HOMEWOOD ASSOCIATES INC. v. UNIFIED GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY

Homewood Village and eight other property owners in Athens-Clarke County argued that the county's stormwater utility charge, which funds flood control and pollution management, is really an unconstitutional tax that isn't applied uniformly, as Georgia's Constitution requires. This is the second time Homewood Village has made this argument; the Supreme Court of Georgia already ruled in a 2013 case, Homewood I, that the exact same charge is a fee, not a tax. The property owners also argued the charge amounts to an illegal taking of property without compensation, and that the trial judge wrongly resolved factual disputes in the county's favor when granting it summary judgment. The court declined to revisit its 2013 ruling, holding that the legal and factual circumstances are unchanged and that longstanding respect for prior decisions favored leaving Homewood I in place. It rejected the takings claim because the charge provides a special benefit tied to its cost, and found no error in how the trial court handled the evidence. The county's grant of summary judgment was affirmed.

The court held that Athens-Clarke County's stormwater utility charge remains a fee, not a tax, because its 2013 Homewood I decision already resolved that question for this same ordinance and stare decisis (respect for prior rulings) required following it; the charge therefore is not subject to the taxation uniformity provision and does not violate the Takings Clauses.

Property owners across Athens-Clarke County, and any Georgia local government that funds stormwater programs through similar utility charges, can continue relying on this fee structure without fear it will be struck down as an unconstitutional tax, at least under this specific ordinance.

Affirmed

1. The court explained that under stare decisis, the strong default rule that courts should stick with prior decisions, it would not overturn its 2013 Homewood I ruling unless that decision was clearly wrong, and the property owners had not made that showing.
2. Because Homewood I already decided as a matter of law that this same stormwater ordinance provides a special benefit to payors and imposes a fee rather than a tax, and nothing about the ordinance had changed since then, that precedent controlled regardless of new evidence in the record.
3. On the takings claim, the court found the property owners had not argued that Georgia's Takings Clause should be read differently from the federal one, so it analyzed the claim only under the federal Takings Clause and found no case law supporting that a service-based fee tied to a special benefit constitutes an unconstitutional taking.
4. The court reviewed the trial court's summary judgment order and found it had not resolved disputed factual issues in the county's favor or improperly weighed expert credibility, and had expressly avoided relying on the contested expert affidavit when granting judgment to the county.
5. Concluding that none of the property owners' arguments undermined Homewood I or showed a takings violation or procedural error, the court affirmed the trial court's grant of summary judgment to the county.

• stormwater fee
• taxation uniformity clause
• takings clause
• Athens-Clarke County
• stare decisis