Cite as: 509 U. S. 86 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Fla. Dept. of Business Regulation, 496 U. S. 18, 39-40 (1990). If Virginia "offers a meaningful opportunity for taxpayers to withhold contested tax assessments and to challenge their validity in a predeprivation hearing," the "availability of a predeprivation hearing constitutes a procedural safeguard . . . sufficient by itself to satisfy the Due Process Clause." Id., at 38, n. 21. On the other hand, if no such predeprivation remedy exists, "the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment obligates the State to provide meaningful backward-looking relief to rectify any unconstitutional deprivation." Id., at 31 (footnotes omitted).10 In providing such relief, a State may either award full refunds to those burdened by an unlawful tax or issue some other order that "create[s] in hindsight a nondiscriminatory scheme." Id., at 40. Cf. Davis, 489 U. S., at 818 (suggesting that a State's failure to respect intergovernmental tax immunity could be cured "either by extending [a discriminatory] tax exemption to retired federal employees . . . or by eliminating the exemption for retired state and local government employees").
The constitutional sufficiency of any remedy thus turns (at least initially) on whether Virginia law "provide[s] a[n] [adequate] form of 'predeprivation process,' for example, by authorizing taxpayers to bring suit to enjoin imposition of a tax
10 A State incurs this obligation when it "places a taxpayer under duress promptly to pay a tax when due and relegates him to a postpayment re-fund action in which he can challenge the tax's legality." McKesson, 496 U. S., at 31. A State that "establish[es] various sanctions and summary remedies designed" to prompt taxpayers to "tender . . . payments before their objections are entertained and resolved" does not provide taxpayers "a meaningful opportunity to withhold payment and to obtain a predeprivation determination of the tax assessment's validity." Id., at 38 (emphasis in original). Such limitations impose constitutionally significant " 'duress' " because a tax payment rendered under these circumstances must be treated as an effort "to avoid financial sanctions or a seizure of real or personal property." Id., at 38, n. 21. The State accordingly may not confine a taxpayer under duress to prospective relief.
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