Title: Jefferson County Board of Education v. City of Irondale
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 1180752
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: October 23, 2020

REL: October 23, 2020
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.
SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
OCTOBER TERM, 2020-2021
____________________
1180752
____________________
Jefferson County Board of Education
v.
City of Irondale
____________________
1180777
____________________
Martin Blankenship et al.
v.
City of Irondale
Appeals from Jefferson Circuit Court
(CV-18-904402)
1180752, 1180777
MITCHELL, Justice.
The Jefferson County Board of Education ("the Board") and
several of its employees seek to avoid the application of an 
occupational tax imposed by the City of Irondale ("City"). 
The Board and its employees argue that public-school employees
are exempt from the occupational tax because, they say, they
provide an essential government service.  But the importance
of a state employee's role, even a role as important as a
public-school employee, does not remove that employee's
obligation to pay a duly owed occupational tax.  Other
arguments made by the Board and its employees are equally
unavailing.  We therefore affirm the trial court's judgment in
favor of the City.
Facts and Procedural History
In 2018, the City enacted municipal ordinance no. 2018-10
("the ordinance"), which imposed a 1% occupational tax on "any
person ... [who] engage[s] in or follow[s] any trade,
occupation or profession ... within the city ... without
paying license fees for the privilege o[f] engaging in or
following such trade, occupation or profession."  Several
months after the ordinance went into effect, the Board, which
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provides K-12 public-education services in four schools
located in Irondale, sued the City in the Jefferson Circuit
Court seeking injunctive relief and a judgment declaring that
the City lacked authority to impose an occupational tax on the
Board's employees who provide services in Irondale.  
After the Board filed its complaint, eight Board
employees who render services in Irondale filed a motion to
intervene 
as 
additional 
plaintiffs 
("the 
intervening
employees").  The intervening employees are all teachers or
support workers employed by the Board who provide services for
students in schools located in Irondale.  The trial court
granted the motion to intervene.
The Board, the intervening employees, and the City each
filed a motion for summary judgment.  The trial court entered
a summary judgment for the City and denied the summary-
judgment motions of the other parties.  The Board and the
intervening employees then appealed.
Standard of Review
The standard of review applicable to a summary judgment
is the same as the standard the trial court applied when
granting the summary-judgment motion.  McClendon v. Mountain
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Top Indoor Flea Mkt., Inc., 601 So. 2d 957, 958 (Ala. 1992). 
That is, we must determine whether there was a genuine issue
of material fact and, if not, whether the moving party is
entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.  Id. at 958.  If
the only question presented is a question of law, such as the
interpretation or validity of an ordinance, the summary
judgment is reviewed de novo.  See Alabama Republican Party v.
McGinley, 893 So. 2d 337, 342 (Ala. 2004).  An ordinance
enacted by a local governing body "is presumed reasonable and
valid, and ... the burden is on the one challenging the
ordinance to clearly show its invalidity."  Jefferson Cnty. v.
Richards, 805 So. 2d 690, 706 (Ala. 2001).
Analysis
This Court must determine whether the ordinance may
lawfully be applied to Board employees who provide services at
schools located in Irondale.  The Board and the intervening
employees argue that the ordinance creates an unlawful burden
on or interferes with essential government services because,
they say, (1) Board employees perform essential functions for
the operation of public schools in the State; (2) Board
employees have State-agent immunity from occupational-tax
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liability to Irondale; and (3) the ordinance creates an
arbitrary pay disparity among Board employees based on the
location of where they work within Jefferson County.  These
arguments are unconvincing.
First, the Board and the intervening employees argue that
Board employees are exempt from the occupational tax because,
they say, the ordinance essentially conditions the provision
of public education on the payment of an occupational tax by
Board employees.  A similar argument was made in McPheeter v.
