The dormant Commerce Clause prohibits states from
enacting laws regulating local resources or services that
"fall by design" on nonresidents in a "predictably disproportionate way." Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v.
Town of Harrison, Me., 520 U.S. 564, 579 (1997). Ariz. Rev.
Stat. § 5-839 authorizes imposition of a tax on car rentals
in Maricopa County that was deliberately designed to impose such a disproportionate burden, forcing nonresidents
to bear a share of the taxation burden out of proportion to
their use of rental cars through exemptions covering the
types of rental vehicles residents typically use, and the
reasons residents typically rent. Yet the Arizona Supreme
Court disregarded the unambiguous and unrebutted evidence of the tax's protectionist purpose because it found
that the tax did not have a disproportionate effect on nonresidents. And it found the tax to lack this disproportionate effect solely because the tax was assessed on, and paid
by, rental car companies, rather than the nonresidents
themselves.

The Questions Presented are these:

1. Whether a car-rental tax designed to foist a disproportionate share of the tax's burden onto nonresidents is
nonetheless immune from dormant Commerce Clause
scrutiny simply because the tax is assessed on the companies that rent the cars rather than the nonresidents who
are the ultimate target for the tax.

2. Whether evidence that a tax was intended to impose
a disproportionate burden on nonresidents is relevant in
determining whether a statute imposes an impermissibly
discriminatory design.

Whether a car-rental tax designed to foist a disproportionate share of the tax's burden onto nonresidents is nonetheless immune from dormant Commerce Clause scrutiny simply because the tax is assessed on the companies that rent the cars rather than the nonresidents who are the ultimate target for the tax