Martin v. Harrah Independent Sch. Dist.

• Decision Date: 08 August 1978
• Docket Number: No. 76-1813,76-1813
• Citation: 579 F.2d 1192
• Parties: Mary Jane MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HARRAH INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, L. M. Sullivan, Edward Brzozowski, Walter Helm, Loyd Mixon, Harold Manwell, Joe Zawiska, and Paul Thomas, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1192

579 F.2d 1192

Mary Jane MARTIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. HARRAH INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, L. M. Sullivan, Edward

Brzozowski, Walter Helm, Loyd Mixon, Harold

Manwell, Joe Zawiska, and Paul Thomas,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 76-1813.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 12, 1977.

Decided June 30, 1978.

Rehearing Denied Aug. 8, 1978.

Robert Chanin, Washington, D. C. (Robert Weinberg and Jeremiah A. Collins of

Bredhoff, Cushman, Gottesman & Cohen, and David Rubin, National Education Association, Washington, D. C., on briefs), for plaintiff-appellant.

Ronald L. Day of Fenton, Fenton, Smith, Reneau & Moon, Oklahoma City, Okl. (Larry L. French of Edwards & French, Seminole, Okl., with him on the brief), for defendants-appellees.

Before SETH, Chief Judge, and McWILLIAMS and McKAY, Circuit Judges.

McKAY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff was a tenured teacher. Oklahoma law required the defendant school board to renew her contract annually unless she was guilty of "immorality, wilful neglect of duty, cruelty, incompetency, teaching disloyalty to the American Constitutional system of government; or any reason involving moral turpitude." Okl.Stat., tit. 70, § 6-122 (Supp.1973) (repealed 1977). That statute also provided for full scale hearing and appellate procedures in the event of nonrenewal. Plaintiff's contract incorporated by reference the rules and regulations of the board. Of relevance to this case was a regulation requiring continuing education in specified increments. The regulation allowed three years in which to complete the work. Both by the terms of the regulation itself and by the uninterrupted practice of the board, the only sanction for noncompliance with this requirement was the withholding of salary increments. This rule remained in effect throughout the dispute and litigation below.

Plaintiff, for a variety of reasons including her heavy involvement in the school's extracurricular programs, exercised her option to forego salary increments during the 1972-1974 school years by not completing the specified additional credit hours of study. Her contract was renewed by defendant board without the increments. After the renewal of her contract for the 1973-1974 school year, the Oklahoma State Legislature mandated certain salary raises for teachers regardless of their compliance with the continuing education policy. Thus deprived of the only available sanction against four teachers, including plaintiff, who had been relying on their right to forgo salary increments, the board wrote to them on September 6, 1973, saying that unless they completed five semester hours by April 10, 1974, their contracts would not be renewed for 1974-1975. The reason given for the threatened nonrenewal was "gross neglect and failure to adhere to board policy." Oddly enough, the letter repeated the language of the regulation indicating that the penalty for continued noncompliance was denial of salary increments.

The board's letter implemented a special policy as to plaintiff and her three yokefellows under which they, unlike any other tenured teacher before or since, would be subject to discharge for failure to come into compliance with continuing education requirements within seven months (instead of three years). The only factor which distinguished this insular group from all other teachers, so far as the newly adopted policy of discharge for noncompliance was concerned, was the fact that they had lawfully relied on the board's prior policy of salary penalty only.

Plaintiff did not earn the five credits within the seven month period imposed on her. ¹ She appeared before the board in January 1974 to protest the proposed special limitation and penalty and to indicate that under the circumstances she could not and would not comply. At the April 1974 meeting the board voted not to renew plaintiff's contract for the 1974-1975 school year. Plaintiff immediately commenced both an administrative appeal and an action in the Oklahoma State courts. She lost at the first level of her administrative appeal and did not pursue additional steps available under Oklahoma administrative review laws.

