Hall v. Tucker, 98-151

• Decision Date: 21 January 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-151,98-151
• Citation: 336 Ark. 112,983 S.W.2d 432
• Parties: , 132 Ed. Law Rep. 237 Alton C. HALL, Ronald J. Hall and James E. Burns, Appellants, v. Jim Guy TUCKER, Governor of Arkansas; Arkansas State Board of Education; Elaine Scott, Chairman; Richard C. Smith, Jr., Vice Chairman; Carl Baggett, William R. Fisher; Mitch Lewellen, Jr., James McClarty III, Rae Rice Perry, and Sherry Walker in their Official Capacity with the Arkansas State Board of Education; Gene Wilhoit, Director, State Department of Education; Diane Sydoriak, Associate Director of Special Education; Joe Don Parris, Program Support Manager of Compensatory Education; Jimmie Lou Fisher, Treasurer and Charles Robinson, State Legislative Auditor, Appellees, Junction City School District, Intervenor.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Page 432

983 S.W.2d 432

336 Ark. 112, 132 Ed. Law Rep. 237

Alton C. HALL, Ronald J. Hall and James E. Burns, Appellants, v. Jim Guy TUCKER, Governor of Arkansas; Arkansas State Board of Education; Elaine Scott, Chairman; Richard C. Smith Jr., Vice Chairman; Carl Baggett, William R. Fisher; Mitch Lewellen, Jr., James McClarty III, Rae Rice Perry, and Sherry Walker in their Official Capacity with the Arkansas State Board of Education; Gene Wilhoit, Director, State Department of Education; Diane Sydoriak, Associate Director of Special Education; Joe Don Parris, Program Support Manager of Compensatory Education; Jimmie Lou Fisher Treasurer and Charles Robinson, State Legislative Auditor, Appellees Junction City School District, Intervenor.

No. 98-151.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

Jan. 21, 1999.

Pat Hall, El Dorado, for Appellants.

Winston Bryant, Atty. Gen., Tim Humphries, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for Appellees.

Cathleen V. Compton, Little Rock, for Intervenor.

ROBERT L. BROWN, Justice.

Appellants Alton C. Hall, Ronald J. Hall, and James E. Burns (hereinafter referred to jointly as Hall) appeal an order of summary judgment in favor of multiple state officials, including the Governor of the State, the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education, and the State Treasurer (hereinafter referred to jointly as Board of Education) and a second order in favor of the intervenor, Junction City School District. Alton Hall is a property owner and taxpayer in Union County. Ronald Hall and James Burns are certified school teachers in the Junction City School District. The crux of Hall's appeal is that the Arkansas statute permitting Louisiana school teachers to teach in a border school district without Arkansas certification (Ark.Code Ann. § 6-17-404 (Repl.1993)) is special and local legislation. Hall further contends that the Junction City School District's allowance of in-kind services from Louisiana as per pupil contributions for the eighty-four Louisiana students educated in that school district was wrong and adversely affected the Arkansas students. We find no error in the trial court's two orders, and we affirm.

The Junction City School District # 75 (School District) is located in Union County and is near the Louisiana border. For years, students from neighboring Claiborne Parrish and Union Parrish in Louisiana have attended school in the School District, and the cost for educating those students has been borne primarily by Arkansas. On September 9, 1994, Hall filed a lawsuit to enjoin the Board of Education from violating the School Finance Act of 1984 and further to compel the Board of Education to prevent the misallocation of state-administered aid to the School District. Specifically, Hall sought to prevent the School District from including Louisiana students in the School District's average daily membership, which permitted the School District to receive Arkansas minimum foundation funds for the Louisiana students. He further complained that in the 1995-96 school year, Louisiana sent no money to defer the cost of educating its students but instead sent inkind services, including teachers and two school buses. Following Hall's complaint, the School District was granted the right to intervene in the action.

The Board of Education then moved for summary judgment and asserted that the School Finance Act of 1984 had been repealed by the Equitable School Finance System Act of 1995, codified at Ark.Code Ann. §§ 6-20-301 through 322 (Supp.1997). Hall amended his complaint and added the Junction City School Board as a party defendant. He alleged that for the 1996-97 school year, the amount spent in in-kind services by Louisiana was valued at approximately $3,200 for each Louisiana student whereas the contribution was about $4,000 for each Arkansas student. Hall complained that the diminished value attributable to the Louisiana in-kind services was diluting the funds spent by Arkansas on its own students. He further stated that the Board of Education had ordered the School District to stop including Louisiana students in its average daily membership in 1994 and that the practice had halted. ¹ He also complained about various wrongful practices, including laying off two of the plaintiffs from their coaching jobs and replacing them with Louisiana coaches with less seniority. As a final point, he alleged wrongful conduct on the part of the School District's administration, including treating the Louisiana teachers more favorably regarding salary, retirement plans, and certification requirements. In his prayer for relief, Hall (1) prayed that Ark. Code Ann. § 6-17-404 (Repl.1993), be declared invalid and unconstitutional; (2) sought to enjoin the Board of Education from (a) allowing Louisiana employees to educate Arkansas students in the School District, (b) accepting in-kind educational services from Louisiana, (c) violating various Arkansas Code sections; (3) prayed for a writ of mandamus requiring the Board of Education to perform its duties imposed by law; and (4) sought a judgment for any money fraudulently obtained. After filing his amended complaint, Hall moved for summary judgment and asserted that there were no issues of material fact surrounding the in-kind services from Louisiana and that he was entitled to an injunction to stop the acceptance of these services.

