Court Opinion

ID: 9671511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:37:56.758779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:10.376105
License: Public Domain

PALMORE, Judge
(dissenting).
If the legislature may validly classify each of 200 or so different school districts solely on the fortuitous basis of what its individual tax assessment may have been at a given .time prior to Russman v. Luckett, Ky., 391 S.W.2d 694 (1965), as today held in Miller v. Nunnelley, Ky., 468 S.W.2d 298 (1971),1 I see no constitutional reason why it may not provide for Jefferson County, upon the basis of its density of population, a special method of changing school district boundaries.
If City of Louisville v. Commonwealth, 134 Ky. 488, 121 S.W. 411 (1909), in which a statute pertaining to school taxes in Louisville alone was held not to be special legislation, is still good law it seems to me that the same reasoning applies to legislation dealing with school district boundaries. I doubt the wisdom of this statute, and I am not free of doubt on the constitutional point, but it is not a court’s province to pass on the wisdom of a legislative act, and mere doubt as to its constitutionality must be resolved in favor of the legislature.
I therefore join with Judges STEIN-FELD and NEIKIRK in dissenting.

. That such a classification exists with regard to the maximum tax rates permitted the various school districts is not made less so by the fact that an escape hatch is available in the form of a public vote.