Jason Richards, et al. v. Jefferson County, Alabama, et al. (517 U.S. 793)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 10, 1996 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 517 U.S. 793 · 116 S. Ct. 1761
- Decided
- June 10, 1996
- Term
- October Term 1995
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. In Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U. S. 32, 37 (1940), we held that it would violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to bind litigants to a judgment rendered in an earlier litigation to which they were not parties and in which they were not adequately represented. The decision of the Supreme Court of Alabama that we review today presents us with the same basic question in a somewhat different context. I Jason Richards and Fannie Hill (petitioners) are privately employed in Jefferson County, Alabama. In 1991 they filed a complaint in the Federal District Court challenging the validity of the occupation tax imposed by Jefferson County Ordinance 1120, which had been adopted in 1987. That action was dismissed as barred by the Tax Injunction Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1341. 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. 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…
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