Dilly County Line Independent School Dist. v. Burns

• Decision Date: 15 December 1926
• Docket Number: (No. 7740.)
• Citation: 290 S.W. 279
• Parties: DILLY COUNTY LINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. et al. v. BURNS.<SMALL><SUP>*</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 279

290 S.W. 279

DILLY COUNTY LINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DIST. et al. v. BURNS.^*

(No. 7740.)

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. San Antonio.

December 15, 1926.

Rehearing Denied January 19, 1927.

Appeal from District Court, Frio County; Covey C. Thomas, Judge.

Suit by Thomas E. Burns against the Dilly County Line Independent School District and others. Judgment granting plaintiff a permanent injunction as prayed for, and defendants appeal. Reversed, and writ of injunction set aside.

Jno. L. Pranglin, of Pearsall, and U. S. Algee and J. D. Dodson, both of San Antonio, for appellants.

Denman, Franklin & Denman, of San Antonio, for appellee.

FLY, C. J.

Appellee filed a petition for a writ of injunction to restrain Ed. McCloskey, Emmett Reagan, W. T. Newsome, L. A Lowe, R. E. Adams, C. Jones, and Sackville, trustees of the school district, the district itself, as well as its assessor and collector of taxes, from issuing bonds and from assuming any of the obligations of the old school district No. 13 and from the collection of any taxes. The court rendered a permanent injunction as prayed for in the petition.

The Thirty-Ninth Legislature of Texas, in March, 1925, passed a special act (Sp. Laws 1925, c. 214) creating and incorporating the Dilly County Line independent school district out of territory in Frio and La Salle counties. The district was given the territory embraced in Dilly common school district No. 13, in Frio county, theretofore created and established, and certain land situated in La Salle county, not at that time included in any school district, and fully described said district by metes and bounds. Section 3 of the act placed the management and control of the public free schools in the district in the hands of a board of seven trustees, prescribing their qualifications. Section 4 made the board of trustees a body politic and corporate in law, giving such board the power to contract, and to sue and be sued, and to receive any gifts, grants, donations, or devises made to or for the use of the public schools in the district. Section 5 provides for the election of the trustees, dividing them into two classes, and fixing their terms of office. Section 6 provides for taking and subscribing the constitutional oath of office, and section 7 provides for meetings of the board of trustees, quorums and the election of officers; Section 8 is as follows:

"The trustees of said Dilly County Line independent school district shall have power to levy and collect an annual ad valorem tax of not exceeding the constitutional limit as is now or may hereafter be adopted for the maintenance of the public free schools therein, and a tax of not exceeding 50 cents on the $100 of taxable property within said district, for the purpose of erecting, constructing, repairing, equipping, or the purchase of site or sites, or either, of public free school buildings within the limits of said district, provided, however, that the amount of maintenance tax, together with the bond tax of said district, shall never exceed the constitutional limit as is now or may hereafter be adopted. Said trustees shall have power to issue coupon bonds of said district for the purchase of building sites, building purposes, repair, or equipment of such building, which bonds shall be payable serially or otherwise, not exceeding forty years from their date, in such sums as they shall deem expedient, which said bonds shall bear interest at not exceeding 6 per centum per annum: Provided, however, that when such buildings are to be constructed of wooden materials the bonds herein provided for shall not run for a longer period than twenty years; provided that the aggregate amount of bonds for the above named purposes shall never reach such an amount that the tax of 50 cents on the $100 valuation of taxable property in said district shall not be sufficient to pay the current interest and create a sinking fund sufficient to pay the principal at maturity; and provided further, that no such tax shall be levied and no such bonds shall be issued until after an election shall have been duly held within said district, wherein a majority of the tax paying voters voting at an election to be held for that purpose shall have voted in favor of the levying of said tax or the issuance of such bonds or bond, as the case may be, provided that the specific rate of tax need not be determined at such election."

Sections 9 and 10 provide for calling elections by order of the trustees on petitions of at least 10 taxpaying voters of the district, providing for the machinery of the election, giving notices and all other necessary things in regard to the election and declaration of the result. Section 11 provides for the choice of an assessor and collector of taxes and his compensation. Section 12 makes provision for property valuations and equalization of taxes, and sections 16 and 17 provide for the application of general laws in all matters not provided for in the special act.

The provisions cited, and whose contents are noted, are not assailed on any ground by appellee, and, unless they are destroyed by the unconstitutionality claimed against sections 13, 14, and 15 of the act, the law should not be declared unconstitutional as a whole. There can be no doubt that the Constitution of Texas authorizes the Legislature to provide for the formation of school districts by general or special laws, without the local notice required in other cases of special legislation, and to form them so as to embrace parts of two or more counties, and to provide for the assessment, levy, and collection of taxes, when a majority of the qualified property taxpaying voters of the district shall have voted the tax. The act in question fully conformed to the requirements of the Constitution. Article 7, § 3, Const.; Moerschell v. City of Eagle Lake (Tex. Civ. App.) 236 S. W. 996.

It is tacitly conceded that there are no unconstitutional provisions in the act, except those contained in sections 13, 14, and 15; but it is contended that the taint from those three sections contaminates with unconstitutionality and destroys the whole of the act. The three sections which appellee contended were unconstitutional, and which contention was sustained by the lower court, were 13, 14, and 15 of the Act of March 24, 1925. Section 13 provided:

"That any and all outstanding indebtedness and bonds of said Dilly common school district No. 13, in Frio county, Texas, be and the same is hereby validated, and all such indebtedness and all bonds outstanding of said Dilly common school district No. 13 shall be assumed by and are hereby made binding obligations of the said Dilly County Line independent school district, as the same is created by this act."

Section 14 continued in existence the local maintenance tax then existing in the old district until a majority of the qualified taxpaying voters of the new district should change the same under the general statutes. Secton 15 vested the title to all the property in the old district in the new district.

The rules to govern when only a part of a statute is constitutional are that, if the valid parts of a statute are not absolutely dependent on the invalid part, but contain useful and salutary provisions, it would be inconsistent with just principles of constitutional rights to strike down the whole law. Therefore, if a part of a statute is unconstitutional, that fact does not authorize courts to declare the whole law unconstitutional, "unless all the provisions are connected in subject-matter, depending on each other, operating together for the same purpose, or otherwise so connected together in meaning, that it cannot be presumed the Legislature would have passed the one without the other." The purpose of the enactment of the statute will be looked to. If that purpose be to accomplish two objects, which are severable from each other, and is void as to one and valid as to the other, then only the invalid portion should be declared void, and the valid part upheld. If, however, there be such mutual connection between the parts as to lead to the inevitable conclusion that the Legislature would not have passed the one without the other, then the whole statute would fall with the unconstitutional parts. Cooley, Const. Lim. (7th Ed.) pp. 246-248.

The prime, the chief, object in enacting the special law was to expand the old district and make it more efficacious in advancing the cause of education of the children included therein, and that object was fully attained if sections 13, 14, and 15 be held invalid and be stricken from the act. The law would in reason and common sense have been enacted, if no effort had been made for the validation and payment of the debts created by the old district. The end to be attained was obtained without the aid or assistance of the three sections assailed as unconstitutional, and it should stand as a clear constitutional expression of the will of the Legislature and the desire...