Alberda v. Noell

• Decision Date: 19 February 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 454,35955,Civ. A. No. 35357,Civ. A. No. 3069
• Citation: 322 F. Supp. 1379
• Parties: Daniel ALBERDA et al., Plaintiffs, v. John NOELL et al., Defendants. SWARTZ CREEK TEACHERS ASSOCIATION et al., Plaintiffs, v. SWARTZ CREEK COMMUNITY SCHOOLS et al., Defendants. John METZELAAR a Minor, et al., Plaintiffs, v. MILAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS et al., Defendants. Steve CHMELA et al., Plaintiffs, v. Martin SVILAND et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

322 F. Supp. 1379

Daniel ALBERDA et al., Plaintiffs, v. John NOELL et al., Defendants.

SWARTZ CREEK TEACHERS ASSOCIATION et al., Plaintiffs, v. SWARTZ CREEK COMMUNITY SCHOOLS et al., Defendants.

John METZELAAR a Minor, et al., Plaintiffs, v. MILAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS et al., Defendants.

Steve CHMELA et al., Plaintiffs, v. Martin SVILAND et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 3069, N. D., Civ. A. No. 454, S. D. Flint, Civ. A. Nos. 35357, 35955, S. D.

United States District Court, E. D. Michigan.

February 19, 1971.

Paul Doner, Director Bay-Midland Legal Aid Society, James G. Orford, Ralph I. Selby, Bay City, Mich., for Daniel Alberda and others.

William M. Lambert, Bay City, Mich., for John Noell and others.

Wallace K. Sagendorph, Erwin B. Ellmann, Detroit, Mich., for Swartz Creek Teachers Assn. and others.

Frederick E. Salim, Flint, Mich., for Swartz Creek Community Schools and others.

David I. Goldstein, Washtenaw County Legal Aid Society, Fred S. Steingold, Ann Arbor, Mich., for John Metzelaar and others.

Joseph Delaney, Flint, Mich., for Milan Public Schools and others.

Ronald Reosti, Detroit, Mich., for Steve Chmela and others.

Arthur Heidt, Jr., Westland, Mich., for Martin Sviland and others.

OPINION

ROTH, District Judge.

These four cases involve school matters relating to students' grooming styles, a teacher's facial grooming, and a truancy suspension. For the purpose of deciding whether we should entertain jurisdiction of them in a United States District Court, the circumstantial differences we consider of no decisive moment. With some poetic license we classify them as "hair" cases, and in the interest of judicial economy, propose to deal with them in a single ruling.

In filing these cases the plaintiffs have punched various constitutional and statutory buttons: the major keys being the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution; the minor keys being Title 28, United States Code, Sections 1343(3) and (4), 2201 and 2202, and Title 42, United States Code, Sections 1975, 1981 and 1983. There is no indication in any of these cases that the plaintiffs, or any one of them, have sought relief from the courts of the State of Michigan, much less any claim that they have resorted to such courts and have been improperly denied relief.

It would appear from the number of "hair" cases in the federal reports that many federal courts have responded with a Pavlovian-type conditioned reflex, and considerable alacrity, in exercising jurisdiction of claims arising from dress and grooming codes or regulations. It may be that the discipline of training of federal judges has conditioned them to react almost automatically, and in a favorable way, to what are purely rhetorical and, perhaps, faulty or highly questionable assertions of constitutional violations. It may be that this kind of case offers federal judges a pleasurable escape from the more usual, garden-variety federal cases—a welcome change of judicial diet, as it were. Whether this use of federal judicial man-hours in cases of this class is justified, necessary or required is really our basic question, as we see it (conceding that our vision is less than perfect).

It should be noted that these cases raise havoc with our calendars requiring as they do, interruptions of our regularly scheduled matters for the purpose of hearing applications for restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, in what are alleged, as they always are, emergency situations. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch" or at our ordinary chores, we are under the gun to expedite our disposition of criminal cases, school desegregation cases, old civil cases, multiple district cases, and the like.

