Glenn Bynum and Larry Gipson v. City of Oneonta

Summary

The court held that the statutory exclusion of municipalities in Blount, Clay, and Randolph Counties from the municipal alcohol-election provisions violated equal protection because the distinction had no rational relationship to alcohol regulation. It further held that the exclusion could not be severed because doing so would rewrite the statute and contradict the legislature's clear intent, requiring the entire enactment to fall. Chief Justice Moore, concurring in the result, would have invalidated the Act primarily as an unadvertised local law under the Alabama Constitution and agreed with the majority's severability analysis in the alternative.