Bexar Appraisal Dist. v. Johnson

691 S.W.3d 844

BEXAR APPRAISAL DISTRICT, Petitioner,

v.Yvondia JOHNSON, Respondent

No. 22-0485

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued January 11, 2024

OPINION DELIVERED: June 7, 2024

On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fourth District of Texas

John Brusniak Jr., Tracy M. Turner, Catherine Meili, Evan Paul Singer, Dallas, J. Benjamin Aguinaga, Christopher Arnell, for Respondent.

Daniel Richard Smith, James Popp, Mark Stephen Hutcheson, Stephen Grant, for Amicus Curiae Tax Equity Council.

Nicholas Goettsche, Matthew Tepper, Round Rock, Wallace B. Jefferson, Austin, Robert B. Dubose, Houston, Stephen Tyler McCarty, Sharon Coffee Baxter, Elizabeth Corny Davidson, for Petitioner.

Peter Gardner Smith, Victoria W. Thomas, Dallas, for Amici Curiae Texas Association of Appraisal Districts (TAAD), Dallas Central Appraisal District (DCAD).

Mike Thompson Jr., Abilene, John B. Dahill, Dallas, Michael Pichinson, Liberty, for Amicus Curiae Texas Association of Counties.

G. Todd Stewart, Houston, Sands L. Stiefer, for Amicus Curiae Harris Central Appraisal District.

Michael Sankey, for Amicus Curiae Travis Central Appraisal District.

Justice Huddle delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Hecht, Justice Lehrmann, Justice Boyd, Justice Devine, Justice Busby, and Justice Bland joined.

In 2009, the Legislature created a residence homestead tax exemption for veterans who are 100% disabled. See Tex Tax Code § 11.131(b). Yvondia Johnson is a 100% disabled U.S. Air Force veteran who claimed the exemption for her principal residence, a home in Converse, Texas. It is undisputed that Bexar Appraisal District, which denied Ms. Johnson’s application for the exemption, would have granted it if she were unmarried. The question we must answer is whether the Tax Code bars Ms. Johnson’s claim to the exemption because her husband, from whom she is separated and who is also a 100% disabled U.S. military veteran, claims the same exemption for his principal residence, a home in San Antonio.

The court of appeals refused to engraft a one-per-married-couple limitation onto the statute. It concluded that the Tax Code bestows the exemption on each individual 100% disabled veteran who meets Section 11.131(b)’s express statutory requirements without regard to whether the veteran’s spouse also claims the exemption on a separate residence homestead. We hold that the court of appeals’ application of the statute was correct and thus affirm its judgment.

I. Background

Yvondia and Gregory Johnson are married, and each is a 100% disabled U.S. Air Force veteran. In 2012, when they lived together in their jointly owned San Antonio home, Mr. Johnson applied for a tax exemption under Tax Code Section 11.131(b), which benefits 100% disabled veterans by exempting the complete value of their residence homesteads from ad valorem tax. Years later, the Johnsons jointly bought another home in Converse, Texas. They later separated, with Ms. Johnson living at the Converse home while Mr. Johnson remained at the San Antonio residence. Ms. Johnson, herself a 100% disabled veteran, applied for a Section 11.131(b) exemption for the Converse residence for the year 2020. But Bexar Appraisal District refused the exemption, stating as its rationale "[s]pouse claiming exemptions" at the San Antonio residence. Ms. Johnson protested the appraisal district’s decision to the Bexar Appraisal Review Board under Chapter 41 of the Tax Code. See id. § 41.41(a)(4) (permitting a property owner to protest the denial of an exemption to the appraisal review board). After the review board denied her protest, Ms. Johnson sued. See id. § 42.01(a)(1)(A) (allowing a property owner to appeal the review board’s order in district court).

In the trial court, the appraisal district moved for summary judgment, arguing that Ms. Johnson was ineligible for a Section 11.131(b) exemption because her husband claimed the same exemption on a different home they jointly owned. Ms. Johnson also sought summary judgment, arguing that the evidence conclusively established she met the exemption’s requirements. The trial court granted summary judgment for the appraisal district and denied Ms. Johnson’s motion. Ms. Johnson appealed, and the court of appeals reversed and rendered judgment in her favor. 683 S.W.3d 92, 99 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2022).

II. Applicable Law

A. Statutory interpretation

[1-5] In interpreting a statute, we must "ascertain and give effect to the Legislature’s intent." Odyssey 2020 Acad., Inc. v. Galveston Cent. Appraisal Dist., 624 S.W.3d 535, 540 (Tex. 2021) (quoting Entergy Gulf States, Inc. v. Summers, 282 S.W.3d 433, 437 (Tex. 2009)). "We look for that intent first and foremost in the plain language of the constitutional or statutory provision." Id. "If the statute’s plain language is unambiguous, we interpret its plain meaning, presuming that the Legislature intended for each of the statute’s words to have a purpose and that the Legislature purposefully omitted words it did not include." Silguero v. CSL Plasma, Inc., 579 S.W.3d 53, 59 (Tex. 2019). Statutory terms usually bear their common, ordinary meaning. Id. When a statute defines one of its terms, however, "[w]e do not look to the ordinary, or commonly understood, meaning of the term because the Legislature has supplied its own definition, which we are bound to follow." Entergy, 282 S.W.3d at 437.

