Anne Arundel County v. Harwood Civic Ass'n

The Court treated its simultaneously issued decision in Anne Arundel County v. Bell as controlling. Bell held that comprehensive zoning is legislative action, and judicial challenges to legislative action are governed by Maryland's taxpayer-standing doctrine.

The proximity-based doctrine from Bryniarski and related cases addresses a different setting: challenges to particular zoning decisions, often administrative or piecemeal in character. It does not supply standing to attack a legislative comprehensive-zoning enactment.

Because taxpayer standing, rather than property-owner standing, controlled, the Court did not separately resolve whether the plaintiffs' proximity allegations or asserted harms met the Bryniarski and Ray standards for special aggrievement.

A taxpayer-standing plaintiff must allege that the plaintiff is a taxpayer and is suing, expressly or implicitly, on behalf of similarly situated taxpayers. The plaintiff also must allege an illegal or ultra vires governmental act, a potential injury to the plaintiff's property through pecuniary loss or increased taxes, and a nexus between that injury and the challenged governmental action.

The Court assumed that Shirley Harrison's allegation that her property taxes might increase could satisfy the pecuniary-injury component and that her ownership of real property could support an inference that she was a taxpayer. It also assumed, for purposes of analysis, that her allegations of unlawful spot zoning sufficiently alleged illegal or ultra vires action.

Those assumptions did not cure the decisive procedural defect. Earlier in the litigation, the respondents expressly said they did not claim taxpayer standing. Although Harrison later added an allegation concerning increased taxes, the respondents never argued in the Court of Special Appeals or the Court of Appeals that they had taxpayer standing or explained how they met its elements.

Appellate courts do not consider arguments omitted from the parties' briefs or presented only indirectly. The respondents' occasional references to taxpayer-standing principles did not amount to a developed claim that they satisfied the doctrine. Their failure to raise and support that theory waived it.

Since no respondent established taxpayer standing, the Court did not need to decide whether Harrison adequately alleged that the suit was brought on behalf of other taxpayers or whether she alleged the required nexus between the rezoning and a potential tax increase.

Standing is a threshold requirement. Once the Court concluded that the respondents could not maintain a challenge to the comprehensive zoning enactment, it had no basis to decide whether the challenged amendments were unlawful spot zoning or whether Bill 44-11 had to be consistent with the County's General Development Plan.

The Court therefore reversed the Court of Special Appeals and directed it to affirm the Circuit Court's dismissal, though the Court's controlling rationale was the respondents' lack of properly asserted taxpayer standing.