Page:James Dawson, et ux. v. Dale W. Steager, West Virginia State Tax Commissioner.pdf/5

Rh a “less burdensome” tax on property leased from the State. Phillips Chemical Co. v. Dumas Independent School Dist., 361 U. S. 376, 378, 380 (1960).

Mr. Dawson’s own attempt to invoke §111 met with mixed success. A West Virginia trial court found it “undisputed” that “there are no significant differences between Mr. Dawson’s powers and duties as a US Marshal and the powers and duties of the state and local law enforcement officers” that West Virginia exempts from income tax. App. to Pet. for Cert. 22a. In the trial court’s judgment, the State’s statute thus represented “precisely the type of favoritism” §111 prohibits. Id., at 23a. But the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals saw it differently. In reversing, the court emphasized that relatively few state employees receive the tax break denied Mr. Dawson. The court stressed, too, that the statute’s “intent… was to give a benefit to a narrow class of state retirees,” not to harm federal retirees. Id., at 15a. Because cases in this field have yielded inconsistent results, much as this one has, we granted certiorari to afford additional guidance. 585 U. S. ___ (2018).

We believe the state trial court had it right. A State violates §111 when it treats retired state employees more favorably than retired federal employees and no “significant differences between the two classes” justify the differential treatment. Davis, 489 U. S., at 814–816 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); Phillips Chemical Co., 361 U. S., at 383. Here, West Virginia expressly affords state law enforcement retirees a tax benefit that federal retirees cannot receive. And before us everyone accepts the trial court’s factual finding that there aren’t any “significant differences” between Mr. Dawson’s former job responsibilities and those of the tax-exempt state law enforcement retirees. Given all this, we have little difficulty concluding that West Virginia’s law unlawfully “discriminate[s]” against Mr. Dawson “because of the