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Sunday, January 02, 2005

Indiana Decisions - More on Fort Wayne Airport case

The Supreme Court oral argument in SMDfund, Inc., et al v. Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Auth., et al took place December 20, 2004. The ILB entry from that date included this information:

A Dec. 1, 2004 IBL entry, titled "Case on Fort Wayne Airport Board Could Affect Hundreds of Laws," is available here. Earlier ILB reports on the Supreme Court's grant of emergency transfer in this important case, plus analysis and a link to the initial, 6/28/04 decision of the Allen Circuit Court, are available here: 9/22/04 and 9/21/04 [See particularly my thoughts at the end of the 9/21/04 entry].
Why am I talking abut this now? Because I just this morning ran across a good report on the Dec. 20th oral arguments, by Jennifer Whitson of the Evanville Courier&Press (whose website continues to confound me). Dated 12/21/04, the headline is "High court case may clarify what special legislation is all about." Some quotes:
The Indiana Constitution requires that all laws be general and applied equally. But throughout the years, lawmakers often have passed laws to aid a specific area. Whether this so-called special legislation, set up for specific areas, is constitutional has been a point of contention. To avoid the debate, lawmakers for years wrote laws that used population brackets and descriptions, instead of city names, to define which cities would be affected.

But in a split decision the Indiana Supreme Court handed down in January 2003 [City of South Bend v. Kimsey, et.al.], the majority said the legislative maneuver wasn't enough to keep some laws from being special legislation. The court further found that special legislation would be allowed in some circumstances but only when a city or county could show that its unique need necessitated a law.

Since then it's been somewhat unclear how to proceed and Monday's oral arguments may be the first step toward clarifying the ground rules for lawmakers.

In his questioning, Justice Theodore R. Boehm's questions seemed to offer two other alternatives - deciding outright whether the Fort Wayne case was permissible special legislation or sending the case back to the trial court to decide that issue.

Recall that the author of the majority opinion in City of South Bend v. Kimsey, et.al. (Ind.S.Ct. 1/15/03) was Justice Boehm.

Over the holidays I took the opportunity to watch the 12/20/04 oral argument in SMDfund, Inc., et al v. Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Auth., et al, via the Indiana Supreme Court's Oral Arguments Online. I highly recommend it.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 2, 2005 10:10 AM
Posted to Ind. Sup.Ct. Decisions