A school district designed a formula for properties within its catchment to determine if the district should appeal a particular property’s assessed value. Using that calculation, the district determined that two properties were assessed at a fraction of their actual value and appealed those values. The Court of Common Pleas agreed and increased the assessment. The property owners appealed, claiming that the formula used violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and the Pennsylvania Constitution’s Uniformity Clause. The current law of Pennsylvania is that a school district’s monetary method for selecting property assessments to appeal is within its discretion so long as that method does not differentiate properties based on property type or another constitutionally infirm basis. The Commonwealth Court affirmed.
