Perry County, Indiana v. Keith D. Huck

• Court: Indiana Court of Appeals
• Decided: April 29, 2024
• Docket: 24A-PL-00418
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE

Court of Appeals of Indiana Perry County, Indiana; The Board of Commissioners of the County of Perry (Indiana); Randy Cole; Randy Kleaving; Rebecca Thorn, Appellants-Defendants FILED Apr 29 2024, 10:35 am

v. CLERK Indiana Supreme Court Court of Appeals and Tax Court

Keith D. Huck, Appellee-Plaintiff

April 29, 2024 Court of Appeals Case No. 24A-PL-418 Appeal from the Perry Circuit Court The Honorable Justin B. Mills, Special Judge Trial Court Cause No. 62C01-2401-PL-31

Opinion by Judge Mathias

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 1 of 7 Judges Tavitas and Weissmann concur.

Mathias, Judge.

Facts, Procedural History, and Issue on Appeal [1] The facts in this expedited appeal are not in dispute. Keith Huck is an elected

member of the Perry County Common Council. In June 2023, during his term

as a councilman, the Perry County Board of Commissioners (“the Board”)

publicly voted to no longer provide health insurance coverage to part-time

employees effective January 2024. As Huck averaged only nine work hours per

month as a councilman, he lost his insurance coverage. He did not obtain

alternative coverage following the Board’s June 2023 vote.

[2] Huck filed a petition for a preliminary injunction to require the Board to

provide him with health insurance coverage on the theory that, as an elected

county official, he is necessarily a full-time employee, regardless of his actual

hours worked. The trial court agreed and entered a preliminary injunction in

Huck’s favor. The Board then moved for expedited consideration of this

interlocutory appeal, which we granted.

[3] We consider the following dispositive issue: whether elected county officials are

per se full-time employees such that counties must provide them with health

insurance coverage. We conclude that they are not. Accordingly, we reverse the

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 2 of 7 trial court’s preliminary injunction for Huck and remand for further

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Discussion and Decision [4] The Board appeals the trial court’s preliminary injunction for Huck. Our

resolution of this appeal hinges on the trial court’s conclusion that Huck

satisfied the first requirement for a preliminary injunction, namely, that he had

established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of his claim. See

Members of Med. Licensing Bd. v. Planned Parenthood Great Nw., Haw., Alaska, Ind.,

Ky., Inc., 211 N.E.3d 957, 964 (Ind. 2023).

[5] It is well settled that the grant of a preliminary injunction rests within the sound

discretion of the trial court, and our review is limited to whether the court

abused that discretion. Id. But one way a trial court abuses its discretion is by

misinterpreting the law. Id. And where, as here, our analysis of the reasonable-

likelihood-of-success requirement turns on the trial court’s interpretation of

purely legal issues, we review those issues de novo. Id. at 965.

[6] Indiana Code chapter 5-10-8 (2022) describes health insurance benefits for

public employees. In particular, section 5-10-8-1(1) defines an “employee” as

follows:

(A) an elected or appointed officer or official, or a full-time employee;

(B) if the individual is employed by a school corporation, a full- time or part-time employee;

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 3 of 7 (C) for a local unit public employer, a full-time or part-time employee or a person who provides personal services to the unit under contract during the contract period; or

(D) a senior judge appointed under IC 33-24-3-7;

whose services have continued without interruption at least thirty (30) days.

And section 5-10-8-2.6(b), which applies to local unit public employers and

employees, states in relevant part: “A public employer may provide programs of

group insurance for its employees . . . . The public employer may, however, exclude

part-time employees . . . from any group insurance coverage that the public

employer provides to the employer’s full-time employees.” (Emphasis added.)

Finally, we note that section 5-10-8-2.6(d) states that “[a]n insurance contract

for local employees under this section may not be canceled by the public

employer during the policy term of the contract.”

[7] We conclude that, as an elected official, Huck is an employee under those

statutes. But that is not the end of the inquiry. The statutes confer on local

boards the authority to exclude employees from health insurance coverage

based on their status as full-time or part-time employees, and the statutes

neither define “full-time” and “part-time” employees nor exempt elected

officials from that consideration. See I.C. § 5-10-8-2.6(b). Thus, under the plain

language of the statutes, the Board had the authority to discontinue health

insurance coverage for an elected official who was also a part-time employee.

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 4 of 7 [8] Absent clear direction from our General Assembly to the contrary, the

definition of “full-time” and “part-time” employees here is controlled by federal

law. And, as directed by the Affordable Care Act, the Internal Revenue Service

has defined a “full-time employee” as “an employee employed on average at

least 30 hours of service per week, or 130 hours of service per month.”

Identifying Full-time Employees, irs.gov, https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-

act/employers/identifying-full-time-employees (last accessed on Apr. 25,

2024). 1

[9] The evidence here is undisputed that Huck’s actual work hours averaged about

nine hours per month. He is therefore not a full-time employee. And that

enabled the Board to exclude him from future health insurance coverage. I.C. §

5-10-8-2.6(b).

[10] We briefly address Huck’s additional arguments on appeal. First, he asserts

that, because he is an elected official, he is not required to keep a record of his

hours worked nor is he paid hourly, which implies that the General Assembly

views elected officials as per se full-time employees. Appellee’s Br. at 12; see

I.C. § 36-2-5-13(b). We acknowledge that there is no requirement for elected

officials to keep a record of hours worked; however, we also acknowledge that

local boards are often well-aware of the hours required to be worked by elected

1 We acknowledge that Indiana’s tax code provides that, for purposes of Indiana Code chapter 6-3.1-13, a “full-time employee” means an employee who works “for at least thirty-five (35) hours each week . . . .” I.C. § 6-3.1-13-4.

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 5 of 7 officials in their counties. Indiana law favors yielding to the discretion of local

rule absent state law to the contrary, and, here, we have no state law to the

contrary. See I.C. §§ 36-1-3-1 to -13. We therefore conclude that the General

Assembly intended to allow local boards to exercise their common-sense

discretion in determining full-time and part-time elected officials.

[11] Huck also asserts that a Perry County employee handbook, and concomitant

ordinances, treats elected officials differently than other employees. Be that as it

may, Huck cites no authority for his apparent proposition that a majority vote

of the Board to exercise the authority granted to it under Indiana Code section

5-10-8-2.6(b) cannot stand based on an employee handbook or a local

ordinance. We therefore reject this argument.

[12] For all of the above-stated reasons, the trial court erred when it concluded that

Huck had established a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits of his

claim against the Board. As the “[f]ailure to prove any one” of the requirements

for a preliminary injunction “requires denying the injunction,” we reverse the

trial court’s entry of the preliminary injunction for Huck, and we remand for

further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Leone v. Comm’r, Ind. Bureau of

Motor Vehicles, 933 N.E.2d 1244, 1248 (Ind. 2010).

[13] Reversed and remanded for further proceedings.

Tavitas, J., and Weissmann, J., concur.

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 6 of 7 ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLANTS Anthony W. Overholt Maggie L. Smith Alexander P. Will Frost Brown Todd, LLC Indianapolis, Indiana

ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE Keith W. Vonderahe Dirck H. Stahl Ziemer Stayman Weitzel & Shoulders, LLP Evansville, Indiana

Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 24A-PL-418 | April 29, 2024 Page 7 of 7