The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority scored a victory in federal court on Thursday with the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to end the use of Dulles Toll Road revenue for the construction of Dulles Metrorail.
The suit was brought by two disgruntled Dulles Toll Road users, Virginia residents John Corr and John Grisby. Their lawyers argued that the tolls, imposed by the airports authority, constituted a tax. Because the board members of the airports authority are appointed – not elected – officials, the plaintiffs claimed “taxation without representation.”
U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga disagreed completely.
Responding to the charge that the tolls are an unjustified tax, Trenga wrote that the plaintiffs’ position “flies in the face of a long series of legislative acts that clearly authorizes [the airports authority] to set tolls.”
He also took the opportunity to school the plaintiffs in a bit of Constitutional law. While the principal of “no taxation without representation” was used as a rallying call to help found the United States, it was not adopted in the federal Constitution and has never been enforced as such, Trenga wrote. He added that the plaintiffs need look no further than the District of Columbia to find an example of Supreme Court-condoned taxation without representation.
The plaintiffs also complained that the existence of the airports authority and its powers denies them a republican form of government, guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.
Trenga dismissed that complaint, writing that the authority’s power “is circumscribed by legislation and can be modified or abolished altogether through the elected legislatures that created it.”
Taken as a whole, the suit’s dismissal means good news and bad news for Washingtonians. Good news? Dulles Rail is allowed to move forward. Bad news? Besides the construction that comes with the project, drivers will still have to pay ever-increasing tolls for that to happen.
