Elaine Ann Gold and Amy Jacobson Shaye are teachers for the DeKalb County School District. In 2009, the School District suspended its contributions to a tax-sheltered annuity plan, which Gold and Shaye allege was an employee-benefit plan established by the District as an alternative to the federal Social Security system. Gold and Shaye, on behalf of themselves individually and a class of similarly situated teachers collectively, “Gold”, sued the School District, the Dekalb County Board of Education, and the members of the Board and the School District superintendent in their official capacities collectively, the “District”, asserting claims for declaratory judgment, money had and received, unjust enrichment, promissory estoppel, conversion, breach of contract, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The District moved to dismiss Gold’s complaint for failure to state a claim, arguing that the doctrine of sovereign immunity barred each of Gold’s claims. The trial court denied the motion, and the District appeals. We agree with the District that sovereign immunity bars Gold’s claims for declaratory judgment, money had and received, unjust enrichment, promissory estoppel, and conversion, and we conclude that the trial court erred in failing to dismiss these claims. We find that the trial court did not, however, err in denying the District’s motion to dismiss Gold’s claims for breach of contract and the associated implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part.
Accepting Gold’s well-pleaded material allegations as true,1 the complaint shows that on June 27, 1979, the Board voted to leave the federal Social Security system to pursue an alternative employee-benefits plan. Before voting to leave Social Security, the Board passed a resolution the “1979 Resolution” which stated, in relevant part, that “in the event of withdrawal from Social Security, funds currently budgeted for Social Security shall be used for the support of the alternative plan,” and that “before the budget is adopted each year, a determination shall be made as to the amount that would have been required for continued participation in Social Security during the current year.” The Board further resolved that the amount required “to continue funding Social Security shall be the amount budgeted to fund the alternative to social security, and that the Board will give a two year notice to the employees before reducing or terminating these funding provisions.”
