Board of equalization

“ The state board of equalization is one of the instrumentalities provided by the state for the purpose of raising the public revenue by way of taxation. In regard to corporations of the class of which the appellee and the other corporations involved here are members, it is the duty of that board to make an original assessment upon them. From the decision of the board in making such assessment no appeal is provided for, and each decision is therefore conclusive, except as proceedings for relief may thereafter be taken in the courts. ”

“ For instance, in § 2804, providing for a county board of equalization, there is this provision: 'Said board shall have power to hear complaints, and to equalize the valuation of all real and personal property, moneys and credits, within the county, and shall be governed by the rules prescribed for the government of decennial county boards for the equalization of real property: Provided, . ”

“ Plaintiffs filed a written pleading in the district court, in which they set out all proceedings leading up to the appeal and the grounds for their complaint against the action of the equalization board, and when the case went to trial filed an amendment, alleging the additional grievance of inequality. ”

“ We concluded:
'A citizen, a qualified voter, is no more nor no less so because he lives in the city or on the farm. This is the clear and strong command of our Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. This is an essential part of the concept of a government of laws and not men. This is at the heart of Lincoln's vision of 'government of the people, by the people, (and) for the people.' The Equal Protection Clause demands no less than substantially equal state legislative representation for all citizens, of all places as well as of all races.' Id., at 568, 84 S.Ct. ”

“ They would make the Equal Protection Clause the charter of adjudication, asserting that the equality which it guarantees comports, if not the assurance of equal weight to every voter's vote, at least the basic conception that representation ought to be proportionate to population, a standard by reference to which the reasonableness of apportionment plans may be judged. ”

“ LVIII. The costs and burdens of the whole military affairs of the Confederation are to be borne equally by all the Federal States and those who belong to them so that neither the advantage nor the overburdening of individual States or classes is admissible in principle. Where the equal distribution of the burdens cannot, from natural circumstances, take place without injury to public welfare, the equalization must be settled in the way of legislation, according to the principles of equity. ”

“ As here, they uniformly contain a specific direction to take 'affirmative action.' In enforcing the Board's orders the Courts of Appeals similarly act not merely to review a common-law judgment, but to 'effectuate the policies' of the National Labor Relations Act by enforcement orders directing that action be taken to remove the unfair labor practice found to exist. Every affirmative order in equity carries with it the implicit command to refrain from action designed to defeat it. ”

“ After today, simply by framing its discriminatory rules in terms of eligibility, a union can immunize itself from pre-election attack in a federal court even though it makes deep incursions on the equal right of its members to nominate, to vote, and to participate in the union's internal affairs. ”

“ I agree that, under the statutory scheme, a minority union does not have the standing to bargain for all employees. That principle of representative government extends only to the majority. But where there is no majority union, I see no reason why the minority union should be disabled from bargaining for the minority of the members who have joined it. ”

“ No wording of the law can eliminate this personal judgment of each assessing authority, and the supervision of the returns by State boards of equalization has introduced an even greater departure from justice, as a majority, based upon selfish interests, may be had, and its decision may readily be defended as based upon good and sufficient reasons. ”

“ In the Virginia case, the court below noted that the equalization program was already “afoot and progressing” (103 F. Supp. 337, 341) ; since then, we have been advised, in the Virginia Attorney General’s brief on reargument, that the program has now been completed. In the Delaware case, the court below similarly noted that the state’s equalization program was well under way. ”

“ Laws concerning the implementation of the equalization of burdens may, with the consent of the Bundesrat, stipulate that in the field of equalization benefits, they shall be executed partly by the Federation and partly by the Länder acting as agents of the Federation, and that the relevant powers vested in the Federal Government and the competent highest Federal authorities by virtue of Article 5 shall be wholly or partly delegated to the Federal Equalization Office. ”

“ Since the present agreement contains such a prohibition, the Board is confined to determining whether discrimination has in fact been practiced. If hiring halls are to be subjected to regulation that is less selective and more pervasive, Congress not the Board is the agency to do it. ”

“ And so the question is, may a State weight the vote of one county or one district more heavily than it weights the vote in another?
The traditional test under the Equal Protection Clause has been whether a State has made "an invidious discrimination," as it does when it selects "a particular race or nationality for oppressive treatment." See Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541. Universal equality is not [p245] the test; there is room for weighting. ”

“ The power to command affirmative action is remedial, not punitive, and is to be exercised in aid of the Board's authority to restrain violations and as a means of removing or avoiding the consequences of violation where those consequences are of a kind to thwart the purposes of the Act. The continued existence of a company union established by unfair labor practices or of a union dominated by the employer is a consequence or violation of the Act whose continuance thwarts the purposes of the Act and renders ineffective any order restraining the unfair practices. ”

“ In face of this, to hold that 'no substantial variation' from equal population may be allowed under the Equal Protection Clause is to ignore the substance of the rights and powers involved. It denies-it does not implement-substantive equality of voting rights. It is like insisting that each stockholder of a corporation have only one vote even though the stake of some may be $1 and the stake of others $1,000. ”

