Court Opinion

ID: 9560562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:51:23.336488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:59.160249
License: Public Domain

Gunter, Justice,
dissenting. This appeal has presented the question of whether an application for a permit to sell beer at retail in Atlanta may be arbitrarily denied by the City’s governing authority.
The applicant’s application was first summarily denied by the governing authority; a judge of Fulton Superior Court held such denial to be legally improper and directed that the governing authority duly consider the application; an evidentiary hearing was then conducted before the govern*505ing authority, and the application was again denied; another judge of Fulton Superior Court determined that the second denial was legally improper after the evidentiary hearing, and he enjoined the governing authority from refusing to issue the permit to the applicant; the governing authority has now appealed, seeking reversal of the trial court’s injunctive order.
A majority of the court here today reverses the trial court, holding that in the area of alcoholic beverages the entitlement to a retail sales permit is only a "privilege” which can be arbitrarily granted or denied by a local governing authority. I disagree with the majority and would hold that the arbitrary denial of such a retail permit by a local governing authority offends the "equal protection” provisions of the Georgia Constitution and the Federal Constitution.
Since Magna Carta our system has maintained that all citizens must receive fair and equal treatment at the hand of government; to bolster this concept of equal treatment of citizens at the hand of government, "equal protection” provisions have been written into our State and Federal Constitutions; our Georgia Constitution says that one of the paramount duties of government is the protection to a person and his property and that such protection shall be impartial and complete. See Code Ann. § 2-102. Our Georgia Constitution also provides that it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to enact such laws as will protect citizens in the full enjoyment of the rights, privileges and immunities due to such citizenship. See Code Ann. § 2-125. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution provides that no State shall make or enforce, any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
It is therefore quite plain to me that the General Assembly of Georgia cannot enact a valid statute which says that a retail beer permit can be arbitrarily denied to a citizen of Georgia by a local governing authority, and that is exactly *506what the General Assembly of Georgia attempted to do in 1935 in §§ 1 and 15A when it enacted the Malt Beverages Act. (Ga. L. 1935, p. 73.)
The authority contained in that Act for a municipal government to arbitrarily deny a retail beer permit to a citizen is a legislative authorization that is in direct conflict with the "equal protection” provisions of the Georgia and Federal Constitutions. The Georgia Constitution also provides that legislative acts in violation of the Georgia Constitution or the Constitution of the United States are void, and the judiciary shall so declare them. See Code Ann. § 2-402. I would therefore declare that the attempt by the General Assembly of Georgia in the 1935 Malt Beverages Act to confer arbitrary power upon a municipal government to grant or deny retail beer permits to citizens is unconstitutional and void.
The Supreme Court of the United States has put at rest any distinction heretofore made between "privileges” and "rights” in the constitutional context. In the case of Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254, 262 (90 SC 1011, 25 LE2d 287), it said that "the constitutional challenge can not be answered by an argument that public assistance benefits are a 'privilege’ and not a 'right,”’ (citing Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618; and citing with approval the case of Hornsby v. Allen, 326 F2d 605).
The retail sale of beer in 1972 is nothing more than a regulated business with numerous retail outlets; its sale is regulated but little more than other normal general merchandise; and the earlier decisions of this court upholding the power of a municipality to arbitrarily deny a permit to a qualified citizen are, in my opinion, relics of the early post-prohibition era; and in the light of the "equal protection” mandates of the Georgia and Federal Constitutions, those decisions should now be given a peaceful repose.
The doctrine of "equal protection” for citizens under the law was invoked and reduced to writing in Constitutions to prevent governmental bodies from taking arbitrary action toward their citizens or groups or classes of their citizens. *507For this doctrine to have any practical meaning in the affairs of everyday life, the legislative grant of power to a municipal government which enables the latter to arbitrarily deny a beer permit to one of its citizens can not be constitutionally upheld.
It follows that I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.
I respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Justice Hawes joins me in this dissent.