Cite as: 505 U. S. 1 (1992)
Stevens, J., dissenting
13 purchasers. The Court reasons that the State may tax earlier and later purchasers differently because
"an existing owner rationally may be thought to have vested expectations in his property or home that are more deserving of protection than the anticipatory expectations of a new owner at the point of purchase. A new owner has full information about the scope of future tax liability before acquiring the property, and if he thinks the future tax burden is too demanding, he can decide not to complete the purchase at all. By contrast, the existing owner, already saddled with his purchase, does not have the option of deciding not to buy his home if taxes become prohibitively high." Ante, at 12-13.10
This simply restates the effects of Proposition 13. A pre-Proposition 13 owner has "vested expectations" in reduced taxes only because Proposition 13 gave her such expectations; a later purchaser has no such expectations because Proposition 13 does not provide her such expectations. But the same can be said of any arbitrary protection for an existing class of taxpayers. Consider a law that establishes that homes with even street numbers would be taxed at twice the rate of homes with odd street numbers. It is certainly true that the even-numbered homeowners could not decide to "un-purchase" their homes and that those considering buying an even-numbered home would know that it came with an extra tax burden, but certainly that would not justify the arbitrary imposition of disparate tax burdens based on house numbers. So it is in this case. Proposition 13 provides a benefit for earlier purchasers and imposes a burden on later purchasers. To say that the later purchasers know what they are getting into does not answer the critical question: Is it reasonable
10 The Court's sympathetic reference to "existing owner[s] already saddled" with their property should not obscure the fact that these early purchasers have already seen their property increase in value more than tenfold.
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