Alabama State Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO v. James

• Decision Date: 17 September 1981
• Docket Number: AFL-CIO,No. 80-7400,80-7400
• Citation: 656 F.2d 193
• Parties: The ALABAMA STATE FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,, etc., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Fob JAMES, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees. . Unit B
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 193

656 F.2d 193

The ALABAMA STATE FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO, etc., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Fob JAMES, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 80-7400.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Unit B

Sept. 17, 1981.

Robert L. Wiggins, Jr., Birmingham, Ala., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Philip C. Davis, Linda Breland, Asst. Attys. Gen., Montgomery, Ala., for defendants-appellees.

Kenneth L. Thomas, Montgomery, Ala., for Landers.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before MORGAN, RONEY and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge:

Alabama State Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO (ASFT), a teachers' representational organization, challenges several Alabama statutes conferring certain benefits upon a rival teachers' organization, the Alabama Education Association (AEA), ¹ on the ground that such statutes deny appellants ² the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment and burden their freedom of association guaranteed by the first amendment. The statutes in question empower designated AEA officers to serve on both the Board of Control of the Alabama Teachers' Retirement System and the State Tenure Commission and permit the AEA president to appoint two teachers to the State Tenure Commission. The challenged statutes also provide that non-teaching administrative personnel employed by the AEA are eligible to participate in the State Teachers' Retirement System but do not confer similar eligibility upon such personnel employed by the ASFT. Appellants argue that by conferring certain benefits upon the AEA and not the ASFT, such statutes distinguish between the two organizations without a rational basis. ³ Furthermore, appellants contend that these statutes have rendered the ASFT a "second-class" teachers' representational organization in Alabama, thus burdening members' freedom of association and the organization's ability to represent its members. The district court rejected both claims. We affirm.

I. Facts

Alabama employs approximately 40,000 public school teachers, supervisory and support personnel. Both the AEA and ASFT represent such personnel, although the ASFT excludes principals and other supervisory school personnel from membership. The AEA was formed in 1856 ⁴ and has approximately 35,000 members. The ASFT was formed in 1971 and has between 2,500 and 3,000 members. The AEA does not exclude from membership ASFT members; some ASFT members belong to the AEA, and the AEA is not informed as to which members are ASFT members.

The challenged Alabama statutes provide that the Executive Secretary of the AEA serve ex officio as one of eleven trustees constituting the Board of Control of the Alabama Teachers' Retirement System ⁵ and as ex officio secretary to the State Tenure Commission, ⁶ and that the President of the AEA appoint two certified, tenured classroom teachers to the Tenure Commission. ⁷ Historically, such appointees have always been AEA members. The Tenure Commission hears and determines appeals by tenured teachers who have been dismissed from employment by local boards of education. The Board of Control of the Teachers' Retirement System provides retirement allowances and other benefits to Alabama public school teachers. ⁸ Appellants also challenge the Alabama statutory provision which permits non-teacher AEA staff, but not ASFT staff, to participate in the State Teachers' Retirement System. ⁹

II. Equal Protection

The court below held that appellants had "failed to meet their burden of demonstrating that the statutes in question bore no rational relationship to any legitimate state interest" ¹⁰ and had therefore failed to overcome the presumption that state statutes are constitutional. The appellants argue that this holding was erroneous for two reasons. First, ASFT asserts that Alabama failed to meet its burden of coming forward and articulating through a competent witness ¹¹ its legitimate interests in the statutory scheme. Second, ASFT argues that no rational basis exists to support the statutory discrimination between the AEA and ASFT.

