Case Title: JEFFERSON COUNTY, BD. OF HEALTH v. City of Bessemer

Citation: 301 So. 2d 551

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1974-10-03T00:00:00Z

Document:
301 So. 2d 551 (1974)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Alabama, BOARD OF HEALTH and Dr. George Hardy, as Health Officer of Jefferson County
v.
CITY OF BESSEMER, a municipal corp., etc.
SC 768.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
October 3, 1974.
*552 Sadler, Sadler, Sullivan & Sharp, Birmingham, Stone, Patton & Kierce, Bessemer, William A. Thompson, Birmingham, for appellants.
J. Howard McEniry, Jr., Bessemer, for City of Bessemer.
James H. Weaver, Jr., Birmingham, for City of Hueytown.
David H. Hood, Jr., Bessemer, for City of Roosevelt City.
Thomas R. Elliott, Jr., Birmingham, for City of Midfield.
Charles L. Kerr, Leeds, for City of Leeds.
J. Clewis Trucks, Fairfield, for City of Fairfield.
Powell Lipscomb, Bessemer, for City of Brownsville.
J. Thomas King, Birmingham, for City of Adamsville.
Robert E. Paden, Bessemer, for City of Lipscomb.
Thomas N. Crawford Jr., Birmingham, for City of Pleasant Grove.
James M. Tingle, Birmingham, for Cities of Gardendale and Tarrant City.
Robert S. Vance, Birmingham, for City of Vestavia Hills.
JONES, Justice.
This appeal is from a final decree of the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Bessemer Division, declaring Act No. 546, Acts of Alabama 1973, unconstitutional. The Bill for Declaratory Judgment was filed by five Jefferson County municipalities (later joined by the intervention of twenty-two others) against the Jefferson County Board of Health, Dr. George Hardy, as Health Officer of Jefferson County, and J. D. Smith, as Tax Collector of Jefferson (whose answer was by way of interpleader).
This case is to be decided upon a determination of three basic issues which may be simply stated as follows:
Did Act No. 546:
Under our rules of review, if the lower Court's declaration of unconstitutionality of Act No. 546 on any one or more of the foregoing grounds is supported by competent evidence and is in accordance with applicable legal principles, this cause is due to be affirmed; otherwise, it is due to be reversed. Since we find, after a careful review thereof, that the lower Court's holding as to ground No. 1local versus *553 general actis correct, we confine our consideration to the issue of the double classification aspect of the Act and affirm.
While the record before us is voluminous, we feel that a summary of the defendants' responses to plaintiffs' request for admission of facts will suffice to set the factual context in which this controversy arose.
1. Act No. 546 was not published as if it were a local act;
Act No. 546 reads:
"Be It Enacted by the Legislature of Alabama:
"Section 6. [Severability clause.]
"Section 7. [Repealer clause.]
"Approved August 27, 1973.
"Time: 5:15 P.M."
As a preface to our consideration of the constitutional issues, we point out that this Court is fully cognizant of, and in complete agreement with, the numerous longstanding and well-reasoned opinions dealing with the importance of upholding legislative acts as constitutional whenever possible. These propositions may be summarized as follows:
These presumptions favoring validity, being fully indulged, must nonetheless give way where the legislative flaws make it judicially impossible for the act to conform to the requirements of our most revered polestar: constitutionality. See Jefferson County v. Busby, 226 Ala. 293, 148 So. 411 (1933); Ward v. State ex rel. Lea, 224 Ala. 242, 139 So. 416 (1932); Henry, County Treasurer v. Wilson, 224 Ala. 261, 139 So. 259 (1931).
The first issue with which we are confronted is whether the Act before us can be categorized as one of general or local application, as defined in § 110, Article 4, Constitution of Alabama 1901.
On an initial reading, the distinction between these two types of legislation seems quite lucid. As we shall presently see, however, any presupposed degree of clarity becomes only superficial in the light of our case law, which is perplexing at times in its ratio decidendi. Nevertheless, this distinction is a critical one since a local law can only become valid through compliance with § 106 of the State Constitution, which prescribes that notice of such law must be published in the county affected by its passage.
Otherwise stated, should it be determined that the Act before us is in actuality a local law passed under the guise of a general law, and thus would require publication to initially ensure its contitutionality, then the entire Act must be struck down as unconstitutional since here there was no publication.
