July 30, 1998 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has upheld a lower court’s decision that Longwood Gardens, located outside Philadelphia, deserved to be exempt from property taxes. The 1,050-acre park, which was opened to the public by Pierre Samuel du Pont in the 1920s, qualifies as an operating foundation under federal law.
The Union-Chadds Ford School District, where the gardens are located, had argued for years that even though Longwood Gardens had a charitable exemption under federal law, it did not qualify for an exemption under Pennsylvania law. The school district said Longwood’s policy of charging an admission fee to visitors disqualified it from charity status under state law.
But the state Supreme Court agreed with the Commonwealth Court, which concluded that Longwood did not cover its costs through the admission fees and met all tests for the property-tax exemption as both a charity and a public park. Supreme Court Justice Russell M. Nigro offered the only dissenting view. He warned that the court was headed down a “slippery slope” toward “the point that the term charity is meaningless.”
