City of San Antonio v. Rankin

• Decision Date: 23 August 1995
• Docket Number: No. 04-95-00385-CV,04-95-00385-CV
• Citation: 905 S.W.2d 427
• Parties: CITY OF SAN ANTONIO, Appellant, v. District Chiefs Michael RANKIN and Neal Nye of the Fire Department of the City of San Antonio, Appellees.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 427

905 S.W.2d 427

CITY OF SAN ANTONIO, Appellant, v. District Chiefs Michael RANKIN and Neal Nye of the Fire Department of the City of San Antonio, Appellees.

No. 04-95-00385-CV.

Court of Appeals of Texas San Antonio.

Aug. 23, 1995.

Paula Dlugosz, William W. Morris, Alberto J. Pena, Assistant City Attorney, San Antonio, for appellant.

J. Patrick Wiseman, Wiseman, Durst, Tuddenham & Owen, Austin, for appellee.

Before RICKHOFF, LOPEZ, and STONE, JJ.

LOPEZ, Justice.

This is an accelerated appeal of an order granting a temporary injunction. Appellees, plaintiffs below, are district fire chiefs for the City of San Antonio and, as such, are civil service employees. ¹ The new amendments to the City's Ethics Ordinance require them to file annual financial disclosure statements and annual financial involvement records with the City Clerk. See San Antonio, Tex., Ordinance 80329 (as amended by Ord. 81020 of Oct. 20, 1994). The data requested includes disclosures by the plaintiffs' spouses as well. Failure to file timely complete documents subjects them to disciplinary action. The ordinance provides that the City enforce noncompliance by filing a complaint in municipal court. Violation of the Ethics Ordinance is a Class C misdemeanor.

The district chiefs complain that their position is not one that is readily subject to potential conflicts of interest with private contractors. These chiefs are responsible for managing the response to a fire, not for negotiating contracts with private interests. They object to the City's requirement of disclosure "across the board" when it serves no purpose in their case. They are 20-year veterans with the fire department. This type of disclosure has never been a condition of employment for them. They testified that disclosure could make it easier for them and their families to become targets for reprisals by disgruntled employees. One of appellees is a member of the union negotiation team and opined that if the negotiators for the City can review his personal finances, he is in a weakened bargaining position.

Appellees received a memo from the Fire Chief which instructed them to complete the financial disclosure forms, have them notarized, and returned to his office by a stated deadline. Rather than wait for the Fire Chief to take disciplinary action against them for failure to comply with this directive, they filed suit for declaratory and injunctive relief. The trial court heard evidence and argument and granted a temporary injunction which ordered the City to desist and refrain from requiring the appellees to file the financial disclosure forms or otherwise face internal discipline and/or prosecution under the ordinance pending a trial on the merits.

Jurisdiction

Our first concern is whether the trial court had jurisdiction to hear this matter. In State v. Morales, Justice Cornyn lists four types of cases in which a party might seek relief from an equity court based on the alleged unconstitutionality of a criminal statute:

(1) the statute is enforced and the party is being prosecuted,

(2) the statute is enforced and the threat of prosecution is imminent, although the party has yet to be prosecuted,

(3) there is no actual or threatened enforcement of the statute and the party does not seek an injunction against its enforcement, but the statute is nonetheless integrally related to conduct subject to the court's equity jurisdiction,

(4) there is no actual or threatened enforcement of the statute and no complaint of specific conduct remediable by injunction.

State v. Morales, 869 S.W.2d 941, 944-45 (Tex.1994). As a general rule, courts of equity do not have jurisdiction to interfere with the ordinary enforcement of a criminal statute. Passel v. Fort Worth Ind. Sch. Dist., 440 S.W.2d 61, 63 (Tex.1969). Scenarios one and two will not offer jurisdiction in equity unless a vested property right is in jeopardy. Id.

The third scenario was presented under the facts of Passel, and under those limited circumstances, i.e, injunctive relief was sought solely to prevent administrative enforcement of an administrative regulation adopted for the purpose of implementing the statute, equitable jurisdiction was potentially available to protect personal as well as property rights. Id. at 64. We are cautioned by the Morales decision, however, "that a personal right can [not] be uniformly substituted for a property right and thereby expand civil jurisdiction to cover criminal statutes." Morales, 869 S.W.2d at 946.

In Morales, plaintiffs challenged the constitutionality of the sodomy statute, which the Attorney General contended had not been nor would likely be enforced against the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs claimed that the very existence of the statute stigmatized them as criminals by the very fact that they were homosexuals. They further alleged damage to career and employment opportunities and that the statute encouraged the commission of hate crimes. Id. at 943. The Morales case illustrates the fourth scenario, and the Supreme Court determined that the civil trial court did not have jurisdiction to grant a temporary injunction against the enforcement of the criminal statute on the ground it was unconstitutional.

The Morales plaintiffs were unable to show any specific instance of injury to their careers, thus, there was no specific equitable relief required. The court noted: "Further, as the irreparable harm to property rights must flow from attempted enforcement of the statute, the plaintiffs cannot simultaneously urge the mutually exclusive contentions that [the statute] is not enforced and that the enforcement of [the statute] affects their employment opportunities." Id. at 943 n. 6. The majority refused to create an exception where there was a history of nonenforcement. Id. at 948. An "adequate" remedy at law resided in the criminal courts.

So, the arguments on jurisdiction in our case tend to place the financial disclosure ordinance in either the third or fourth scenarios. Appellant argues that this is a Morales situation since there is no evidence of enforcement and no evidence of a vested property right. They cite Apodaca v. Montes, 606 S.W.2d 734 (Tex.App.--El Paso 1980, no writ), which held that disclosure of personal financial records filed with the county bail bond board did not violate the bondsman's constitutional right to privacy. That case demonstrates that where the disclosure is required to promote a public interest, the invasion of privacy does not rise to a constitutional level. Id. at 737. The City further argues that appellees have an adequate remedy at law because they can challenge the constitutionality of the ordinance in municipal court if they are prosecuted for violating it.

On the other hand, appellees argue that this is a Passel scenario because this is a noncriminal application of a criminal statute. Application of the ordinance is interfering with their constitutional right to privacy. Like Passel, they seek relief to prevent administrative enforcement of an administrative regulation adopted for the purpose of implementing the statute. That "regulation" is in the form of a one sentence memo from the fire chief directing those in appellees' position to fill out and return the disclosure forms by a stated deadline. They anticipate being disciplined or demoted because they have refused to comply with the order. The lack of enforcement was due to the City's agreement not to take action against appellees until after the temporary injunction hearing.

Appellees also claim vested property interests in their positions under civil service statutes, see Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 1491, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985) (vested privacy interest exists where employee may not be removed from position absent misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance in office), and under TEX.LOCAL GOV'T CODE § 143.089 which protects firemen's personnel files from public disclosure. They claim the ordinance is impermissibly broad because it seeks disclosure from plaintiffs who are allegedly not in a position of likely conflict with the ethics code while it ignores other positions where the potential for conflict of interest is much greater.

We agree that the trial court did have jurisdiction, in that this is a Passel situation. In seeking a temporary injunction, the district chiefs are challenging anticipated administrative enforcement of the interdepartmental memo which they have characterized as a "direct order from the Fire Chief."

The Standard of Review

The merits of the movant's case...