Shelton v. Tucker Carr v. Young, s. 14
Citation | 5 L.Ed.2d 231,364 U.S. 479,81 S.Ct. 247 |
Decision Date | 12 December 1960 |
Docket Number | 83,Nos. 14,s. 14 |
Parties | B. T. SHELTON et al., Appellants, v. Everett TUCKER, Jr., etc., et al. Max CARR et al., Petitioners, v. R. A. YOUNG et al |
Court | United States Supreme Court |
Mr. Robert L. Carter, for appellants.
Messrs. Herschel H. Friday, Jr., Little Rock, Ark., and Louis L. Ramsay, Jr., Pine Bluff, Ark., for appellees.
Mr. Edwin E. Dunaway, Little Rock, Ark., for petitioners.
Messrs. Robert V. Light and Herschel H. Friday, Jr., Little Rock, Ark., for respondents.
An Arkansas statute compels every teacher, as a condition of employment in a state-supported school or college, to file annually an affidavit listing without limitation every organization to which he has belonged or regularly contributed within the preceding five years. At issue in these two cases is the validity of that statute under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. No. 14 is an appeal from the judgment of a three-judge Federal District Court upholding the statute's validity, 174 F.Supp. 351. No. 83 is here on writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Arkansas, which also held the statute constitutionally valid. 231 Ark. 641, 331 S.W.2d 701.
The statute in question is Act 10 of the Second Extraordinary Session of the Arkansas General Assembly of 1958. The provisions of the Act are summarized in the opinion of the District Court as follows (174 F.Supp. 353):
174 F.Supp. 353—354.1 These provisions must be considered against the existing system of teacher employment required by Arkansas law. Teachers there are hired on a year-to-year basis. They are not covered by a civil service system, and they have no job security beyond the end of each school year. The closest approach to tenure is a statutory provision for the automatic renewal of a teacher's contract if he is not notified within ten days after the end of a school year that the contract has not been renewed. Ark.1947 Stat.Ann. § 80 1304(b) (1960); Wabbaseka School District No. 7 of Jefferson County v. Johnson, 225 Ark. 982, 286 S.W.2d 841.
The plaintiffs in the Federal District Court (appellants here) were B. T. Shelton, a teacher employed in the Little Rock Public School System, suing for himself and others similarly situated, together with the Arkansas Teachers Association and its Executive Secretary, suing for the benefit of members of the Association. Shelton had been employed in the Little Rock Special School District for twenty-five years. In the spring of 1959 he was notified that, before he could be employed for the 1959—1960 school year, he must file the affidavit required by Act 10, listing all his organizational connections over the previous five years. He declined to file the affidavit, and his contract for the ensuing school year was not renewed. At the trial the evidence showed that he was not a member of the Communist Party or of any organization advocating the overthrow of the Government by force, and that he was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The court upheld Act 10, finding the information it required was 'relevant,' and relying on several decisions of this Court, particularly Garner v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles, 341 U.S. 716, 71 S.Ct. 909, 95 L.Ed. 1317; Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S.Ct. 380, 96 L.Ed. 517; Beilan v.
Board of Higher Education, 357 U.S. 399, 78 S.Ct. 1317, 2 L.Ed.2d 1414; and Lerner v. Casey, 357 U.S. 468, 78 S.Ct. 1311, 2 L.Ed.2d 1423.2
The plaintiffs in the state court proceedings (petitioners here) were Max Carr, an associate professor at the University of Arkansas, and Ernest T. Gephardt, a teacher at Central High School in Little Rock, each suing for himself and others similarly situated. Each refused to execute and file the affidavit required by Act 10. Carr executed an affirmation3 in which he listed his membership in professional organizations, denied ever having been a member of any subversive organization, and offered to answer any questions which the University authorities might constitutionally ask touching upon his qualifications as a teacher. Gephardt filed an affidavit stating that he had never belonged to a subversive organization, disclosing his membership in the Arkansas Education Association and the American Legion, and also offering to answer any questions which the school authorities might constitutionally ask touching upon his qualifications as a teacher. Both were advised that their failure to comply with the requirements of Act 10 would make impossible their re-employment as teachers for the following school year. The Supreme Court of Arkansas upheld the constitutionality of Act 10, on its face and as applied to the petitioners. 231 Ark. 641, 331 S.W.2d 701.
It is urged here, as it was unsuccessfully urged throughout the proceedings in both the federal and state courts, that Act 10 deprives teachers in Arkansas of their rights to personal, associational, and academic liberty, protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by state action. In considering this contention, we deal with two basic postulates.
First. There can be no doubt of the right of a State to investigate the competence and fitness of those whom it hires to teach in its schools, as this Court before now has had occasion to recognize. Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485, 493, 72 S.Ct. 380, 385, 96 L.Ed. 517. There is Beilan v. Board of Education, 357 U.S. 399, 406, 78 S.Ct. 1317, 1322, 2 L.Ed.2d 1414.4
This controversy is thus not of a pattern with such cases as N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488, and Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480. In those cases the Court held that there was no substantially relevant correlation between the governmental interest asserted and the State's effort to compel disclosure of the membership lists involved. Here, by contrast, there can be no question of the relevance of a State's inquiry into the fitness and competence of its teachers.5
Second. It is not disputed that to compel a teacher to disclose his every associational tie is to impair that teacher's right of free association, a right closely allied to freedom of speech and a right which, like free speech, lies at the foundation of a free society. De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364, 57 S.Ct. 255, 260, 81 L.Ed. 278; Bates v. Little Rock, supra, 361 U.S. at pages 522—523, 80 S.Ct. at pages 416—417. Such interference with personal freedom is conspicuously accented when the teacher serves at the absolute will of those to whom the disclosure must be made—those who any year can terminate the teacher's employment without bringing charges, without notice, without a hearing, without affording an opportunity to explain.
The statute does not provide that the information it requires be kept confidential. Each school board is left free to deal with the information as it wishes.6 The record contains evidence to indicate that fear of public disclosure is neither theoretical nor groundless.7 Even if there were no disclosure to the general public, the pressure upon a teacher to avoid any ties which might displease those who control his professional destiny would be constant and heavy. Public exposure, bringing with it the possibility of public pressures upon school boards to discharge teachers who belong to unpopular or minority organizations, would simply operate to widen and aggravate the impairment of constitutional liberty.
The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools. ...
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