[6, 7] "Statutory exemptions from taxation are subject to strict construction because they undermine equality and uniformity by placing a greater burden on some taxpaying businesses and individuals rather than placing the burden on all taxpayers equally." Odyssey 2020, 624 S.W.3d at 540 (quoting N. Alamo Water Supply Corp. v. Willacy Cnty. Appraisal Dist., 804 S.W.2d 894, 899 (Tex. 1991)). We have held that "an exemption cannot be raised by implication, but must affirmatively appear." Id. (quoting Bullock v. Nat’l Bancshares Corp., 584 S.W.2d 268, 272 (Tex. 1979)). "The taxpayer has the burden to clearly show that an exemption applies, and all doubts are resolved against the granting of an exemption." Id. at 541 (internal quotation marks omitted).

[8-11] Any doubts, however, must arise "from legal text, not from gut instincts or guesses." Miles v. Tex. Cent. R.R. & Infrastructure, Inc., 647 S.W.3d 613, 633 (Tex. 2022) (Young, J., concurring). Our analysis does not turn on speculation as to whether the Legislature envisioned a particular result but rather depends on what the statute’s text "clearly says." Id. "We must enforce the statute ‘as written’ and ‘refrain from rewriting text that lawmakers chose.’ " Jaster v. Comet II Constr., Inc., 438 S.W.3d 556, 562 (Tex. 2014) (plurality op.) (quoting Entergy, 282 S.W.3d at 443); see also Combs v. Health Care Servs. Corp., 401 S.W.3d 623, 629 (Tex. 2013) ("[W]e read unambiguous statutes as they are written, not as they make the most policy sense."). Consistent with that approach, construing tax "exemptions narrowly does not mean disregarding the words used by the Legislature." Odyssey 2020, 624 S.W.3d at 541.

B. Constitutional and statutory benefits of residence homestead ownership

Since 1866, the Texas Constitution has protected a family’s homestead from forced sale.¹ In considering the nature and scope of this protection in the 1869 Constitution, we noted that the term "homestead" "conveys the idea of a house and place connected therewith" and adopted the dictionary definition as "[t]he place of the house; a mansion-house with the adjoining land." Herman Iken & Co. v. Olenick, 42 Tex. 195, 201 (1874) (citation omitted). And we noted that the 1869 Constitution limited its protection against forced sale to property used for "homestead purposes"; it did not extend, for example, to a property used only for commercial purposes. Id. at 202.

We have also held that the constitutional protection against a homestead’s forced sale does not extend to every individual. Rather, Crowder v. Union National Bank of Houston, 114 Tex. 34, 261 S.W. 375 (Tex. [Comm’n Op.] 1924), noted that "[t]he homestead is by our Constitution given to the family. It is given neither to the husband nor the wife …." Id. at 377. In other words, Crowder held that the constitutional protections against forced sale are not doled out en masse or on a one-per-person basis. Rather, as the text at the time made clear, the constitutional safeguard protected a family unit. See Tex Const art. XVI, § 50 ("The homestead of a family shall be, and is hereby protected from forced sale … ") (emphasis added) (amended 1973). Thus, spouses could not each separately avail themselves of the constitutional protection against forced sale because, while married, they were "constituent members of the same family." Crowder, 261 S.W. at 377. The longstanding historical rule thus had been that constitutional homestead protection against forced sale carries with it a one-per-family limit.

After Crowder, a different type of benefit afforded to homestead owners emerged. Whereas earlier constitutional protection had shielded homestead owners from forced sales, a series of constitutional amendments beginning in 1932 birthed an entirely new kind of benefit: the residence homestead tax exemption.² Moved in 1948 to Article VIII, Section 1-b, where it remains today, that provision declared:

Three Thousand Dollars ($3,000) of the assessed taxable value of all residence homesteads as now defined by law shall be exempt from all taxation for all State purposes.

Tex. Const, art. VIII, § 1-b (amended 1973). Quite plausibly, Section 1-b’s use of the phrase "as now defined by law" incorporated Crowder’s limitations on the use to which property must be put to qualify as a residence homestead and on who may claim the exemption.

Further constitutional amendments would bring clarity. In 1973, Texans again amended the Constitution, resolving any doubt about who could claim constitutional protection against forced sale. Whereas the 1876 Constitution had...