Cite as: 514 U. S. 749 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
upon the kind of case, matter, and circumstances involved. Not all cases concerning retroactivity and remedies are of the same sort.
Second, Hyde points to tax cases in which the Court applied retroactively new rules holding certain state tax laws unconstitutional, but nonetheless permitted the state courts a degree of leeway in designing a remedy, including a remedy that would deny state taxpayers, with pending refund cases, the refund that they sought. See Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86 (1993); Beam, supra. If state courts may at the same time apply new law (invalidating tax statutes) and withhold relief (tax refunds) from tax plaintiffs, asks Hyde, why can they not at the same time apply new law (invalidating tolling statutes) and withhold relief (dismissal) from tort defendants?
The answer to this question lies in the special circumstances of the tax cases. The Court has suggested that some of them involve a particular kind of constitutional violation—a kind that the State could cure without repaying back taxes. See McKesson Corp. v. Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Fla. Dept. of Business Regulation, 496 U. S. 18, 40-41 (1990). Where the violation depends, in critical part, upon differential treatment of two similar classes of individuals, then one might cure the problem either by similarly burdening, or by similarly unburdening, both groups. Where the violation stemmed from, say, taxing the retirement funds of one group (retired Federal Government employees) but not those of another (retired state government employees), see Davis v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 489 U. S. 803 (1989), then the State might cure the problem either (1) by taxing both (imposing, say, back taxes on the previously advantaged group, to the extent constitutionally permissible), or (2) by taxing neither (and refunding back taxes). Cf. McKesson Corp., supra, at 40-41, and n. 23. And, if the State chooses the first, then the taxpayers need receive no refund. But, that result flows not from some general "reme-
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