review the unpublished decision of the court of
The Uniformity Clause provides that:
The rule of taxation shall be uniform but the legislature may empower cities, villages or towns to collect and return taxes on real estate located therein by optional methods. Taxes shall be levied upon such property with such classifications as to forests and minerals including or separate or severed from the land, as the legislature shall prescribe. Taxation of agricultural land and undeveloped land, both as defined by law, need not be uniform with the taxation of each other nor with the taxation of other real property. Taxation of merchants' stock-in-trade, manufactures' materials and finished products, and livestock need not be uniform with the taxation of real property and other personal property, but the taxation of all such merchants' stock-in-trade, manufacturers' materials and finished products and livestock shall be uniform, except that the legislature may provide that the value thereof shall he determined on an average basis. Taxes may also be imposed on incomes, privileges and occupations, which taxes may be graduated and progressive, and reasonable exemptions may be provided.
Wis. Const. art. VIII, § 1.
All subsequent references to the Wisconsin statutes are to the 2015-16 version unless otherwise indicated.
Each town creates its own board of review. The town's common council decides who sits on the board, but the members typically include the mayor, town clerk, and such other officers as the council should designate. See Wis. Stat. § 70.46(1).
The percentages we use throughout this opinion are those reflected in the amended complaint.
Once the assessor has recorded the assessed values of the town's property on the assessment rolls, the town clerk makes the rolls available for public inspection during what is known as "open book sessions." Wis. Stat. § 70.45.
The Fourth Amendment applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., State v. Kramer, 2009 WI 14, ¶ 18 & n.6, 315 Wis. 2d 414, 759 N.W.2d 598 (citing Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)).
The dissent says one must keep "two realities firmly in mind":
¶ 126 One. The Town's assessor did not enter the interior of the Milewskis' home. No search of the Milewskis' home occurred.
* * *
¶ 128 Two, the Milewskis have received full due process hearings in three courts—in the circuit court, in the court of appeals, and in this court. Furthermore, the Milewskis retained and exer*58 cised rights under the statutes to a hearing in which they challenged the assessment on specified grounds.
Dissent, ¶¶ 125-26, 128. The first of these "realities" is important only if the second is true. It is not.
The Board of Review, relying on Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa), denied the Milewskis' request to appear and present their challenge to the reassessment because they had refused the home inspection. The circuit court did not address the assessment because it concluded there was no constitutional violation in requiring the Milewskis to allow a home inspection as a precondition to its challenge. The court of appeals reviewed and affirmed this determination. And we are addressing the constitutionality of the statutory scheme, not the assessment of the Milewskis
Not even the Town attempted the dissent's contra-factual argument. Instead, it candidly acknowledged that the Milews-kis lost the right to challenge their assessment by refusing the home inspection, stating, for example, that "the result of this refusal is that they [the Milewskis] would be unable to challenge the assessment." The dissent's position is not supported by the facts or the Town itself.
So the most that can be said of the dissent's argument is that the Milewskis have been able to litigate whether they should be allowed to litigate the new tax assessment. That, of course, is not the same thing as actually challenging the tax assessment, as even the Town admits.
As we noted in State v. Big John:
The question of which party has the burden of proof on this issue is determined by the application of the five-factor analysis outlined in McCormick, Handbook of the Law of Evidence, § 337 at 787-89 (2d ed. 1972), and adopted by this court in State v. McFarren, 62 Wis. 2d 492, 499-503, 215 N.W.2d 459 (1974). The five factors to be considered are: (1) the natural tendency to place the burden on the party desiring change; (2) special policy considerations such as those disfavoring certain defenses; (3) convenience; (4) fairness; and (5) the judicial estimate of probabilities.
State v. Big John, 146 Wis. 2d 741, 755, 432 N.W.2d 576 (1988).
The dissent is concerned we are restoring the Milewskis' due-process rights without penalizing them for exercising their Fourth Amendment rights. Dissent, f 183 ("According to the lead opinion, a property owner can, without any adverse consequences, refuse an assessor an actual view of the real property and apparently can still contest the amount of the assessment.") First, the suggestion that someone should be penalized for exercising his constitutionally-protected rights is more than a little chilling. And second, we have not said the Milewskis will not suffer adverse consequences from refusing the home inspection. As this paragraph recognizes, their choice may have created substantial impediments to successfully challenging the Town's reassessment. However, the consequences are not a penalty for exercising their rights, but are instead the potential result of applying required evidentiary standards to their claim.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized." Wis. Const. art. I, § 11.
