Alabama Beverage Licensees Association v. Stewart, No. CL-2026-0014, 2026 WL 2276765 (Ala. Civ. App. Aug. 7, 2026) (Moore, P.J., and Hanson, Fridy, and Bowden, JJ., concur). The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals affirms a Montgomery Circuit Court judgment holding that the ABC Board's approximately 2% convenience fee for credit-card purchases of wholesale case lots of liquor does not violate Ala. Code § 28-3-53.2, which caps the Board's markup on such sales at 16.99% of cost plus freight. Id. at *1–2.
A group of liquor licensees sued Curtis Stewart, the ABC Board's administrator, seeking a declaratory judgment that the credit-card fee amounted to an unlawful "mark up on the mark up," exceeding the statutory cap. Id. The plaintiffs argued that allowing the Board to characterize the fee as a cost of doing business passed on to purchasers would let the Board evade the cap by tacking on other operating costs as well, defeating the Legislature's intent to limit the wholesale price of liquor. Id. at *2. Stewart countered that the fee is not a markup on liquor's wholesale cost at all, but a separate, transaction-specific surcharge that credit-card companies charge the Board and that the Board passes through only to purchasers who choose to pay by credit card — expressly authorized by § 41-1-60(e), which permits a state board accepting credit-card payments to impose a surcharge to offset the discount or administrative fees it is charged. Id.
Applying the ore tenus standard where facts are undisputed — meaning no deference is owed to the trial court's legal conclusions — the Court agrees with the circuit court that the wholesale cost of a case lot of liquor itself is unchanged by the fee, which is imposed only on the subset of purchasers who pay by credit card rather than by cash, check, or the Board's electronic-payment system. Id. at *3. Because the fee does not alter the cost-plus-freight figure to which the 16.99% cap applies, it is not a "mark up" within the meaning of § 28-3-53.2(c), and its imposition on credit-card purchasers is independently authorized by § 41-1-60(e). Id.