The Supreme Court of Georgia has vacated a Troup County trial court’s dismissal of a putative class action lawsuit filed by Lonnie Hollis and Mason’s World Bar & Grill against the city of LaGrange regarding the city’s charges for utility services.
In their 2023 lawsuit, Hollis and Mason’s World Bar & Grill argued that the city imposed excessive mandatory charges for utility services, constituting a tax not authorized by the Georgia Constitution or law. The city filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and the trial court granted that motion, ruling the Georgia Constitution prohibited the trial court from regulating utilities charges.
Hollis and Mason’s World Bar & Grill appealed, contending that the trial court erred by concluding it lacked authority to review their legal claims. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case on Sept. 19, 2024.
Today’s unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren, states that Paragraph V (d) of the Georgia Constitution “sets forth the limited scope of the General Assembly’s legislative authority to regulate or fix municipal public utilities charges.”
The opinion further states that the relevant section of the law “does not mention the judicial branch at all—which is no surprise, given that this provision is housed in a section of the Georgia Constitution that pertains to the exercise of legislative power.”
“And even if it did, the plaintiff’s claims that the City’s excessive charges for utilities services constituted an ‘illegal tax’ do not require the trial court to ‘regulate or fix’ the City’s utilities charges as a matter of discretionary policymaking,” Justice Warren writes. “Rather, the claims ask the court to exercise its judicial authority to determine whether or not the charges are
in fact taxes in the first place.”
The Supreme Court has remanded the case to the trial court to address the city’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
Presiding Justice Nels S.D. Peterson has authored a concurring opinion that considers some limited circumstances under which a restriction on the legislative branch’s power may extend to the judicial branch.