Our references to the Fourth Amendment throughout this opinion also encompass Article 1, sec. 11 of the Wisconsin Constitution unless otherwise noted.
95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765).
Trespass, of course, is not the only government intrusion that can cause a Fourth Amendment violation. United States v.
"It has long been established that the Fourth Amendment places the greatest protection around the home, as it was drafted in part to codify 'the overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic.' " State v. Sobczak, 2013 WI 52, ¶ 11, 347 Wis. 2d 724, 833 N.W.2d 59 (quoting Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 601 (1980)).
The dissent justifies nonconsensual, warrantless home inspections as an aid in administration of our property tax laws. But the United States Supreme Court has already rejected that rationale. See G.M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U.S. 338 (1977). The dissent does not explain how this justification can co-exist with G.M. Leasing Corp.
Investopedia defines mill rate as follows: "The mill rate, also referred to as the millage rate, is a figure representing the amount per $1,000 of the assessed value of property, which is used to calculate the amount of property tax. The term 'millage' is derived from a Latin word meaning 'thousandth,' with 1 mill being equal to 1/1,000th of a currency unit." See Mill Rate, Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/ m/millrate.asp (last visited June 28, 2017).
The Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual is published by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue as required by statute. The manual must accomplish the following:
The manual shall discuss and illustrate accepted assessment methods, techniques and practices with a view to more nearly uniform and more consistent assessments of property at the local level. The manual shall be amended by the department from time to time to reflect advances in the science of assessment, court decisions concerning assessment practices, costs, and statistical and other information considered valuable to local assessors by the department.
Wis. Stat. § 73.03(2a).
"[Statutory interpretation 'begins with the language of the statute. If the meaning of the statute is plain, we ordinarily stop the inquiry.'" State ex rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane Cty., 2004 WI 58, ¶ 45, 271 Wis. 2d 633, 681 N.W.2d 110 (quoting Seider v. O'Connell, 2000 WI 76, ¶ 43, 236 Wis. 2d 211, 612 N.W.2d 659).
The dissent says these really are not disjunctive options, and spends most of its analytical space trying to empty all meaning out of the second option into the first. But if the second option really means nothing more than the first, then
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
See State ex rel. Two Unnamed Pet'rs v. Peterson, 2015 WI 85, ¶ 18, 363 Wis. 2d 1, 866 N.W.2d 165 (the sought-after information included emails on computers seized during the search).
One of the concurrences says this statement is too broad. Justice Ziegler's concurrence, f 103. This should be an entirely unremarkable statement, and it is troubling that, apparently, it is not. If we cannot rouse ourselves enough to say this, then maybe Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is right when she said, just this term, that our jurisprudence "continues the erosion of the Fourth Amendment." State v. Floyd, 2017 WI 78, ¶ 48, 377 Wis. 2d 394, 898 N.W.2d 560 (Ann Walsh Bradley, J., dissenting). And if that is the case, then we should stop making grand-sounding statements like "There can be no doubt that 'the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house'" and that "it is our duty to zealously guard that line." Sobczak, 347 Wis. 2d 724, ¶ 27 (quoting Payton, 445 U.S. at 590). We should say what we mean, and if what we mean is that finding an uninvited government agent trespassing in one's home can be a "minor" intrusion, then it would be far more accurate to say that we lackadaisically observe a permeable line somewhere in or around the house.
Notwithstanding the striking similarities between the legislative schemes at issue both here and in Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), the dissent does not explain why San Francisco needed a warrant, but the Town of Dover does not.
A sophisticated statutory scheme that deprives the Milewskis of either their Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment rights is no more acceptable than a blunt exercise of legislative authority that accomplishes the same thing. See, e.g., Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939). ("The [Fifteenth] Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination . . ..").
One of the concurrences favors resolving this case on statutory grounds—as a means of avoiding constitutional
The limiting construction the concurrence would place on "view," it says, is necessary to "save the constitutionality of the statutory scheme." Id., ¶ 94. It must have been the interior inspection that put the statute at risk because that's what the concurrence would exclude from the scope of the term "view." And although it didn't say why the interior view created constitutional peril, it must have been that it would violate the Fourth Amendment. If that were not so, then no "saving" construction would be necessary. So the Chief Justice must have concluded, just as we did, that a nonconsensual, warrantless interior inspection would violate the Fourth Amendment. The only difference between her conclusion and ours is that we said it aloud, while she said it sotto voce. We should say such things aloud.
