Laney v. Farley

• Decision Date: 28 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-6000.,06-6000.
• Citation: 501 F.3d 577
• Parties: William LANEY, individually; Victoria Laney, a minor child by father, and as next friend, William Laney, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Jim FARLEY, individually and in his capacity as Principal of West Wilson Middle School; Laura Honeyman, individually and in her capacity as Assistant Principal of West Wilson Middle School, Defendants, Wilson County Board of Education, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

501 F.3d 577

William LANEY, individually; Victoria Laney, a minor child by father, and as next friend, William Laney, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Jim FARLEY, individually and in his capacity as Principal of West Wilson Middle School; Laura Honeyman, individually and in her capacity as Assistant Principal of West Wilson Middle School, Defendants, Wilson County Board of Education, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 06-6000.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: April 18, 2007.

Decided and Filed: August 28, 2007.

ARGUED:

Winston N. Harless, Lewis, King, Krieg, Waldrop & Catron, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Stephen E. Grauberger, John H. Lowe & Associates, Goodlettsville, Tennessee, for Appellees

ON BRIEF:

Winston N. Harless, Lewis, King, Krieg, Waldrop & Catron, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Stephen E. Grauberger, John H. Lowe & Associates, Goodlettsville, Tennessee, for Appellees.

Before: SUHRHEINRICH and GIBBONS, Circuit Judges; HEYBURN, Chief District Judge.^*

HEYBURN, D.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which SUHRHEINRICH, J., joined. GIBBONS, J. (p. 584), delivered a separate concurring opinion.

OPINION

JOHN G. HEYBURN II, Chief District Judge.

Plaintiff William Laney brought suit individually and on behalf of his minor daughter, Victoria Laney, after school officials confiscated her cell phone when it began ringing during a class session and then imposed a one-day, in-school suspension upon her. The only remaining claim, brought pursuant 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeks recovery for failure to provide notice and an opportunity to be heard prior to Victoria's suspension. The sole remaining defendant, Wilson County Board of Education ("WCBE"), brings this interlocutory appeal of the district court's finding that a one-day, in-school suspension implicates procedural due process protection of the Due Process Clause. For the reasons stated below, we respectfully disagree with the district court and reverse.

I.

Victoria Laney was in the eighth grade at West Wilson Middle School in Mt. Juliet, Wilson County, Tennessee. On September 16, 2005, her cellular telephone began to ring during a class. Victoria's instructor seized the telephone and delivered it to the school's principal, Jim Farley, along with a partially completed Disciplinary Office Referral form.

The WCBE's code of conduct prohibits students' personal communications devices such as cellular telephones on school property during school hours. It further requires that violations be reported to the principal; that the device be confiscated; and returned only to the parent/guardian of the student. The Code of Conduct states that for a first offense, such a violation will result in "Confiscation of device and return to parent ONLY after 30 days and 1 day of In-school suspension." The Code of Conduct further provides:

DUE PROCESS — before imposing consequences, the teacher or principal shall be guided by the principle of fundamental fairness and make at least rudimentary inquiry into the incident to assure that the offense is accurately identified, that the student understands the nature of the offense, and that the student is given an opportunity to present his/her views. Before a student is removed from the school setting, he/she shall be given a complete due process hearing by the principal of said school and/or the Wilson County Schools Discipline Hearing Authority.

On the morning of Monday, September 19, 2005, Bill Laney went to Wilson Middle School and spoke with Jim Farley, seeking the return of the cellular telephone. Farley refused to return the phone until the expiration of thirty days. That same day, the vice-principal, Laura Honeyman, completed the Disciplinary Office Referral form stating that Victoria was to serve one day of in-school suspension on September 20, 2005, and that the phone was "to be held in the vault for 30 days. Parent may pick up on October 17, 2005, in the main office." Honeyman further checked boxes on the form that stated a conference had been held with the student and a letter had been sent home.

On September 19, Victoria was home sick from school. When she reported to school for class on the next day, she served her one day of in-school suspension in the school office. She did not confer with anyone at school regarding the cellular telephone incident, its seizure, or notice of the in-school suspension.¹ Further, Victoria did not receive the suspension note to take to her parents until after she had served the suspension. They did not learn of it until informed by their daughter.