City of Auburn, 288 Ala. 286, 259 So. 2d 833 (1972), in which
employees of Auburn University contested a 1% 
occupational tax
imposed by the City of Auburn.  The employees of Auburn
University asserted that they were shielded from paying the
occupational tax because, they said, they performed an
essential government function of providing higher education
for the State of Alabama.  But this Court disagreed,
observing:
"Imposing payment of the tax or license fee on
the individual so engaged and employed, place[d] no
tax burden on Auburn University, the State, or the
federal government as such. The tax [was] not levied
on the employer-employee relationship, but on the
taxable event of rendering services or following a
trade, business, or profession. The ordinance
place[d] the tax on an employee's privilege of
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working in the city limits of Auburn regardless of
the person's employer or the place of residence of
the employee."
288 Ala. at 291, 259 So. 2d at 836.  Thus, this Court held
that "if there is no principle of law clothing government
employees with immunity, because they are such, we can
conceive of no reasonable cause why they should be excluded
from a tax that others bear."  288 Ala. at 290, 259 So. 2d at
835.
Although the government employees in McPheeter provided
services in an Alabama public university rather than an
Alabama public K-12 school, the holding of McPheeter
nonetheless applies here.  As in McPheeter, the occupational
tax imposed by the ordinance on Board employees providing
services in Irondale places no tax burden on the Board or the
State, nor does it interfere with the essential state function
of providing K-12 education.  The ordinance also applies to
all employees working in the city limits of Irondale,
regardless of the person's employer or place of residence. 
And the Irondale occupational tax does not create a new or
additional requirement for gaining or maintaining employment
by the Board.  Thus, the nature of the services performed by
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Board employees is not an adequate basis for excluding them
from having to pay the occupational tax.
Next, the Board and the intervening employees argue that
Board employees are shielded by State-agent immunity from
complying with the ordinance.  But State-agent immunity does
not apply here.  The ordinance does not affect any government
function of the Board, nor is payment of the occupational tax
related to a Board employee's government responsibilities. 
See Estes v. City of Gadsden, 266 Ala. 166, 172-73, 94 So. 2d
744, 750 (1957) (upholding the City of Gadsden's occupational
tax covering all types of work as valid so long as the
imposition of the tax is not capricious or discriminatory). 
And if the Board is unwilling to withhold the occupational tax
for its employees, the ordinance provides a procedure for
employees to independently comply with the requirements of 
the
ordinance.  Therefore, State-agent immunity does not shield
Board employees from the ordinance's requirements.
Finally, the Board and the intervening employees argue
that the ordinance creates an unlawful pay disparity among
Board employees.  See § 16-13-231.1(b)(2), Ala. Code 1975
("[E]ach local board of education shall adopt a salary
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schedule that shall pay each teacher employed at least 100
percent of the appropriate cell of the State Minimum Salary as
determined by the Legislature.").  The Board claims that a
difference in net wages occurs based on where Board employees
provide services within Jefferson County –– and that this
disparity violates the statutorily mandated salary schedule
and fails to ensure equitable pay for its employees.  But
nothing in the ordinance prohibits the Board from paying
employees gross wages exactly as required under the mandated
salary schedule.  Nor does § 16-13-231.1 state that Board
employees are otherwise exempt from local, state, or federal
taxes.  Thus, any difference in net wages for Board employees
does not affect the validity of the ordinance or its
application to Board employees.
Conclusion
The Board employees who provide services in Irondale are
not exempt from the City's occupational tax.  The Board and
the intervening employees' argument that essential state
employees are exempt from an occupational tax tracks the
argument made in McPheeter.  We rejected that argument in
McPheeter, and we do so again here.  The other arguments made
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by the Board and the intervening employees are likewise
without merit.1  Therefore, we hold that the ordinance applies
to Board employees.
1180752 –– AFFIRMED.
1180777 –- AFFIRMED.
Parker, C.J., concurs.  
Shaw, Sellers, and Mendheim, JJ., concur in the result. 
1The City moved to strike certain material below before
the trial court ruled on its motion for summary judgment.  In
entering a summary judgment in favor of the City, the trial
court did not rule on the City's motion to strike, other than
to say that the motion had become moot.  The intervening
employees now argue that it is unclear whether the trial court
considered the material that the City sought to strike.  We
need not consider this argument in detail.  Because the trial
court did not affirmatively strike the material, that material
is properly before us and, in any event, would not create a
genuine issue of material fact under the summary-judgment
standard, such that reversal would be required. 
9