The dissent says revoking someone's due process rights is a reasonable "constitutional inducement" to obtain a person's consent to a search of one's home. See dissent, ¶ 170. Constitutionally valid consent, however, must be given freely and voluntarily. See State v. Artic, 2010 WI 83, ¶ 32, 327 Wis. 2d 392, 786 N.W.2d 430 ("The State bears the burden of proving that consent was given freely and voluntarily . .. ."). Stated in the negative, effective consent cannot be "the product of duress or coercion, express or implied ... ." Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 227 (1973). Threatening someone with the loss of a constitutional right sounds an awful lot like "duress or coercion."
The Harman Court considered a Virginia statute that forced voters to choose between (a) an onerous yearly registration process and (b) payment of a poll tax. The Court observed that the latter option violated the 24th Amendment, while the former acted as a substantial encumbrance on "[t]he right to vote freely for the candidate of one's choice [, which] is of the essence of a democratic society .. .." Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 540 (1965) (quoting Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 555 (1964)). "Restrictions on that right," it said, "strike at the heart of representative government." Harman, 380 U.S. at 540 (quoting Reynolds, 377 U.S. at 555). So Virginia voters were faced with a Milewski-like conundrum: Submit to an unconstitutional poll tax, or suffer an encumbrance on the right to vote that strikes at the heart of representative government. The Harman Court concluded Virginia could not put its citizens to that choice.
One of the concurrences is concerned by our decision to opine on the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine" because it was not briefed. Justice Ziegler's concurrence, ¶ 101. It is fair to say this subject comprised virtually the entirety of the Milewskis' briefing. As relevant here, the doctrine expresses the basic principle that the State may not put constitutional
That is precisely, and only, what the Milewskis argued. They said they have a due-process right to challenge their tax reassessment, they have the simultaneous right to prevent government agents from searching their home, and they said the statutes told them they had to choose between those rights. We have not addressed anything the parties have not briefed.
The concurrence also says existing cases demonstrate the unconstitutional conditions doctrine is applicable only when the State conditions access to a government-provided benefit upon surrender of a constitutional right. Justice Ziegler's concurrence, ¶ 101. While courts most frequently discuss the doctrine in that context, they also address it in the context of juxtaposed constitutional rights (as we described above). In any event, concluding from this that the doctrine protects access to government benefits but not constitutional rights is to make government benefits a higher order of rights than those protected by our Constitutions. Neither law nor logic supports such a proposition.
Finally, the concurrence agrees the Milewskis could not be constitutionally required to choose between their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Justice Ziegler's concurrence, ¶ 100. But it does not explain how or why it would reach that conclusion without aid of the very principles it rejects.
Soc'y Ins. v. LIRC, 2010 WI 68, ¶ 26, 326 Wis. 2d 444, 786 N.W.2d 385 ("[A] facial constitutional challenge attacks the law itself as drafted by the legislature, claiming the law is void from its beginning to the end and that it cannot be constitutionally enforced under any circumstances . .. .").
The notice requested an interior view of their home.
Concurring Opinion
0concurring).
f 73. I agree with the lead opinion that the
I. BACKGROUND
¶ 74. The lead opinion ably sets forth relevant facts, and therefore I relay only those facts that are helpful to understanding my discussion that follows.
¶ 75. The Milewskis received a written notice that a tax assessor, Gardiner, would visit their home to view their property.
¶ 76. Gardiner valued the Milewskis' property significantly higher than it previously had been valued. Mr. Milewski appeared at the Town of Dover Board of Review (board of review) to object to the valuation of their property. The board of review denied Mr. Milewski the opportunity to appear because he had not permitted the assessor to view the interior of his home.
¶ 77. The Milewskis paid their taxes for 2013 and sought review of their tax assessment in circuit court under Wis. Stat. § 74.37. The Town of Dover
¶ 78. The Milewskis moved for partial summary judgment and argued, in part, that they were entitled to a hearing to object to their tax assessment because Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) is satisfied by a taxpayer who permits an exterior view of his property, and the Milewskis permitted such a view.
