Apartment Ass'n of Los Angeles County, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles

The city, and the department of water and power appeal from a judgment holding unconstitutional a city ordinance imposing a sewer service charge. We reverse the judgment.

The ordinance involved imposes a sewer service charge on governmental, industrial and commercial users. The charge, measured by the amount of water used, is billed and collected for the city by the department. The ordinance defined commercial users as including apartment houses, condominiums, stock cooperatives and community apartment projects consisting of five or more dwelling units served by .a single water meter. The charge was not imposed on such structures having four or less units, nor on structures of any size haying individual water meters for each unit.

*15 The attack here is solely on the ground that the distinction between the five or more unit structure with one meter and a smaller structure or a large structure with individual meters is a denial of equal protection.

I

Preliminarily, the appellants contend that the plaintiffs, not being shown to be the owners of the kind of residential structure subject, to the charge, are not proper parties to sue; and that the trial court’s findings do…

I dissent.

The majority reverses a judgment of the trial court which declared unconstitutional a city ordinance imposing a sewer service charge. The attack on the ordinance is predicated on the contention that it violates plaintiffs’ constitutional right to equal protection of the laws. Under the ordinance, no sewer service charge is imposed on structures containing four units or less irrespective of whether such structures are serviced by a single water meter or a water meter for each unit. For structures containing five or more units, the sewer service charge is imposed only as to those structures having a single water meter. If a structure contains five or more units with an individual water meter for each unit, no sewer service charge is imposed as to that structure.

The trial judge found that the ordinance constitútes a violation of equal protection of the laws in levying a sewer service charge—declared to be a tax—on structures with five or more units based on whether there was a single water meter or a water meter for each unit, and in exempting from the charge structures containing four units or less. I agree with the trial judge that the distinctions made by the…