Barnett v. Jones, 1190470
| Court | Supreme Court of Alabama |
| Writing for the Court | MITCHELL, Justice. |
| Parties | Vernon Barnett, in his official capacity as commissioner of the Alabama Department of Revenue, et al. v. Dr. Danna Jones, individually and in her official capacity as superintendent of Hartselle City Schools, et al. |
| Decision Date | 14 May 2021 |
| Docket Number | 1190470 |
Vernon Barnett, in his official capacity as commissioner of
the Alabama Department of Revenue, et al.
v.
Dr. Danna Jones, individually and in her official capacity as
superintendent of Hartselle City Schools, et al.
1190470
SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
OCTOBER TERM, 2020-2021
May 14, 2021
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance sheets of Southern Reporter. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Alabama Appellate Courts, 300 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104-3741 ((334) 229-0649), of any typographical or other errors, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is printed in Southern Reporter.
Appeal from Montgomery Circuit Court
(CV-19-477)
MITCHELL, Justice.
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This case involves the constitutionality of a 2019 local law that appropriates a large portion of Morgan County's proceeds from the Simplified Sellers Use Tax ("SSUT") to the county and city boards of education in Morgan County. The Morgan County Commissioners have appealed a judgment upholding the local law and contend that the local law violates Ala. Const. 1901 (Off. Recomp)., art. IV, § 105, because, they say, it creates a variance with -- and changes the result under -- preexisting general laws. Because the subject of the local law is not provided for by general law, we hold that it does not violate § 105 and therefore affirm.
The act at the heart of this case is Act No. 2019-272, Ala. Acts 2019 ("the Local Act"), a local law that sets out how the SSUT proceeds distributed to Morgan County are to be appropriated. The Legislature adopted the SSUT in 2015 through the passage of the Simplified Seller Use Tax Remittance Act ("the SSUT Act"),§ 40-23-191 et seq., Ala. Code 1975. The SSUT Act created mechanisms by which the State can collect a use tax from online sales of goods and services. See id. It also dictates
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how the proceeds from the tax are distributed. See § 40-23-197(b), Ala. Code 1975. Under this statutory framework, 20% of the SSUT proceeds are currently distributed to "each county in the state ... on a basis of the ratio of the population of each county to the total population of all counties in the state as determined in the most recent federal census prior to the distribution." § 40-23-197(b). See also § 40-23-197(a).
The Legislature has amended the SSUT Act several times. Relevant to the arguments in this case, a 2018 amendment added what is currently § 40-23-197(b). See Act No. 2018-539, § 1, Ala. Acts 2018. That provision of the SSUT Act now reads, in pertinent part:
"[T]he net proceeds after the distribution provided in subdivision (1) of subsection (a) shall be distributed ... 40 percent to each county in the state, and deposited into the general fund of the respective county commission, on a basis of the ratio of the population of each county to the total population of all counties in the state as determined in the most recent federal census prior to the distribution."
§ 40-23-197(b) (emphasis added).
In 2019, the Legislature passed the Local Act, which applies only to Morgan County and serves as the basis of the parties' dispute. The Local Act dictates how the SSUT proceeds distributed to Morgan County must
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be appropriated following their deposit into the county's general fund. After the proceeds are deposited, Morgan County retains 5% of the proceeds, but the remainder is to be transferred elsewhere. Eighty-five percent of the remaining proceeds are split between the county and city boards of education; another 13.5% goes exclusively to the Morgan County Board of Education; and the final 1.5% goes in equal shares to certified volunteer fire departments in Morgan County. Act No. 2019-272, § 2.
The Morgan County Commission refused to comply with the appropriation requirements of the Local Act. As a result, Dr. Danna Jones, individually and in her official capacity as the superintendent of Hartselle City Schools; Venita Jones, individually and in her official capacity as a member of the Hartselle Board of Education; Dana Gladden, Rodney Randell, and Rona Blevins, individually and in their official capacities as presidents, respectively, of the Hartselle City Education Association, the Decatur Education Association, and the Morgan County Education Association; and the Hartselle City, Decatur, and Morgan County Education Associations brought this suit in the Montgomery Circuit Court in October 2019. They sued the members of the Morgan
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County Commission -- Ray Long, Jeff Clark, Randy Vest, Don Stisher, and Greg Abercrombie ("the Commissioners") -- in their individual and official capacities and Alabama Commissioner of Revenue Vernon Barnett, seeking a judgment declaring the Local Act constitutional as well as injunctive relief. The defendants answered the complaint and asserted that the Local Act violates § 105. The crux of their argument is that the Local Act creates a variance from preexisting general laws of statewide application and changes the results dictated by the SSUT Act and the Budget Control Act, § 11-8-1 et seq., Ala. Code 1975. This singling out, they say, is prohibited by § 105.