¶ 79. The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of the Town of Dover and Gardiner, and the court of appeals affirmed. We granted the Milews-kis' petition for review. I would reverse the court of appeals and remand to the circuit court for a hearing on the Milewskis' excessive tax assessment claim.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Standard of Review
¶ 80. The present case requires the court to interpret and apply the statutory provisions that govern the valuation of real property and the ability of a taxpayer to contest a tax assessment. "Interpretation and application of a statute present questions of law that we review independently, while benefitting from the analyses of the circuit court and court of appeals." Sorenson v. Batchelder, 2016 WI 34, ¶ 10, 368 Wis. 2d 140, 885 N.W.2d 362 (citing Pool v. City of Sheboygan, 2007 WI 38, ¶ 9, 300 Wis. 2d 74, 729 N.W.2d 415).
B. Statutory Interpretation
f 81. "[Statutory interpretation 'begins with the language of the statute. If the meaning of the statute is
¶ 82. These principles guide our interpretation of the three pertinent statutes in this case: Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1); Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa); and Wis. Stat. § 74.37. The circuit court and the court of appeals concluded that these provisions prevent the Milewskis from contesting the valuation of their home and the validity of their tax assessment.
¶ 83. Wisconsin Stat. § 70.32(1) describes the way in which an assessor is required to value real property. It provides, "Real property shall be valued by the assessor in the manner specified in the Wisconsin property assessment manual provided under s. 73.03(2a) from actual view or from the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain, at the full value which could ordinarily be obtained therefor at private sale." Wis. Stat. § 70.32(1). Therefore, there are two permissible ways in which an assessor may value real property: (1) through an actual view of the property; or (2) based on the best information available to the assessor. Of course, an assessor may rely on the best information available because an actual view of a property is not always feasible. See generally Boorman v. Juneau Cty., 76 Wis. 550, 45 N.W. 675, 676 (1890) ("We cannot hold that the mere failure of the assessor to value the lands from actual view invalidated the assessment.").
¶ 85. A hearing before a board of review allows a taxpayer to object to the valuation of his property; however, a taxpayer also has the option of claiming his tax assessment is excessive. Specifically, a taxpayer may pay the taxes that were imposed and sue for a refund in circuit court. Wis. Stat. § 74.37(1) ("In this section, a 'claim for an excessive assessment' or an 'action for an excessive assessment' means a claim or action, respectively, by an aggrieved person to recover that amount of general property tax imposed because the assessment of property was excessive.").
¶ 86. Under Wis. Stat. § 70.47, a taxpayer is required to satisfy certain procedural requirements before he may obtain a hearing to object to the valuation of his property. And, a taxpayer who is procedurally barred from challenging the valuation of his property before a board of review is also precluded from seeking review of his tax assessment in circuit court. Wis. Stat. § 74.37(4)(a) ("No claim or action for an excessive assessment may be brought under this section unless the procedures for objecting to assessments under s. 70.47, except under s. 70.47(13), have been complied with.").
¶ 87. Wisconsin Stat. § 70.47(7) explains the ways in which an individual can lose the right to object to a tax assessment. For example, a taxpayer who refuses the request of an assessor to view his property
No person shall be allowed to appear before the board of review, to testify to the board by telephone or to contest the amount of any assessment of real or personal property if the person has refused a reasonable written request by certified mail of the assessor to view such property.
Under this provision, an assessor may request the opportunity to view a taxpayer's property, but the assessor is not obligated to specify those parts of the property the assessor wishes to view. Accordingly, a "view" may include only the exterior, only the interior or both.
¶ 88. Although this provision requires an individual to permit an assessor to "view" his property, nothing in Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) requires that a taxpayer permit an assessor to view the interior of his home. See State v. Pratt, 36 Wis. 2d 312, 317, 153 N.W.2d 18 (1967) ("In construing or 'interpreting' a statute the court is not at liberty to disregard the plain, clear words of the statute."). Rather, § 70.47(7)(aa) provides that an assessor must be given the opportunity to "view such property." And, the phrase "view such property" is not defined so as to require an interior view of the structures on the property in order for a view of the property to have occurred.