The state trial court subsequently entered an order reinstating plaintiff and issued a writ of mandamus. ² The Oklahoma Court of Appeals affirmed the issuance of the writ. ³ The Oklahoma Supreme Court did not reach the merits of the case, holding instead that the trial court was without jurisdiction to issue the writ of mandamus because plaintiff had failed to exhaust her administrative remedies. Martin v. Harrah Independent School Dist., 543 P.2d 1370 (Okl.1975). In a strongly worded dissent, three justices upheld the jurisdiction of the trial court and addressed the merits:

A teacher is a government employee and his interest in his continued employment is a protectible "property interest" and therefore, any termination is subject to procedural and substantive safeguards. . . . Being fired for willful neglect of duty places a stigma on Mary Jane and this too could be an infringement of "liberty and hence due process." . . .

. . . Non-renewal provisions being penal in nature must give fair warning of the exact conduct which is outlawed. Rules must be reasonable. This is the essence of substantive due process. Otherwise, a school board could arbitrarily add new rules and new penalties to the regulations already existing at the time the teacher's contract was signed, and then use a teacher's failure to conform to these as a basis for termination and call it "willful neglect of duty."

Id. at 1378 (Doolin, J., dissenting).

Because of the mandamus order of the Oklahoma trial court, plaintiff remained on the job until January 1975. By that time she had earned the required five academic credits and, in the eyes of the board, was in full compliance with the continuing education policy. After the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision, the parties attempted a settlement. When plaintiff refused the board's offer they voted to terminate her contract "pursuant to the decision of the Oklahoma State Supreme Court."

Following her termination, plaintiff immediately filed this action in federal district court ⁴ alleging that she had been denied equal protection under the laws and had been deprived of protected liberty and property interests without due process of law. Her motion for a preliminary injunction was denied and, by stipulation, the district court decided the issue of liability on the basis of evidence presented at the hearing on the preliminary injunction. The trial The only constitutional issue addressed by the district court was whether plaintiff's nonrenewal was based on an "impermissible reason that is prohibited by the Constitution." The court found no impermissible or irrational classification in the continuing education rule and therefore held there had been no denial of equal protection. While recognizing that plaintiff "was a tenured teacher and as such had a protected 'property' interest in continued employment," the trial court nevertheless concluded that by complying fully with the state procedural requirements relating to hearings in cases of contract nonrenewal, the board had satisfied the procedural due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. As to plaintiff's claim that she was denied fair warning that her contract could be nonrenewed if she did not continue her education, the court held that "notice in the due process sense seems to intend notice of the proceedings against the plaintiff, not notice of all possible penalties that may be imposed for violation of certain rules and regulations." Finding that plaintiff was "afforded her full constitutional rights," the court entered judgment on behalf of the board and dismissed her complaint.

court properly declined to assert pendent jurisdiction over the non-Federal question of whether noncompliance with the continuing education policy amounted to "wilful neglect of duty" as contemplated by the Oklahoma statute. This question was clearly one of state law on which the Oklahoma courts had not spoken.

It is plaintiff's contention on appeal that the board's nonrenewal of her contract was a deprivation of property and liberty without due process of law. That claim is bottomed on an arbitrary rule change which gave a small class of teachers, whose only sin was lawful reliance on the board's long-standing rules, only seven months to avoid the new sanction of contract nonrenewal while giving all others similarly situated three years in which to comply. We recognize that "it may be difficult, if not impossible, to give to the term 'due process of law' a definition which will embrace every permissible exertion of power affecting private rights, and exclude such as are forbidden." Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 123, 9 S.Ct. 231, 234, 32 L.Ed. 623 (1889). These terms "come to us from the law of England . . . and their requirement was there designed to secure the subject against the arbitrary action of the crown, and place him under the protection of the law." Id. "In this country the requirement is intended to have a similar effect . . . that is, to secure the citizen against any arbitrary deprivation of his rights, whether relating to his life, his liberty, or his property." Id. at 124, 9 S.Ct. at 234. In like manner, "(w)hen we consider the nature and the theory of our institutions of government . . . we are constrained to conclude that they do not mean to leave room for the play and action of purely personal and arbitrary power." Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369-70, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 1071, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886). More recent decisions reiterate that the "essence" or "touchstone" of the Due Process Clause is protection of the individual from arbitrary government action. See, e. g., Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 558, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974); Slochower v. Board of Educ., 350 U.S. 551, 559, 76 S.Ct. 637, 100 L.Ed. 692 (1956); Ohio Bell Tel....