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.

On June 27, 2002, the United States Supreme Court handed down the most widely anticipated decision of its 2002 term when it resolved a constitutional question that had been dominating the school-voucher debate for years. In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a five-to-four majority held that Cleveland’s voucher program did not violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority, reasoned that voucher programs that allow state money to reach religious institutions by way of parental choice are “entirely neutral with respect to religion,” and therefore do not amount to government endorsement of religion.

In 2000, the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing a “Choose Life” specialty license plate. The plate displays the faces of two cartoon-drawn children with the words “Choose Life” inscribed at the bottom. Shortly thereafter, Louisiana began sending the “Choose Life” message through its own, similar specialty license plate. The Louisiana plate replaced the children’s faces with an image of a brown pelican—the state bird—carrying a baby in a blanket. The same “Choose Life” message is displayed at the bottom. Other states, including Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, have enacted laws allowing the “Choose Life” plate, and similar laws are in the early stages of development in nearly thirty other states.

In State v. City of Clearwater, the Florida Supreme Court held that an e-mail message sent and received over a public agency’s network server “does not automatically become [a] public record[ ] by virtue of” its automatic storage on the server, and that such a record is not encompassed within the statutory definition of “public records,” if an agency employee claims that the content of the e-mail message is “personal.” The Court also agreed with the Second District Court of Appeal by holding that private or personal e-mail messages fall outside the current definition of “public records” in Florida Statutes Section 119.011(1).