Less than a month after the action began, the Decatur City Board of Education and the Morgan County Board of Education moved to intervene as plaintiffs. Those intervening plaintiffs named the same defendants in their complaint and, in substance, sought the same relief as the plaintiffs. Their motion to intervene was granted.
After briefing, a hearing, and the filing of proposed orders from all parties, the trial court entered its final judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and the intervening plaintiffs. It held that the Local Act did not violate
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§ 105 and ordered the Commissioners to pay all SSUT proceeds distributed to Morgan County after the date of the entry of the order as provided in the Local Act. The Commissioners appealed.1
There are no disputed facts in this case. Thus, our review of the trial court's judgment on the constitutionality of state legislation is de novo. Richards v. Izzi, 819 So.2d 25, 29 n.3 (Ala. 2001). It is also established that this Court will apply a "presumption ... in favor of [the] validity [of state laws]." Alabama State Fed'n of Labor v. McAdory, 246 Ala. 1, 9, 18 So. 2d 810, 815 (1944); Clay Cnty. Comm'n v. Clay Cnty. Animal Shelter, Inc., 283 So. 3d 1218, 1229 (Ala. 2019). That is because "it is the recognized duty of the court to sustain the act unless it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that it is violative of the fundamental law." Alabama State Fed'n of Labor, 246 Ala. at 9, 18 So. 2d at 815.
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The Commissioners challenge the Local Act under § 105 of our State Constitution, which states:
"No special, private, or local law, except a law fixing the time of holding courts, shall be enacted in any case which is provided for by a general law, or when the relief sought can be given by any court of this state; and the courts, and not the legislature, shall judge as to whether the matter of said law is provided for by a general law, and as to whether the relief sought can be given by any court; nor shall the legislature indirectly enact any such special, private, or local law by the partial repeal of a general law."
(Emphasis added.) In essence, the Commissioners argue that the Local Act violates § 105 because the "case" or "matter" the Local Act covers is already provided for by two general laws: the SSUT Act and the Budget Control Act. Further, the Commissioners argue that because Morgan County's share of the SSUT proceeds is subsequently appropriated by the Local Act after deposit into the county's general fund, but none of the other counties' shares of the SSUT proceeds are similarly appropriated, the Local Act creates an impermissible variance and changes the result otherwise generated by those general laws. We reject those arguments and hold that because the SSUT Act, the Budget Control Act, and the
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Local Act all provide for distinct cases or matters, the Local Act does not violate § 105.
As a result of the confusion that has arisen around this Court's § 105 jurisprudence, we first explain the proper framework for analyzing that constitutional provision. We then discuss why there is no § 105 violation here.
A. The § 105 Framework
From the time of the adoption of our 1901 Constitution, the text of § 105 and the caselaw interpreting it have been at war. For the first several decades, this Court applied a "substantial difference" test to assess the constitutionality of local laws. See, e.g., State ex rel. Brandon v. Prince, 199 Ala. 444, 74 So. 939 (1917). Instead of assessing what "case[s]" or "matter[s]" the Legislature had already "provided for" by general law, that test charged courts "with the duty to determine whether there is a substantial difference between the general and the local law." Standard Oil Co. of Kentucky v. Limestone Cnty., 220 Ala. 231, 235, 124 So. 523, 526 (1929). The more substantial the difference between the local law and the general law, the more likely it was that the local law would
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stand. Id. Despite the delegation of authority to the judiciary in the text of § 105, courts applying the "substantial difference" test refused to "invade the legislative domain to determine whether a county should have a local law substantially different and in addition to the state law." Id. The "substantial difference" test focused on the content of the local law and was highly deferential to the Legislature's practice of passing local acts.
That mode of analysis was expressly abandoned in Peddycoart v. City of Birmingham, 354 So. 2d 808 (Ala. 1978). In Peddycoart, this Court held that "[b]eing a limitation upon legislative authority, § 105 clearly means just the opposite of what the Court in [Brandon] held that it meant." Id. at 813. In explaining the proper framework for analyzing whether a local law violated § 105, this...
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