Court Opinion

ID: 9775148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:45:10.131374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:21.083047
License: Public Domain

David Newbern, Justice, dissenting. The appellant, A.B. Allen, has petitioned this Court to rehear his claim that the statute by which he was removed from the Gould mayoralty and barred from holding office in that City denies him equal protection of the law. Mr. Allen claims in his petition that the majority opinion left “the question unresolved.” If the majority of this Court could satisfactorily resolve that issue, I might join in the denial of rehearing, although I dissented on other points. Because Mr. Allen is correct in his assertion that the equal protection issue was ignored in the majority opinion, the majority has a duty at least to address the issue in a supplemental opinion. On appeal, Mr. Allen asserted that Ark. Code Ann. § 14-42-108(c)(2) (1987), which requires the removal from office of any city official convicted under §§ 14-42-108(a)(l) or 14-42-108(b)(1) and renders the official ineligible to hold any city office thereafter, is unconstitutional because it denied him equal protection of the laws. Mr. Allen asserted that, under the statutes and case law governing the removal of errant county officials, a county official convicted for a similar offense would not be declared ineligible to hold county office if he or she were re-elected after the commission of the offense. Mr. Allen’s position was that § 14-42-108(c)(2), by not affording this “interceding election” defense to city officials, denied him equal protection. The majority opinion does not respond to this charge of disparate treatment of city officials and county officials. The majority correctly identifies the standard by which we review equal protection claims, and it correctly states that the legislature may provide for the removal and ineligibility of any public official convicted of certain offenses, but it does not explain how the enforcement of a provision of removal and ineligibility against city officials, but not county officials, comports with equal protection guarantees. The error in assuming that such an explanation is sufficient results from focusing solely on city officials rather than comparing them with the other class, i.e., county officials. The best the majority opinion can offer is a singularly unsupported, and in my view insupportable, conclusion that the granting to city officials of “extraordinary . . . power” requires an extraordinary remedy. Is that a suggestion in the Court’s opinion that the authority to run a waterworks confers a greater trust upon a city official than, for example, the authority given to county officials to run a road-building program? If so, I know of no rational basis or authority for it. This Court should identify the rational basis, if any, for treating one class of public officials differently from another, and it has not done so. I respectfully dissent from the denial of the petition for rehearing.