Opinion ID: 894694
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Voluntariness of the Student Services Fee

Text: Where the facts are undisputed, determination of whether a payment is voluntary or involuntary is a question of law. See Windham v. Alexander, Weston & Poehner, P.C., 887 S.W.2d 182, 185 (Tex. App.-Texarkana 1994, writ denied); Matthews v. Matthews, 725 S.W.2d 275, 278 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1986, writ ref'd n.r.e.); accord Merrill v. Gordon, 15 Ariz. 521, 140 P. 496, 501 (1914) (Whether a payment was made voluntarily or not is a question of law, where the facts are undisputed.); Eslow v. Albion, 153 Mich. 720, 117 N.W. 328 (1908) (The question as to whether the [license] payments were voluntarily made where the facts are undisputed is one of law.). The Class contends that attending school is the business of students. It argues that the District's increase in a mandatory student services fee meets the business compulsion exception to the voluntary payment rule, as a matter of law, because students who refused to pay the fees risked complete inability to take classes and receive credit therefor in order to obtain a degree. Because the Class asserted that duress was shown as a matter of law by the imposition of the mandatory fees, it contends that it was not necessary to submit evidence of any coercive impact of the fee increase. The District contends that the Class is not entitled to a refund of the fees because the fees were voluntary payments as a matter of law and because the Class introduced no evidence of duress. Both sides acknowledge that there are no disputed issues of material fact. Therefore, we decide this issue as a matter of law. See Metro. Life Ins. Co. v. Mann, 140 Tex. 450, 168 S.W.2d 212, 213 (1943). The undisputed facts are as follows: The student services fee was increased from a flat fee of $10 per semester to a sliding scale fee of $2 per semester credit hour, with a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $40. [8] The amount of the fee increase is dependent on the number of credit hours taken by the student. Depending on the student's choices, there may be no increase at all or an increase of up to $30. The students also had the option, if they believed that they could not afford the fee, to seek an exemption from all or part of the fee from the District. See TEX. EDUC. CODE § 54.503(e) (allowing the District to waive all or part of any compulsory fee for any student facing undue financial hardship). The dissent points out that the statute limits actual waivers to ten percent of the student body and thus ninety percent of the quarter of a million members of the class could not benefit from the waiver. The dissent makes an argument that the Class did not. However, if there were evidence that students sought waivers and were denied them, or that the students made any protest at all at the time of payment, the Court's analysis might be different. Perhaps only ten percent of the students could actually be awarded a waiver, but fully one hundred percent could have requested it. The fact that no student sought a waiver supports the conclusion that the fees were voluntarily paid. The Class asserts that the District's student services fees put students at risk of not being able to take any junior college classes and receive credit. The evidence establishes the contrary. The students had options by which they could avoid paying the increased fee or at least lower the fee and still take college classes. As discussed, students who faced financial hardship could seek an exemption from all or part of the fee. See TEX. EDUC. CODE § 54.503(e). Other students, if facing financial hardship, would incur no increase in fees if they enrolled in five credit hours or less. Students could also limit the financial burden of the student services fee by taking fewer than twenty credits. For example, a student taking seven credit hours for the semester would pay $4 in additional student services fees and one taking ten credits would pay $10 more in addition to the tuition. The Class members by their choices determined the amount of the fee charged and exercised the option of attending a public junior college in the District. Thus, the student taking seven hours would avoid the alleged duress of a $4 increased fee payment by taking five credit hours. The increase in the student services fee may create financial incentives, but such financial incentives or disincentives do not transform a choice into coercion. Payment of the increased fee was not mandatory for any member of the Class; it was contingent on enrollment in a junior college in the Dallas County Community College District and selection of a certain number of credit hours for the semester. In light of the choices the students retained and their right to request a waiver of the fees or otherwise protest the imposition of the fee, any coercion that existed was not actual and imminent and did not constitute duress as a matter of law. [9] This decision is consistent with our jurisprudence for more than a century. Although the dissent asserts that, in modern times, we have always require[d] public agencies to reimburse taxes and fees that were determined later to be void, this statement is simply not true. See Carrollton-Farmers Branch Ind. Sch. Dist. v. Edgewood Ind. Sch. Dist. (Edgewood III), 826 S.W.2d 489, 515-21, 538 (Tex.1992) (rejecting argument by J. Doggett, dissenting, that prior taxes paid should be returned) [10] ; Corsicana Cotton Mills v. Sheppard, 123 Tex. 352, 71 S.W.2d 247, 249 (1934); City of Houston v. Feizer, 76 Tex. 365, 13 S.W. 266, 267-68 (1890); Galveston City Co. v. City of Galveston, 56 Tex. 486, 491, 494-495 (1882). This Court has also held that voluntary payment of void taxes and fees is not recoverable. Corsicana Cotton Mills, 71 S.W.2d at 249 (Under the facts detailed above this corporation was a volunteer in paying the taxes here involved. It therefore had no legal claim against the state for their repayment at the time this appropriation was made.); Feizer, 13 S.W. at 268 (the evidence does not show an involuntary payment). Rather than challenge the proposition that our precedents refute the contention that public agencies are always required to reimburse payment of void fees, the dissent complains that one of the precedents is old, two others involve voluntary payments and the most recent one, Edgewood III, was based on a different ground. To be sure, we do not base the inability to recoup the payments in this case on any philosophical view of the government's entitlement to the funds, but we adhere to longstanding legal precedent and predictability in the law, and acknowledge practical considerations of the public fisc. These holdings recognize the necessity for a governmental authority to be able to rely on a predictable income stream  the very interest that the voluntary payment rule seeks to protect. [11] The dissent also suggests that today's decision is inconsistent with recent case law and cites several cases in which this Court ordered that government fees be reimbursed. See, e.g., Lubbock County, Tex. v. Trammel's Lubbock Bail Bonds, 80 S.W.3d 580, 585-86 (Tex.2002); Camacho v. Samaniego, 831 S.W.2d 804, 815 (Tex. 1992). The dissent itself refutes the force of these opinions by noting that these cases all have one thing in common  there is no mention in any of them of voluntary payment as a defense. The parties did not raise the issue of voluntary payment in those cases, and the Court did not address it. See Exito Elecs. Co. v. Trejo, 142 S.W.3d 302, 304 n. 1 (Tex.2004) (noting that the Court does not consider issues not raised by the parties). Finally, the dissent asserts that it is hard to see why students should have less protection than bail bondsmen. This statement obfuscates rather than addresses the issue. The students in this case have the same protections under the laws as others who establish duress. In the cases cited by the dissent, it was clear that the harm suffered by the bail bond agents or other professionals was actual and imminent  they would lose their ability to earn a living or do business. In this case, the harm is far more speculative. While the college was authorized to prevent enrollment or to deny credit, it is undisputed that there is no evidence that the college denied either benefit to any student or that it would actually have done so. Furthermore, as noted above, the students had the option to avoid the fee by adjusting their course loads, seeking a waiver or injunction to halt collection of the fees, or seeking other educational opportunities. No member of the class pursued any of these options. We conclude that the Class did not establish duress as a matter of law, and that the District established that the student services fee payments were voluntary payments as a matter of law.