II.

On September 28 William Laney brought suit individually and on behalf of Victoria seeking $500,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages, alleging violations of due process rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 related to the thirty-day retention of the phone and the imposition of the in-school suspension; civil conspiracy under 42 U.S.C. § 1985; and individual claims against defendants Jim Farley and Laura Honeyman.

Defendants WCBE, Farley, and Honeyman moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). The District Court referred the motion to the Magistrate Judge who issued a Report and Recommendation ("R & R") recommending that the Motion be granted and the Complaint dismissed. After considering all the objections, the District Court made a de novo determination of the R & R accepting its recommendation to dismiss the due process claim as to the retention of the phone, but found that the sole remaining claim under § 1983—concerning the procedural due process rights of the daughter in connection with the in-school suspension—should go forward. The only remaining defendant, WCBE, filed a Motion to Alter Or Amend Judgment, or in the Alternative, Application for Certification for Interlocutory Appeal related to the sole remaining due process claim. The District Court denied the Motion to Alter Or Amend Judgment but certified WCBE's application for an interlocutory appeal of its due process claim. The WCBE petitioned this Court, which granted permission for the instant interlocutory appeal.

III.

We review the District Court's consideration of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion for dismissal under a de novo standard. Arrow, 358 F.3d at 393. In doing so, we "must construe the complaint in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, accept all of the factual allegations as true and determine whether the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claims that would entitle him to relief." Id. (citations omitted).

IV.

Claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 can only be brought for "deprivation of rights secured by the constitution and laws of the United States."² Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 924, 102 S.Ct. 2744 73 L.Ed.2d 482 (1982). The Fourteenth Amendment forbids the State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Plaintiffs argue that because they were given no formal hearing or notification concerning Victoria's one-day in-school suspension, they were denied a constitutional right in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.³

The starting point for analyzing a school suspension case is Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 95 S.Ct. 729, 42 L.Ed.2d 725 (1975). In Goss, the Supreme Court held that students facing ten-day suspensions from public school were entitled to protection under the Due Process Clause. Id. at 576, 95 S.Ct. 729. The Court held further that such protection requires schools to provide notice of the charges against the students, an explanation of the evidence the authorities have, and an opportunity to present his or her side of the story. Id. at 581, 95 S.Ct. 729. The Court held that the Due Process Clause applied because suspensions from school deprived students of two rights: a property interest in educational benefits and a liberty interest in their reputations. Id. at 573-74, 95 S.Ct. 729. Thus, we must determine whether the one-day in-school suspension infringed Victoria's property or liberty interest.

A.

Regarding the property interest, the Goss Court said that state laws creating free education to all residents between five and twenty-one years of age coupled with a compulsory-attendance law create a claim of entitlement to public education. 419 U.S. at 573, 95 S.Ct. 729. "Having chosen to extend the right to an education to people of appellees' class generally, Ohio may not withdraw that right on grounds of misconduct absent, [sic] fundamentally fair procedures to determine whether the misconduct has occurred." Id. at 574, 95 S.Ct. 729 (citing Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U.S. 134, 164, 94 S.Ct. 1633, 40 L.Ed.2d 15 (1974)) (Powell, J., concurring). Like Ohio, Tennessee has created a free education system and requires attendance in school. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 49-6-3001. Thus Tennessee students have a legitimate property interest in educational benefits and, therefore, in actually attending school.

Whether an in-school suspension deprives a student of that interest in educational benefits depends on the extent of her exclusion from the educational process. In Goss, the Court viewed a ten-day suspension from school as a deprivation of a property right to education because it was a "total exclusion from the educational process." Id. at 576, 95 S.Ct. 729. An in-school suspension could, but does not necessarily, deprive a student of educational opportunities in the same way an out-of-school suspension would:

Under certain circumstances, in-school isolation could well constitute as much deprivation of education as at-home suspension. In other words, a student could be excluded from the educational process as much by being placed in isolation as by being barred from the school grounds. The primary thrust of the educational process is classroom instruction; in both situations the student is excluded from the classroom. This is not to say that any in-school detention would necessarily be equivalent to a...