Ward v. Love County, 253 U.S. 17 (1920)

Coleman Ward and 66 other Native Americans lived on land in Love County, Oklahoma that had been granted to them by the federal government. The original grant provided that the land would be non-taxable for the next 21 years, as long as it remained in the possession of the parties to whom it had been allotted. However, a decade later, Congress ruled that the land would be subject to taxes even if it were still in the possession of the allotted parties. When the County began to assess taxes on the land, Ward and the other Native Americans argued that they could not be constitutionally deprived of the vested property right that they had been granted through the tax exemption. During this period, other Native Americans in Oklahoma were bringing similar challenges to the loss of their tax-exempt status with regard to their land. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in their favor under the Fifth Amendment, holding that Oklahoma could not tax their lands.

Love County continued to demand that the Native Americans living there should pay the tax, and it threatened them with selling their property if they did not pay off the assessment. Some land belonging to other Native Americans actually was sold off by the County. Rather than face the loss of their land and an 18 percent penalty, Ward and the people living in the area paid their taxes. They then brought an action in state court to recover what they had paid, arguing that the payments were the product of coercion. After they prevailed in the state trial court, the Oklahoma Supreme Court denied them the right to recover the payments. It ruled that they had paid the taxes voluntarily and pointed out that the county already had paid the tax money to the state and municipal governments. When Ward and the other plaintiffs sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court, the County argued that certiorari would be improper because the Oklahoma Supreme Court had based its decision exclusively on state law.

Majority

• Willis Van Devanter (Author)
• Edward Douglass White
• Joseph McKenna
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• William Rufus Day
• Mahlon Pitney
• James Clark McReynolds
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• John Hessin Clarke

The appellate jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court does not exist if the state court based its decision completely on state law issues. This is not the case here, since the tax exemption was a right granted to the plaintiffs by the federal government. Its potential removal thus presents an issue of federal law. While the state Supreme Court based its decision on finding that the taxes were paid voluntarily, this conclusion is clearly erroneous because it is undisputed that the defendant used coercive measures to force the plaintiffs to pay the taxes. Even though the defendant redistributed the funds among other state and local governments, it still needed to repay the funds because they were illegitimately obtained. The U.S. Supreme Court has the authority to reverse the judgment of the state Supreme Court because federal law is involved.

The Supreme Court cannot have the power to review decisions based entirely on state law, since the state courts would not have the important power of final authority over their own matters. Federal and state systems must be separated to preserve state sovereignty.