Court Opinion

ID: 9793686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:51:31.710706+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:39.741157
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the court’s pronouncement that, during the pendency of the appellants’ 1981 protest proceedings, the Legislature may not authorize, without offending Art. V, § 54, Okl. Const., a diversion of money from the § 2061 account kept by the Insurance Commissioner for payment of tax refunds unless its action be in conformity to the terms of that section’s version in force at the time the protest proceedings were triggered.
I write separately to articulate my view that a contrary holding today clearly would violate Art. V, § 46, Okl. Const. As refund claimants in pending judicial tax protest proceedings appellants cannot be relegated to a less efficacious remedy for enforcing a judgment for tax refund against the State than that which is affordable by law to successful protesters seeking satisfaction of adjudicated refund claims from § 206 accounts of other agencies. By the clear command of Art. V, § 462 all taxpayers must be provided with the same method for collecting their § 206 refund claims. For that purpose all § 206 claimants must be treated alike. They comprise a single, indivisible class which may not be dicho-tomized into distinct subclasses. Non-uniform regulation of procedure for enforcement of judgments is plainly, absolutely and unequivocally interdicted by the command of our fundamental law.3

. 62 O.S.1981 § 206.

. The terms of Art. V, § 46, Okl. Const., provide in pertinent part:
“The Legislature shall not ... pass any local or special law authorizing;.
... changing the methods for ... the enforcement of judgments....” [Emphasis added.]

.See, Maule v. Independent School Dist. No. 9, Okl., 714 P.2d 198, 204 [1986] and Barrett v. Board of Com’rs of Tulsa County, 185 Okl. 111, 90 P.2d 442, 446-447 [1939].