War Paint Movie, LLC v. Alabama Film Office, No. CL-2025-0560, 2026 WL 2130907 (Ala. Civ. App. July 24, 2026). The court (Bowden, J.; Edwards and Hanson, JJ., concur; Moore, P.J., concurs in the result without opinion; Fridy, J., recuses) affirms dismissal of a production company's suit challenging the forfeiture of film-production tax incentives, resting its analysis on how the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act's (“AAPA”) terms are to be construed. Interpreting "license" under § 41-22-3(4), the court works from the statutory text, the legislative commentary, and Black's Law Dictionary to isolate the common element across all three that a license confers permission to do something otherwise unlawful and holds that discretionary financial incentives, which authorize no conduct the recipient could not otherwise lawfully undertake, fall outside that definition. Id. at *4-5. The court applies the same textual discipline to "rule" under § 41-22-3(9), contrasting the mandatory, binding directives found to be a rule in Keith v. LeFleur, 400 So. 3d 608 (Ala. Civ. App. 2023), with the absence of any identified agency directive here, and declines to stretch the term to reach conduct the company had simply failed to plead. Id. at *7-8. Underlying both holdings is an explicit separation-of-powers rationale: the court frames its role applying the plain meaning of the AAPA’s term and not extending the AAPA to reach a result the legislature has not authorized. The court states that any policy concern about the incentive program's effect on the state's film industry is a matter for the legislature, not the judiciary. Id. at *8-9.