Appellants, in support of the Act's constitutionality, maintain that Act No. 546 purports to be, and is, what has come to be known as a general act of local application. With this contention we cannot agree.
By § 1 of the Act, it is made applicable only in counties having a population of more than 500,000 § 3 contains additional classifications which render its impact different with respect to municipalities having a population of more than 5,000 as compared to municipalities having a population of 5,000 or less.
The record amply demonstrates that Act No. 546 was a measure intended to meet the specific needs of the Jefferson County Board of Health. Like most comparable legislation, it wound its way through the legislative process as a local act, being presented to the Jefferson County legislative delegation as a matter of its local concern. As such, it would appear to run afoul of both the letter and the spirit of the standard established by this Court in State ex rel. Covington v. Thompson, 142 Ala. 98, 38 So. 679 (1904): "... a law which is general in its terms, and is in good faith so framed that all parts of the state may come within the circle of its operation, is a general law." Yet its contravention of the subsequent and now widely accepted test established in Reynolds v. Collier, 204 Ala. 38, 39, 85 So. 465, 467 (1920), is not nearly so clear, that test being:
There, and in subsequent cases, this Court recognized a larger field of operation for the so-called "general act of local application" in heavily populated urban areas. The trend has been to accept the open-ended population classification applicable to Jefferson County only. Even here, however, our holdings do not present an altogether clear standard for determining whether a logical relationship exists between the classification employed and the purposes of the act. On this point, the line of demarcation between our recent decisions in Masters et al. v. Pruce et al., 290 Ala. 56, 274 So. 2d 33 (1973), on the one hand, and Duncan v. Meeks, 281 Ala. 452, 204 So. 2d 483 (1967), or McDowell et al. v. Columbia Pictures Corporation et al., 281 Ala. 438, 203 So. 2d 454 (1967), on the other, is neither black nor white, but essentially *556 gray. Our decisions, therefore, require a case by case determination.
As we have previously indicated, such determination is here pretermitted, however, because of our treatment of the aspect of double classification of Act 546. When an act contains a scheme of double classification which eliminates its prospective application or which destroys the reasonable relationship with its subject matter, it cannot be considered as a general act. Opinion of the Justices, 277 Ala. 630, 173 So. 2d 793 (1965). See also, Opinion of the Justices, 275 Ala. 465, 156 So. 2d 151 (1963).
The case of State ex rel. Saltsman v. Weakley, et al., 153 Ala. 648, 45 So. 175 (1907) furnishes an excellent explanation of double classification, and its authority is compelling here both because of its clear analysis of the problem and the striking similarity that its fact situation bears to the one at hand.
In Saltsman, an act was passed which provided for the establishment of police commissions in cities of 35,000 or more in counties of 125,000 or more, a classification in which only Jefferson County and the City of Birmingham could fit. The act was challenged as to its constitutionality on the grounds that it was actually a local law guised as a general one for which the required notice was not published. The Court, agreeing with this contention and referring to such as a "double classification", said at 153 Ala. 653, 45 So. 176:
The similarity between the above and the present situation is readily apparent. The object of Act 546 is to assess the cities within Jefferson County, and pertains in no way to such regulations and assessments in other counties around the state. For where, as here, a classification within a classification has the effect of simply designating, rather than classifying, cities within Jefferson County and thereby governing the Act's application to such cities, the challenged Act comes within the influence of the following rule as stated in the Opinion of the Justices, supra, 277 Ala. at p. 633, 173 So.2d at p. 796 (1965).
It follows that Act 546 was a local act and could not validly have been enacted without compliance with the advertising requirements included in § 106. That section sounds the death knell for any such *557 legislation by providing in specific and rather extraordinary language:
It follows from our conclusion on this point that the double classification was constitutionally impermissible.
Affirmed.
HEFLIN, C. J., and MERRILL, COLEMAN, HARWOOD, BLOODWORTH, McCALL and FAULKNER, JJ., concur.
MADDOX, J., concurs in result.