Opinion ID: 853063
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Judicial Review of Special Legislation Today

Text: It is now clear that although the reasonableness of a population classification remains relevant under Article I, neither the per se nor reasonableness view of population categories is determinative of constitutionality under Article IV. Rather, the text of Article IV, Section 23 is controlling here. The terms general law and special law have widely understood meanings. A statute is general if it applies to all persons or places of a specified class throughout the state. Black's Law Dictionary 890 (7th ed. 1999). A statute is special if it pertains to and affects a particular case, person, place, or thing, as opposed to the general public. Id. Most recently, in Williams v. State, 724 N.E.2d 1070, 1085 (Ind.2000), this Court reiterated the view that the text of Article IV, Section 23 requires a two-step test that addresses concerns unique to that section: In analyzing a law under [Article IV,] Section 23, we must first determine whether the law is general or special. If the law is general, we must then determine whether it is applied generally throughout the State. If it is special, we must decide whether it is constitutionally permissible. Williams followed Ind. Gaming Comm'n v. Moseley, 643 N.E.2d 296, 299-301 (Ind.1994), and State v. Hoovler, 668 N.E.2d 1229 (Ind.1996), on this point. [7] Williams found that the specific needs of Lake Countya large county with a larger case docketsupported special legislation providing for the appointment of magistrates only in Lake County courts. Moseley upheld a statute that applied only to counties eligible to vote to adopt riverboat gambling, and provided for city-by-city voting in counties bordering Lake Michigan with more than 400,000 people, i.e., in Lake County, while other counties eligible to adopt dockside gambling did so on a countywide basis. 643 N.E.2d at 301. This Court found this different treatment for Lake County to be justified: In Lake County, the whole of the waterfront is covered by substantial cities, whose residents have the greatest interest in how the shore is used. In all other counties, however, the shore contains both incorporated and unincorporated territory. It thus seems sensible to stage a vote of all persons in the county. Id. In Hoovler, this Court followed Moseley and pierced the claim that a population criteria based statute was general legislation, but again nevertheless found the statute valid. Hoovler dealt with the legislature's attempt to help Tippecanoe County handle the financial burden of cleanup costs at a Superfund landfill site. 668 N.E.2d at 1234. The statute permitted the county council of a qualifying county to impose a higher county income tax rate than was permitted in other counties in the state. Only Tippecanoe County qualified under the legislation, but the statute did not identify Tippecanoe County by name. Rather, it applied only to counties having a population of more than one hundred twenty-nine thousand (129,000) but less than one hundred thirty-thousand six hundred (130,600). Id. at 1231. Rather than validating this legislation on the ground that population categories per se create general statutes, this Court examined the circumstances surrounding [the Act], including language in the Act itself. Id. at 1234. The Court held that because the legislature intended the statute in that case to apply exclusively to Tippecanoe County, the statute was indeed special legislation governed by Article IV. Id. at 1235. In reaching this conclusion, the Court pointed to the narrow population range in the statute, the fact that Tippecanoe County was the only Indiana county with a Superfund site for which local government entities were designated Potentially Responsible Parties by the EPA, and the statute's intent to provide relief to Tippecanoe County from its potential Superfund liability, reflected in its requirement that the county council find that money is needed to fund substance removal and remedial action. Id. at 1234-35. All of these factors were signs that the legislature had indeed enacted a special law authorizing Tippecanoe County to enact and administer a special tax rate increase not available to any other county. Id. at 1235.
