County Judge Rejects Hillsborough Transportation Tax Class Action

• Author: Jeffrey Simmons
• Posted: 2024-07-31

Dozens of people formed a class in Hillsborough County recently, in order to seek a class-action lawsuit for a sales tax from transportation that was charged. The initiative fell through on the county level, though the county had reportedly already charged this tax. Many people banded together in order to get their money back, which was estimated to be a pool of nearly $570 million. However, a Circuit Court judge in Leon County dismissed the entire lawsuit, and now there's a certified class out there that cannot seek financial restitution for a tax they considered illegally implemented.

The case was initially brought up by an Apollo Beach resident named Robert Emerson. With one simple ruling, however, Circuit Court Judge John C. Cooper dismissed the entire suit. The suit essentially alleged that the county Legislature had no authority to implement a transportation tax on individual residents of the county. Another part of the allegation, beyond the supposed authority to tax, was the fact that the Legislature was disbursing the funds from the 1% increased sales taxes (circa 2019) how they chose and not how they were supposed to. The class thought they had a solid case, since the Supreme Court of Florida voided this tax initiative in February of 2021. However, the judge made it clear that the government doesn't owe anyone any money.

Unfortunately for individuals who have been unfairly taxed by the government, there are almost never any cases that are able to proceed forward to get that money back. When individuals get certified as a class to go after big corporations, the corporations have a history of structuring settlements, and so the courts allow the suits to proceed. They rarely end up being tried in court anyway, and so it's all just a formality until which point the corporation writes a check. When it's the government, however, most judges end up shutting the cases down.

Whether this is corruption, protectionism, or any other sort of crooked scheme to protect the government, no one can really say for certain. The reason is that these cases are never allowed to proceed in order to demonstrate whether or not the government did something wrong. This is nothing new for the American government. There is a very long history of the government never having to face the same sort of consequences that citizens have to face. Every single time someone tries to sue the government, the case always ends up dismissed, or the government offers its own judgement on itself. Dating all the way back to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and even long before, the American government always manages to coincidentally find that the government is guilty of zero wrongdoing.

The government has such a long history of this that they've even been known to change definitions on the fly in order to avoid the same sort of trouble that a citizen would be in. For instance, when former President Barack Obama was charged with killing innocent women and children with drone strikes, the federal government simply changed the definition and labeled those people as "enemy combatants," and suddenly the government was innocent of all wrongdoing; and, in fact, gave itself credit for a job well done.

This is just what always happens when people try to hold the government accountable. It never seems to work out. A judge always finds a reason to dismiss the case.
 

Rejection is Always a Concern

Having a lawsuit dismissed is quite common in a class action case, though it goes a little bit beyond a common occurrence when someone tries to sue the government. They just never get off of the ground and go anywhere, and typically it's the case that the news media doesn't even report on it. So, you have a situation where most Americans do not even know that citizens banded together in an attempt to sue the government. Instead, it appears to outsiders as if only large corporations are ever sued by the people. This isn't the case at all; people constantly try to sue the government. The people attempt to sue over election irregularities, tax initiatives, education, etc; but the fact is that every one of these cases end up dismissed, and that's it.

In Florida in 2019, it is alleged that the county Legislature forced a 1% tax hike on people, without any type of vote, and then just outright wasted the money. Whether or not this is actually what happened, no one will ever know because the case was dismissed.