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550 F.2d 1239

Docket No. 77-1101.

Barter v. United States

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals

Argued April 25, 1977.

Decided May 31, 1977.

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1977-05-31

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“perfect equality or absolute logical consistency between persons subject to the Internal Revenue Code * * * [is not] a constitutional sine qua non”

quoted by 6 later decisions, including Schetzer v. Commissioner, LOCKMILLER v. COMMISSIONER

“The inequities asserted to inhere in [this provision] * * * whatever may be their persuasiveness as arguments for legislative change, do not rise to the level of constitutional violations of [petitioners'] rights.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Hammond v. Commissioner

Applies 26 U.S.C. § 1 (Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2008)

Relies on 422 F. Supp. 958 - Johnson v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by (per_curiam) · Decided 1977-05-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently July 2009 · most notably Estate of Cowser v. Commissioner (1984), Druker v. Commissioner (1982)

18 federal appellate ·

1801977198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Jeanne S. Miller, New' Haven, Ind." for plaintiffs-appellants.

¶2Myron C. Baum, Acting Asst. Atty. Gen., Robert T. Duffy, Atty., Tax Division, Dept, of Justice, Washington, D.C., Richard L. Kieser, U. S. Atty., South Bend, Ind., Charles F. Leonard, Asst. U. S. Atty., Fort Wayne, Ind., for defendant-appellee.

¶3Before CUMMINGS and PELL, Circuit Judges, and GORDON, District Judge.…

¶6PER CURIAM.

¶7This appeal involves taxpayer refund suits, consolidated in the district court and *1240here, initiated by two married couples. The taxpayers feelingly and forcefully assert that the rate schedules of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 1, violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, and the right to associate in marriage protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution, in that higher tax rates are imposed on the taxable income of a married person whose spouse has significant income1 than on the same taxable income of an unmarried person.

¶8The district court determined that this so-called “marriage penalty” does not offend the Constitution. Johnson v. United States, 422 F.Supp. 958 (N.D.Ind.1976). The plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment was therefore denied, and the summary judgment motion of the United States was granted. Final judgments in favor of the United States were entered pursuant to Rule 54(b), Fed.R.Civ.P., the district court retaining on its docket for further proceedings the refund suit of Sarah G. Johnson, No. F 74-111 below, which had earlier been consolidated with appellants’ suits.

¶9We agree with the district court that the inequities asserted to inhere in the “marriage penalty,” whatever may be their persuasiveness as arguments for legislative change,2 do not rise to the level of constitutional violations of appellants’ rights. The district court’s thoughtful and workmanlike opinion cogently expounds the reasons for this conclusion, and there is little to be added to its analysis except to observe that it has not been demonstrated to us that perfect equality or absolute logical consistency between persons subject to the Internal Revenue Code has been, at least since the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, a constitutional sine qua non. Accordingly, the opinion of the district court is, with certain exceptions,3 adopted as the opinion of this court, and the judgments appealed from are affirmed.

¶10AFFIRMED

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