¶ 90. The legislature could have used the word "enter" instead of "view," which may have suggested that interior access to any structures on the property is required. See Kalal, 271 Wis. 2d 633, ¶ 44 ("We assume that the legislature's intent is expressed in the statutory language."). It did not. But the legislature has used the word "enter" in other contexts involving the assessment of property. Wis. Stat. § 70.05(4m). "When the legislature chooses to use two different words, we generally consider each separately and presume that different words have different meanings." Augsburger v. Homestead Mut. Ins. Co., 2014 WI 133, ¶ 17, 359 Wis. 2d 385, 856 N.W.2d 874 (internal quotations omitted).
f 91. Importantly, nowhere else in the statutory scheme does it mandate an interior view of a taxpayer's property. And, this interpretation of Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) does not prevent an assessor from correctly assessing the value of the home under Wis. Stat. § 70.32 or the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual. If a taxpayer allows for an exterior view of the home, then that is "the best information that the assessor can practicably obtain." § 70.32.
f 92. Moreover, interpreting "view such property" under Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) to be satisfied by an exterior view of the property avoids the possibility
¶ 93. The lead opinion's due process analysis is predicated on the presumption that Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) precludes the right to be heard for a taxpayer who denies an assessor a view of any part of his home. However, we generally avoid interpreting a statute in a way that would cause constitutional problems. See Blake v. Jossart, 2016 WI 57, ¶ 27, 370 Wis. 2d 1, 884 N.W.2d 484 ("We presume that statutes are constitutional and if any doubt exists about the statute's constitutionality, the court must resolve that doubt in favor of upholding the statute." (internal citations omitted)).
¶ 94. Even if the plain language of the statute could be read to require interior access to a taxpayer's property, interpreting the statute such that it is satisfied by an exterior view preserves its constitutionality. See Milwaukee Branch of NAACP v. Walker, 2014 WI 98, ¶ 63, 357 Wis. 2d 469, 851 N.W.2d 262. "If a saving construction . . . preserves the constitutionality of the statute, we will employ it." Id. "We do so in order to avoid a constitutional conflict." Id., ¶ 64. "Stated otherwise, when we determine that there is a statutory flaw that may have constitutional significance, we ascertain whether the government rule or statute can be interpreted in a manner that will avoid a constitutional conflict." Id. As discussed above, it is possible to interpret the statute such that an exterior view of a taxpayer's property is sufficient. This interpretation allows a taxpayer a hearing to contest his tax assessment if he permits an exterior view of his property, thereby rendering the statutory scheme constitutional. Accordingly, this court should interpret Wis. Stat.
f 95. Consequently, I would interpret Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa) consistent with a taxpayer's due process right to be heard. The interpretation accords a taxpayer who permits an exterior view of his property a hearing under § 70.47(7)(aa) and also the right to maintain a refund action under Wis. Stat. § 74.37.
f 96. However, a taxpayer who provides only an external view of his property is not entitled to produce evidence of the interior condition of his home at a hearing before the board of review or in a claim for excessive assessment before a circuit court. During those proceedings, the taxpayer may cross-examine the individual who valued his property to determine if the assessor came to a reasonable conclusion as to its value.
C. Milewskis
¶ 97. In the present case, the Milewskis satisfied the conditions of Wis. Stat. § 70.47(7)(aa), and there
f 98. Therefore, the Milewskis satisfied the conditions necessary to be able to challenge their taxes as excessive in circuit court under Wis. Stat. § 74.37. I would remand to the circuit court for a hearing on this claim. However, during the hearing, the Milewskis are not entitled to present evidence as to the condition of the interior of their home. Instead, they may examine Gardiner in order to determine the validity and soundness of the methodology upon which he based the valuation of their property. Additionally, they may introduce other evidence of the value of their property as appropriate.
III. CONCLUSION
¶ 99. In light of the foregoing, I conclude that the Milewskis are statutorily entitled to a hearing even though they did not permit a tax assessor to enter the interior of their home. Therefore, because I would not address the constitutional issues discussed by the lead opinion, I do not join the lead opinion, but respectfully concur.
Assessors, or an authorized representative of the assessor, are required to attend such a hearing. See Wis. Stat. § 70.48 ("The assessor or the assessor's authorized representative shall attend without order or subpoena all hearings before the board of review and under oath submit to examination and fully disclose to the board such information as the assessor may have touching the assessment and any other matters pertinent to the inquiry being made.").
For example, the lead opinion pulls language from Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Commission of California, 271 U.S. 583, 592-93 (1926). That case was an unconstitutional conditions case, but it involved a "gratuitous governmental benefit." Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Mgmt. Dist., 570 U.S._, 133 S. Ct. 2586, 2596 (2013).
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Vincent Milewski and Morganne MacDonald, Plaintiffs-Appellants-Petitioners, v. Town of Dover, Board of Review for the Town of Dover and Gardiner Appraisal Service, LLC as Assessor for the Town of Dover, Defendants-Respondents
- Cited By
- 11 cases
- Status
- Published