The trial court granted summary judgment to the Board of Education. In doing so, the trial court found that Ark.Code Ann. § 6-17-404 (Repl.1993) was constitutional under the rational-basis test; that the Board of Education had no statutory duty to monitor or prohibit the School District's receipt of in-kind services from Louisiana; and that the requests for injunctive relief against the Board of Education were essentially petitions for writs of mandamus and outside a chancery court's jurisdiction. The trial court refused to grant summary judgment on whether the School District was properly receiving in-kind contributions from Louisiana because the issue involved questions of disputed fact.

The issue of in-kind contributions was set for a hearing, and the School District filed a motion in limine, requesting that the trial court prohibit Hall and his witnesses from referring to any of the other matters raised in the amended complaint that were disposed of by the summary-judgment order. The trial court granted the motion. After a hearing, the court found in favor of the School District and concluded that Hall had put forth no proof that the in-kind services from Louisiana, with a value of approximately $3,200 per student, materially and adversely affected the Arkansas students.

I. Summary Judgment

Hall first contends, generally, that the trial court incorrectly granted summary judgment in favor of the Board of Education. In his argument on appeal, he incorporates all of the grievances he has amassed against the Board of Education and the School District and concludes that his motion for summary judgment should have been granted and the Board of Education's motion denied. In making this claim, he argues that the trial court erred in finding no genuine issues of material fact.

We recently summarized the major legal principles we use when reviewing a summary-judgment order:

In these cases, we need only decide if the granting of summary judgment was appropriate based on whether the evidentiary items presented by the moving party in support of the motion left a material question of fact unanswered. The burden of sustaining a motion for summary judgment is always the responsibility of the moving party. All proof submitted must be viewed in a light most favorable to the party resisting the motion, and any doubts and inferences must be resolved against the moving party. Our rule states, and we have acknowledged, that summary judgment is proper when a claiming party fails to show that there is a genuine issue as to a material fact and when the moving party is entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law.

Milam v. Bank of Cabot, 327 Ark. 256, 261-262, 937 S.W.2d 653, 656 (1997) (quoting Renfro v. Adkins, 323 Ark. 288, 295, 914 S.W.2d 306, 309-310 (1996) (internal citations omitted)). Bearing these principles in mind, we turn to Hall's specific arguments.

II. Special or Local Legislation

Hall claims that the trial court erred in its decision that Ark.Code Ann. § 6-17-404 (Supp.1997) was not special or local legislation. We disagree.

Amendment 14 of the Arkansas Constitution contains this proscription: "The General Assembly shall not pass any local or special act." Local legislation is legislation that is arbitrarily applied to only one geographic area of the state, while special legislation arbitrarily separates from the operation of an act some person, place, or thing from another. See Boyd v. Weiss, 333 Ark. 684, 971 S.W.2d 237 (1998); Fayetteville Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Arkansas State Bd. of Educ., 313 Ark. 1, 852 S.W.2d 122 (1993). Arkansas statutes are presumed constitutional, and the party attacking a statute has the burden of showing that the challenged statute clearly violates the Arkansas Constitution. See Boyd v. Weiss, supra; McCutchen v. Huckabee, 328 Ark. 202, 943 S.W.2d 225 (1997).

The fact that a statute ultimately affects less than all of the state's territory does not per se render it local or special legislation. See McCutchen v. Huckabee, supra; City of Little Rock v. Waters, 303 Ark. 363, 797 S.W.2d 426 (1990). We have consistently held that a statute that applies to only one area of the state is constitutional if the reason for limiting the statute to one area is rationally related to the purposes of that statute. See McCutchen v. Huckabee, supra; Fayetteville Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Arkansas State Bd. of Educ., 313 Ark. 1, 852 S.W.2d 122 (1993). What we review is whether the decision to apply the act to only one area of the state is rational. See McCutchen v. Huckabee, supra. The rational-basis standard...