🚀 go-pugleaf

In ba.general Jeff Bishop <jwbishop@ocf.berkeley.edu> wrote:
: In article <7tirlh$d0k$1@agate-ether.berkeley.edu>,
: D. Gerasimatos <dim@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

:>I certainly don't like paying fees. However, what was deemed
:>unconstitutional about the fee?

: The Commerce Clause.  Any law that discriminates against out of state goods
: involves regulating interstate commerce, meaning that Congress could do it, or
: it could explicitly allow the states to do it if it wanted to, but the states
: cannot do it on their own.  There are some exceptions where the states have a 
: very good reason, including environmental concerns, but here the
: "environmental" argument was purely pretextual.

     ("Interstate" Commerce Clause.)  So it violates the _federal_
constitution, not the state constitution.  That wasn't clear from
the earlier posts.  In any event the three-year limit for refunds
seems completely unsupportable.  If the DMV no longer has records,
then any individual who could provide proof of the payment 
(receipt, cancelled check, etc.) should be entitled.
     Many years ago I brought a car from out-of-state into California
and it was charged a "use tax" in lieu of sales tax.  Is that now
also likely to be found unconstitutional?

:>It seems to me that the idea behind the
:>fee is to discourage Californians from buying cars in states with
:>less stringent pollution requirements and transporting them to California.