Calloway v. Briggs, 20471.
Citation | 443 F.2d 296 |
Decision Date | 24 May 1971 |
Docket Number | No. 20471.,20471. |
Parties | Vanessa CALLOWAY, a minor by her mother and next friend, Inez Calloway, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Paul W. BRIGGS, Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland School District, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit) |
Gregory B. Taylor, Cleveland, Ohio, for plaintiff-appellant; C. Lyonel Jones, Gregory B. Taylor, Nancy Schuster, Cleveland, Ohio, on brief.
Charles F. Clarke, Cleveland, Ohio, for defendants-appellees; William C. Hartman, Charels F. Clarke, George W. Pring, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, Cleveland, Ohio, on brief.
Before EDWARDS and MILLER, Circuit Judges, and O'SULLIVAN, Senior Circuit Judge.
This appeal apparently contains some dramatic background facts, but the legal issue which we have to decide is a quite prosaic one: Did this complaint require decision by a three-judge federal court rather than by a single District Judge? Since we believe that it did, we do not reach the merits of the dispute which gave rise to the case.
The complaint filed in this case alleged in part:
The statute under attack provides as follows:
Ohio Rev.Code § 3313.66 (Supp.1969).
Appellant does not contest her suspension from a Cleveland high school, but does complain that she was expelled from the Cleveland Public Schools without a hearing, in violation of the United States Constitution's requirement of due process of law. Paragraph 10 of her complaint says:
In this respect appellant relies primarily upon a Fifth Circuit case wherein that court declared:
Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 294 F.2d 150, 158-159 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 930, 82 S.Ct. 368, 7 L.Ed.2d 193 (1961).
This court cited the Dixon case with approval in Norton v. Discipline Committee of East Tenn. State Univ., 419 F.2d 195 (6th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 399 U.S. 906, 90 S.Ct. 2191, 26 L.Ed.2d 562 (1970). See also Knight v. State Board of Education, 200 F.Supp. 174 (M.D.Tenn.1961)
Appellee, however, contends that appellant on this record should be held to have had a due process hearing before her expulsion, and hence, that she has no equitable basis for complaint about the disputed Ohio statute. This is, in essence, the view taken by the District Judge who denied the petition to convene a three-judge court and then dismissed the complaint on the merits. The District Judge accepted as true affidavits filed by appellee and found that appellant was accorded a hearing which provided due process under the circumstances involved. Appellee and the District Judge both point to the limited requirements for an administrative due process hearing in a school disciplinary case set forth in Madera v. Board of Education of City of New York, 386 F. 2d 778 (2d Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U.S. 1028, 88 S.Ct. 1416, 20 L.Ed.2d 284 (1968).
In Madera the Second Circuit said:
Madera v. Board of Education of City of New York, supra at 780.
Accepting these standards, the basic problem we have on this appeal is that appellant claims that she had no hearing before her expulsion and that the Ohio statute which appears to authorize expulsion before a hearing is a violation of federal due process.
Such allegations do in our view raise substantial federal questions. Whether her allegations are correct, of course, is not before us. Nor was it properly before the District Judge. The sufficiency of the complaint for three-judge jurisdictional purposes must be determined by the allegations of the bill of complaint and not by the way the facts turn out. Mosher v. City of Phoenix, 287 U.S. 29, 30, 53 S.Ct. 67, 77 L. Ed. 148 (1932); Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30, 54 S.Ct. 854, 78 L.Ed. 1472 (1933); Tyler v. Russel, 410 F.2d 490 (10th Cir. 1969).
The Supreme Court in 1962 stated the function of the District Judge this way:
Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.S. 713, 715, 82 S.Ct. 1294, 1296, 8 L.Ed.2d 794 (1962). (Footnote omitted.)
Of course, an attack upon a state statute as violative of the Federal Constitution calls for hearing and determination before a three-judge court. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281, 2284 (1964).
In remand the first issue in this case (and possibly the only one which will need resolution, since this is a complaint seeking individual relief) will be whether or not appellant was prior to her expulsion given a hearing which met due process standards in the context of the fact situation involved. It may be quite possible to resolve this issue on a motion for summary judgment filed before the three-judge court. No motion for summary judgment has as yet been filed and, in any event, could not have been determined by the District...
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