We begin our discussion of what we have chosen to call "hair"¹ cases by making a brief survey of the "territory."² The estimated total educational enrollment in the United States for the 1971-72 school year will be almost 60 million, with over 15 million in secondary schools. In 1969-70 there were over 27,000 public secondary schools. In the current school year over 40 billion dollars is being spent on public education; of this amount the federal government is supplying some two and one-half billion, the states 15 and one-half billions, and local contributions amount to over 20 billions.³

In the State of Michigan there are over 800 public high schools in 686 school districts. We say nothing of the number of junior high schools and elementary schools. To cope with this class of potential litigation the State of Michigan is allotted 12 United States District Judges, whereas the State of Michigan provides manpower in terms of 119 circuit judgeships. By a recent count the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan had pending before it more than 20 cases of this variety.

In searching for guidance we look in vain to the United States Supreme Court for it appears reluctant to furnish us with guidelines in the area of hair-styling and dress, although the opportunity has been more than once presented. See Ferrell v. Dallas Independent School District, 392 F.2d 697, cert. denied, 1968, 393 U.S. 856, 89 S.Ct. 98, 21 L. Ed.2d 125, and Breen v. Kahl, 419 F.2d 1034, cert. denied 1970, 398 U.S. 937, 90 S.Ct. 1836, 26 L.Ed.2d 268. Between the dates of these rulings the Court handed down its decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731, 1969, and took occasion to say:

"The problem posed by the present case does not relate to regulation of the length of skirts or the type of clothing, to hair style, or deportment. Cf. Ferrell v. Dallas Independent School District, 392 F.2d 697 (C.A. 5th Cir. 1968); Pugsley v. Sellmeyer, 158 Ark. 247, 250 S.W. 538 30 A.L.R. 1212 (1923)."

Mr. Justice Hugo Black in his dissent in Tinker, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731, at 749 expressed the view that school matters are best and most properly left to local school authorities and to the states. The public press reports that on February 11, 1971, Mr. Justice Black said that the Constitution does not give high school students the right to wear their hair long. He is quoted as saying that:

"Surely the federal judiciary can perform no greater service to the nation than to leave the states unhampered in the performance of their purely local affairs. Surely few policies can be thought of in which states are more capable of deciding than the length of hair of schoolboys." (See Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 11, 1971.)

Justice Black is reported to have added that "lawyers should not be pressing the Supreme Court with `emergency motions' claiming the nation will be in crisis unless long hair is allowed."⁴

If a layman's opinion is proper in this setting we might observe that each head of hair, like each fingerprint, is different. Is it a potential federal case whenever a conflict develops between rule and hair? Must we have national standards for hair-styling and dress? Can we not leave room for variety in our national life, and allow for differences in what are thought proper standards of appearance for school children of, for example, Alaska and Alabama? And what of keeping such standards current? We can be fairly certain that what is popular now will not be in the future, just as it was not in the past.

We strongly suspect that if the Supreme Court of the United States decides to get into the barbering business, and unless it holds simply, in the alternative, either that public school children may wear their hair and dress themselves as they wish,⁵ or that these matters are more properly left to the states, all federal courts will find themselves in another judicial morass like that in the field of obscenity. The avalanche of litigation in that field should be a forewarning of the portending mass of school litigation which most surely will engulf us.

It is hornbook law that the Constitution and laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land, and judges in every state are bound thereby, anything in the laws of the state to the contrary notwithstanding. And under Clause 2, Article VI, of the Constitution, the interpretation placed on the Constitution and laws of the United States by decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States is controlling upon state courts and must be followed even though such decisions are inconsistent with its prior decisions. It is our observation that the courts of the State of Michigan are following these basic decisional guidelines and protecting the constitutional rights of their litigants every working day. In consequence, as we see it, when a federal court entertains jurisdiction in such matters as are before us in these cases, it is saying, in effect, that local authorities and state courts are incompetent to deal with such things. This is an unnecessary and unjustified reflection on the state courts. We know of no special training or peculiar qualification of the federal bench which especially fits it for handling this litigation.⁶

Recent years have seen an alarming increase in resort to federal courts.⁷ It has prompted Mr. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, in his "State of the Federal Judiciary" message, delivered before the American Bar Association, at St. Louis, Missouri, on August 10, 1970, to point out:

"As to the future I can do no more than emphasize that the federal court system is for a limited purpose and lawyers, the Congress and the public must examine carefully each demand they make on that system. People speak glibly of putting all the problems of pollution, of crowded cities, of consumer class actions and others in the federal courts. We should look more to state courts familiar with local conditions and local problems." (Emphasis supplied.)

The Chief Justice also called for a study of the "existing jurisdiction of federal courts with special attention to proper allocation of judicial functions as between state...