Richards v. Jefferson County, 517 U.S. 793, 3 (1996)

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Cite as: 517 U. S. 793 (1996)

Opinion of the Court

Ordinance 1120, which had been adopted in 1987. That action was dismissed as barred by the Tax Injunction Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1341.1 They then commenced this action in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County.

Petitioners represent a class of all nonfederal employees subject to the county's tax.2 Petitioners alleged that the tax, which contains a lengthy list of exemptions, violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and similar provisions of the Alabama Constitution. Because $10 million of the annual proceeds from the county tax have been pledged to the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center for a period of 20 years, the court permitted the center to intervene and support Jefferson County's defense of its tax.

The county moved for summary judgment on the ground that petitioners' claims were barred by a prior adjudication of the tax in an earlier action brought by the acting director of finance for the city of Birmingham and the city itself. That earlier action had been consolidated for trial with a separate suit brought by three county taxpayers, and the Supreme Court of Alabama upheld the tax in the resulting appeal. See Bedingfield v. Jefferson County, 527 So. 2d 1270 (1988). After examining the course of this prior litigation, the trial court granted the county's motion for summary judgment as to the state constitutional claims, but refused to do so as to the federal claims because they had not been decided by either the trial court or the Alabama Supreme Court in Bedingfield.

On appeal, the county argued that the federal claims as well as the state claims were barred by the adjudication in

1 Richards v. Jefferson County, 789 F. Supp. 369 (ND Ala.), affirmance order, 983 F. 2d 237 (CA11 1992).

2 They were joined in the action by George Dykes and Joan Dykes, employees of the Federal Government who also work in the county. The Dykes represent a separate class of federal employees whose claims are not before us.

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