South Carolina v. Baker

Luke v. Baker
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 7, 1987 Decided April 20, 1988
Full case name	Luke v. Baker, Secretary of the Treasury on Exceptions to Report of Special Master
Citations	485 U.S. 505 (more)
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices William J. Brennan, Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens; Scalia (except for Part II)
Concurrence	Stevens
Concurrence	Scalia
Concurrence	Rehnquist
Dissent	O'Connor
Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Luke v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that section 310(b)(1) of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) does not violate the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Background

TEFRA continued the federal tax exemption for state bond interest as long as the bond is registered, with each seller and buyer being recorded for audit purposes. Anonymous bearer bonds, which often were used in money laundering, were no longer exempt however. South Carolina sued to have the federal tax advantage restored for all their bonds.

Decision

The Court also ruled that a nondiscriminatory federal tax on the interest earned on state bonds does not violate the intergovernmental tax immunity doctrine; this is the case which permitted the federal taxation of interest income on bonds issued by state governments in the United States. In this case, the Supreme Court stated that the contrary decision of the Court in the case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. (1895) had been "effectively overruled by subsequent case law."

External links

• 485 U.S. 505 (1988) Full text opinion from Findlaw.com