I am sure that there are a number of articles on taxpayer standing, and I probably would not have written this Article if I had not come across a certain comment of the Louisiana Supreme Court while researching another topic. Chief Justice Edward Bermudez for the Louisiana Supreme Court made the following comment in 1887, and it seemed to make so much sense that it became the springboard for a highly critical look at what the Florida Supreme Court has done in recent years with the issue of taxpayer standing:
The first question to be determined is whether the plaintiffs have a standing in court. It is unnecessary to indulge in any discussion of the long-mooted, but now apparently settled, question, whether tax-payers, or even one of them, have a right to contest judicially, as plaintiffs, the validity of municipal ordinances at which they level the charge of illegality for any cause. The settled doctrine, after much contrariety of opinions and considerable vacillation among the courts, seems to be that the right of property holders or taxable inhabitants is recognized
to resort to judicial authority to restrain municipal corporations and their officers from transcending their lawful powers, or violating their legal duties, in any unauthorized mode which will increase the burden of taxation, or otherwise injuriously affect tax-payers and their property; such as an unwarranted appropriation and squandering of corporate funds, an unjustifiable disposition of corporate property, an illegal levy and collection of taxes not due or exigible, etc. We accept this conservative doctrine. The recognition of that privilege is predicated on the principle that it is proper that those who may be immediately affected by the abuse should be armed with the power to interfere directly and at once in their own name, in a mode which affords an easy, prompt, and adequate preventive relief against an evil which might otherwise entail irremediable wrong. The exercise of that right or privilege is the more justified when the law does not vest the state or an officer with the power to seek redress. In such instances the action is regarded as having a public character, and as being a public proceeding, in which the public complains.