Opinion ID: 2286987
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The City has designated municipal judges as employees

Text: While the City argues that municipal judges are not employees, evidence in this case suggests that these judges are treated as City employees. Here, as opposed to the insurance salesman in Sloan, municipal judges are at no point expressly designated to be independent contractors. To the contrary, they are repeatedly referred to as an employee on various forms they are required to fill out and sign upon being hired. These employment forms require both the judges' signatures as employees and their employee identification number, and several of these forms must then be sent to the City's human resources department to be placed in the judges' personnel files. The following examples highlight the various ways in which the City assigns an employee status to its municipal judges: &lhblk; On one form in particular, each judge must sign and state: As an active employee of the City of Kansas City, Missouri, I hereby designate the following as my pension beneficiaries. &lhblk; Another form explains that the 10-day enrollment period for insurance starts to run the day after the municipal judge's first day of employment with the City. &lhblk; Kansas City municipal judges are eligible for life insurance under a group policy with the City and, as such, they are deemed to meet both the member and active work requirements of the policy, defined as [a]n active employee of the employer regularly working at least 40 hours each week who perform[s] the material duties of [one's] own occupation at [one's] employer's usual place of business. &lhblk; The City pays its municipal judges a fixed salary, which has no relation to the number of cases tried before the judge, guilty verdicts reached, or fines imposed or collected by the judge. CHARTER OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI § 305; § 479.020.6 RSMo Supp.2009. &lhblk; The City requires that its full-time municipal judges perform their services exclusively for the City. CHARTER OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI § 307 (prohibiting municipal judges from engag[ing] in the private practice of law). &lhblk; The City treats its municipal judges as employees for federal and state tax withholding purposes. &lhblk; The City also provides its judges with the work space, staff, and office equipment necessary for them to perform their duties. All of these factors run counter to any assertion that the judges are independent contractors and further emphasize why the common law analysis applied in independent contractor cases simply does not fit. Despite the City's lack of control of judicial decision-making, these facts, taken as a whole, support a legal determination that municipal judges are employees of the City.