We agree with the view that a statute with a population category is a special law if it is designed to operate upon or benefit only particular municipalities and thus is essentially no different than if the statute had identified the particular municipalities by name. City of Miami v. McGrath, 824 So.2d 143, 148 (Fla.2002). Moseley, Hoovler, and Williams clearly implied that those pieces of legislation would have been permissible under Article IV if they had identified the affected counties by name. Indeed, Article IV issues will be simplified if that is done, accompanied by legislative findings as to the facts justifying the legislation's limited territorial application. Legislation applying by its terms to areas with identified characteristics would be equally permissible under Article IV. The statute in Hoovler defined the class of counties to which it applied in terms of population. The opinion justified the classification in terms of the presence vel non of a county's exposure to Superfund liability. Moseley, on the other hand, addressed a statute whose defining characteristics were in part those justifying the classification (bodies of water) and in part population parameters that only Lake County met. Thus its defining characteristics were only partially those that justified the classification, and, like Hoovler, judicial notice of the geography and municipalities in Lake County was necessary to justify the classification. Finally, in Williams, Lake County was identified by name, and its characteristics justifying the legislation were judicially noticed. In some other legislation that has been challenged under Article IV, the characteristics defining the applicable counties are also those that justify the legislation. Thus, in Dortch, a city of the first class in a county was properly thought to justify countywide government. This form of classification is more elegant because it avoids the messiness created by potential entrants (new Superfund sites) or exits (park districts in counties growing out of population parameters) over time. Despite these potential issues, Hoovler made clear that a defining characteristic (a population category) that is theoretically unrelated to the justifying characteristic (Superfund liability) is nevertheless permissible if, under the facts as they are at the time of passage, only justified areas are defined into the class. This is defensible because the perceived evils of special legislation in the absence of special circumstances are largely avoided if the affected area is indeed the only part of the state where the statute has practical effect. In sum, if there are characteristics of the locality that distinguish it for purposes of the legislation, and the legislation identifies the locality, it is special legislation. The identification of the locality may be by name (Tippecanoe County), by the characteristic that justifies special legislation (a unique Superfund liability), or otherwise (population parameters that include only the locality).
Moseley, Williams, and Hoovler, were not revolutionary in viewing the threshold issue as identifying a law as special or general. Gentile v. State, 29 Ind. 409 (1868), which was decided seventeen years after Article IV was adopted, included some useful insight on that point: [Article IV, Section 23] was intended to prohibit the passage of any law applicable only to one or more counties, or other territorial subdivisions of the State, where a general law on the same subject could be made which would properly apply to the entire state.... It is clearly implied by that section, and we know it to be true in fact, that in many cases local laws are necessary, because general ones cannot, properly and justly, be made applicable. There are cases where a law would be both proper and necessary in a given locality or part of the state, where its subject is local, or where, from local facts, it is rendered necessary; but which, if made general, would either be inoperative in portions of the state, or from its inapplicability to such portions, would be injurious and unjust. Id. at 411-12. As Gentile reveals, legislation must be classified as general or special before the focus turns to whether a general law can apply, i.e., whether there are inherent characteristics of the affected locale that justify local legislation. Thus, the reasonableness of a classification does not answer whether the law is general or special in the first place. Nor does it provide a complete answer to the question whether a general law can be made applicable, although one branch of that inquiry may resemble an Article I analysis. A statute general in form can be made applicable only if it does not violate Article I, Section 23. Thus, if population classifications are arbitrary or unrelated to the characteristics that define the class, a statute general in form is nevertheless unconstitutional as a violation of Article I. This can be true under Collins either because there is no defining characteristic of the classified area, or there is such a characteristic but it is shared with areas not in the class. A second consideration in whether a general law can be made applicable is whether in fact it is meaningful in a variety of places or whether relevant traits of the affected area are distinctive such that the law's application elsewhere has no effect. This second consideration turns on whether local facts exist, not on whether those facts are reasonably related to the particular legislation that is actually imposed, a question that is left to Article I. Article IV issues, though distinct from Article I considerations, remain closely related to them. If special legislation passes the first test of Collins, i.e., the legislation is reasonably related to inherent characteristics of the affected locale, and it also passes the second by applying wherever the justifying characteristics are found, then the statute necessarily passes Article IV muster because the presence of those inherent characteristics means a general law cannot be made applicable. Otherwise stated, if the conditions the law addresses are found in at least a variety of places throughout the state, a general law can be made applicable and is required by Article IV, and special legislation is not permitted. Applying these principles, assuming the facts of the affected area are distinct, Long, Dortch, and other cases relying on the proposition that Article IV, Section 23 challenges are resolved by addressing the reasonableness of the classification embodied in the statute are nevertheless correct in their ultimate result.