A state may not retroactively eliminate all remedies for a right it cannot destroy

Evidence

In Brinkerhoff-Er Trust & Savings Pg. v. U11l, 281 U.S. 673 (1930), the company had brought a suit in equity in the state courts to enjoin the collection of a state tax alleged to discriminate against it in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under repeated constructions of the state statutes by the state courts, this was the only remedy open to it. Without reaching the merits of the.bill, the state supreme court overruled an earlier decision that the taxpayer in such a situation had no remedy before the State Tax Commission, and ordered the bill dismissed on the ground that this remedy had not been pursued. By that time an actual application to the Commission was barred by the statute of limitations. The conparq petitioned for rehearing on the ground that the judgment deprived it of due process of law in the primary sense of an opportunity to be heard and to defend its substantive right. The state court rejected the claim, but the Supreme Court sustained it. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2978

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete due-process limit on retroactive judicial lawmaking — material hard case for the institutions thread. — connects to: Restriction to incompatible common law precedent blocked available reparative remedies — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard…, 1338

Broader Connections

• Restriction to incompatible common law precedent blocked available reparative remedies #complicates (0.75) — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1338