We believe appellants' first contention misstates the burden of proof requirements in a "rational basis" equal protection challenge. Supreme Court precedent holds that state statutes are presumed constitutional even in the absence of any express legislative purpose. "Legislatures are presumed to have acted constitutionally even if source materials normally resorted to for ascertaining their grounds for action are otherwise silent, and statutory classifications will be set aside only if no grounds can be conceived to justify them." McDonald v. Board of Election Commissioners, 394 U.S. 802, 809, 89 S.Ct. 1404, 1408, 22 L.Ed.2d 739 (1969). The burden is therefore on the party challenging the statute to "negative every conceivable basis which might support it." Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 88, 60 S.Ct. 406, 408, 84 L.Ed. 590 (1940). See New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297 (1976); Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co., 410 U.S. 356, 93 S.Ct. 1001, 35 L.Ed.2d 351 (1973).

We therefore address appellants' second argument that the statutory classification lacked any rational basis. Although the traditional two-tier equal protection analysis recently has been somewhat unsettled, ¹² we believe that the "rational basis" test is still accurately summarized by the Supreme Court's language in McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). There the Court stated:

Although no precise formula has been developed, the Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the States a wide scope of discretion in enacting laws which affect some groups of citizens differently than others. The constitutional safeguard is offended only if the classification rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the State's objective. State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power despite the fact that, in practice, their laws result in some inequality. A statutory discrimination will not be set aside if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it.

Id. at 425-26, 81 S.Ct. at 1104-05. See New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303-04, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 2516-17, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1976); American Real Estate Institute, Inc. v. Alabama Real Estate Commission, 605 F.2d 931, 933-34 (5th Cir. 1979).

In its brief the state offered several suggested bases for validating the statutes at issue, chiefly relying on the comparative size of the AEA to ASFT, and the position of the AEA as a long-standing body representing all educational interests. We deem the AEA's comparative size it represents 92% of Alabama's public school teachers a rational basis for the state's grants of power to AEA officers to be ex officio members of the Tenure Commission and the Board of Control of the Alabama Teachers' Retirement System and to designate teachers to the Tenure Commission. A limited number of seats constitute, and are feasible on, each of these bodies. The state acts rationally in allotting such seats to the AEA as the organization which represents the overwhelming proportion of Alabama's teachers. Moreover, because the AEA represents school principals and other teacher-supervisors excluded from the ASFT, the Alabama legislature may have reasoned that the AEA was the proper body to have representatives on committees whose decisions would affect all teaching personnel, rather than only classroom teachers.

Similarly, the statutory exclusion of ASFT non-teacher staff from participating in the retirement program, despite inclusion of similar AEA staff, rationally relates to the state interest in providing a stable retirement system for teachers and other personnel with the least administrative cost and burden. The legislature rationally could have concluded that the long-standing position of the AEA as the major representative of educational personnel, as well as the AEA's significant contributions to the initial planning of the retirement system, ¹³ warranted the additional administrative expense of including non-teacher staff of the AEA in the retirement program, while refusing to assume that administrative burden for the staff of other school-related organizations which had yet to demonstrate the longevity and dedication of the AEA. ¹⁴ See City of Charlotte v. Local 660, International Association of Firefighters, 426 U.S. 283, 96 S.Ct. 2036, 48 L.Ed.2d 636 (1976) (holding that the failure of the city to withhold union dues from employees' paychecks despite withholding for a variety of other purposes was a reasonable way for the city to avoid the administrative burden of providing withholding for any group requesting it); Arkansas State Highway Employees Local 1315 v. Kell, 628 F.2d 1099 (8th Cir. 1980) (following Charlotte under similar facts).

In short, while the Alabama legislature might have adopted a more objective scheme for determining retirement participation,

the judiciary may not sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines; in the local economic sphere, it is only the invidious discrimination, the wholly arbitrary act, which cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.

New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303-304, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 2516-17, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1976). Because we cannot say that the line drawn by the Alabama legislature is "wholly arbitrary," we conclude that the statute survives the "rational basis" test.

III. Freedom of Association

Appellants also contend that Alabama's statutory preferences in favor of the AEA infringe appellants' first amendment right of freedom of association without compelling state interest.

The first amendment protects the right of an individual to speak freely, to advocate ideas, to associate with others, and to petition his...