“ Manifestly, the obligation of the State to give the protection of equal laws can be performed only where its laws operate, that is, within its own jurisdiction. It is there that the equality of legal right must be maintained. ”

“ In holding that the Commission is without power to make the order, the Court does not deny that a discrimination which is produced by charging equal rates for unequal service is prohibited by the statute as much as one resulting from unequal rates for equal service. ”

“ Today's opinion is consistent with the longstanding doctrine that the Equal Protection Clause permits economic regulation that distinguishes between groups that are legitimately different—as local institutions so often are—in ways relevant to the proper goals of the State. ”

“ It is true, that, by the Laws of Nations, all sovereign States, great or small, are equal; but this principle has been extended without authority to States created by the Nation and made a part of itself. There is but one active provision in the Constitution which treats the States as equal, and this provision shows how this very Equality may be waived. Every State, large or small, has two Senators, and the Constitution places this Equality of States under its safeguard by providing that “no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” ”

“ While it may not be possible to draw congressional districts with mathematical precision, that is no excuse for ignoring our Constitution's plain objective of making equal representation for equal numbers of people the fundamental goal for the House of Representatives. ”

“ There being no express ban of hiring halls in any provisions of the Act, those who add one, whether it be the Board or the courts, engage in a legislative act. The Act deals with discrimination either by the employers or unions that encourages or discourages union membership. ”

“ To secure to employees the benefits of self-organization and collective bargaining through representatives of the employees' own choosing, the Board was authorized by section 10 (c) , 29 U.S.C.A. § 160 (c) , to order the abandonment of unfair labor practices and to take affirmative action which would carry out the policy of the Act. ”

“ For in order to warrant holding a state electoral apportionment invalid under the Equal Protection Clause, a court, in line with well established constitutional doctrine, must find that none of the permissible policies and none of the possible formulas on which it might have been based could rationally justify particular inequalities. ”

“ If equality cannot be achieved when representation is by component districts, why does the 'as far as practicable' standard not require at-large election of trustees? Is there something about these consideration that gives them a status under the Equal Protection Clause that is not possessed by a legislative desire to apportion by a formula of statewide application? ”

“ The reconciliation of competing values in a desegregation case is, of course, a difficult task with many sensitive facets but fundamentally no more so than remedial measures courts of equity have traditionally employed. ”

“ The 'equal footing' clause, in other words, prevents one State from laying claim to a part of the national domain from which the other States are excluded. 339 U.S. at pages 719-720, 70 S.Ct. at pages 924-925. Today we permit that precise 'inequality among the States' which we earlier said was precluded by the 'equal footing' clause.
Alabama and Rhode Island can justly complain. So can the other States. Our Union is one of equal sovereigns, none entitled to preferment denied the others. That is what the 'equal footing' standard means or it means nothing. ”

“ Insofar as the majority instructs the District Court, on remand, to "conside [r] whether the vestiges of de jure segregation ha [ve] been eliminated as far as practicable," ante, at 250, the majority presumably views elimination of vestiges as part of "operat [ing] in compliance with the commands of the Equal Protection Clause." But as to the scope or meaning of "vestiges," the majority says very little. ”

“ Two arbitrators, whose joint decision is to be final, and neither of whom can do any thing without the assent of the other, possess equal power. Two electors, each of whom has a vote for a borough, possess, in that respect, equal power. If not, all Mr. Mill’s political theories fall to the ground at once. For, if it be impossible to ascertain whether two portions of power are equal, he never can show that, even under a system of universal suffrage, a minority might not carry every thing their own way, against the wishes and interests of the majority. ”

“ The right of collective bargaining was no longer dependent on economic power alone.
Further protection was accorded that right by the amendments which were added in 1934. Thus § 2, Ninth, provided machinery strengthening the representation provisions of the Act. H. Rep. No. 1944, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2. That new provision gave the National Mediation Board an adjudicatory function in the settlement of representation disputes. It provided for a reference to that Board of representation disputes arising among a carrier's employees. ”

“ Yet the order of the Board, now approved, enjoins petitioner union from acting as the exclusive bargaining representative 'of any of the employees, and it enjoins the employer from recognizing the union as the representative of 'any of its employees.'
We have indicated over and again that, absent an exclusive agency for bargaining created by a majority of workers, a minority union has standing to bargain for its members. ”

“ It is an established principle that a court of equity, in decreeing partition, does not act ministerially and in obedience to the call of those who have a right to the partition, but founds itself on its general jurisdiction as a court of equity, and administers its relief Ex aequo et bono, according to its own notions of general justice and equity between the parties. ”

“ The right of a citizen to equal representation and to have his vote weighted equally with those of all other citizens in the election of members of one house of a bicameral state legislature would amount to little if States could effectively submerge the equal population principle in the apportionment of seats in the other house. ”

“ Since guidance in the exercise of this discretion by the Labor Board, and not merely guidance for litigants, thus becomes a function of the Court's opinion, it is doubly necessary to define the scope of our ruling as explicitly as possible.
The lower courts have given conflicting interpretations to the phrase, 'by discrimination * * * to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization', contained in § 8 (a) (3) . We should settle this conflict without giving rise to avoidable new controversies. ”