Summary
The Kentucky Supreme Court held that Kentucky’s Deputy-Sheriff Merit Board statutes do not violate the separation of powers doctrine. The court concluded that the General Assembly could authorize the transfer of the sheriff’s common-law removal authority to a county merit board and reversed the Court of Appeals.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the Deputy-Sheriff Merit Board statutes, KRS 70.260 et seq., unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers by permitting a county to transfer the power to remove deputy sheriffs from the elected sheriff to a merit board.
- Whether the sheriff's common-law authority to remove deputies at will supersedes the General Assembly's statutory reassignment of that authority to a Deputy Sheriff Merit Board.
Holdings
- The Deputy-Sheriff Merit Board statutes do not violate the separation of powers doctrine because the sheriff has no constitutional right to appoint or remove deputies, and the General Assembly may reassign the sheriff's common-law removal authority to an administrative agency acting in an executive capacity.
- The sheriff's common-law authority to remove deputies at will must yield to the superior policy of legislative enactment establishing the Deputy Sheriff Merit Board scheme.
Key quotations
“Johnson and Brown stand for the proposition that the General Assembly may take common-law powers away from executive constitutional officers and assign them to different executive officers or agencies without violating the constitution, which is all that occurred in this case” (586)
“Thus, while Sheriff Augustus had the common-law authority to remove McClure at will, that authority “must yield to the superior policy of legislative enactment....”” (587)
Factual background
On July 21, 1998, Sheriff Frank Augustus terminated Ronald McClure's employment as a McCracken County deputy sheriff. McClure requested a hearing before the county Deputy Sheriff Merit Board, which had been established under KRS 70.260. Before the hearing occurred, Augustus challenged the statutory scheme, arguing that transferring removal authority from the elected sheriff to the Merit Board violated the separation of powers.
Procedural history
Sheriff Frank Augustus terminated Ronald McClure's employment as a deputy sheriff. Before the McCracken County Deputy Sheriff Merit Board could hear McClure's challenge, Augustus sought injunctive and declaratory relief in McCracken Circuit Court. The circuit court declared the Deputy-Sheriff Merit Board statutes unconstitutional and issued an injunction; the Court of Appeals affirmed on separation-of-powers grounds. The Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed and remanded with instructions to dissolve the injunction and vacate the declaration of unconstitutionality.
Remand instructions
The McCracken Circuit Court was instructed to dissolve its injunction and vacate its order declaring the Deputy-Sheriff Merit Board statutes unconstitutional.