Conyers v. Glenn

• Decision Date: 20 January 1971
• Docket Number: No. 69--635,69--635
• Citation: 243 So.2d 204
• Parties: John W. CONYERS, a minor, by his mother and next friend, Janet M. Conyers, Appellant, v. Robert GLENN, as Principal of Clearwater High School, et al., Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 204

243 So.2d 204

John W. CONYERS, a minor, by his mother and next friend, Janet M. Conyers, Appellant, v. Robert GLENN, as Principal of Clearwater High School, et al., Appellees.

No. 69--635.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

Jan. 20, 1971.

Michael O. Plunkett, Clearwater, for appellant.

Edward A. Turville, St. Petersburg, for appellees.

MANN, Judge.

Conyers had parental consent to wear his hair long, but was suspended from Clearwater High School without a hearing for failure to cut it. He sought a temporary injunction and a hearing before the School Board on his contention that the regulation violated his constitutional rights.

The trial judge granted a temporary injunction, permitting Conyers to remain in school pending decision of his case. At a later hearing the trial judge announced that he would hear argument, but had prepared a lengthy order in which he found that Conyers was not entitled to due process, reasoning that the School Board was no more obligated to grant a hearing than are a child's parents. The complaint was dismissed.

One can understand how a trial judge, after researching the matter briefly, might be led to this conclusion. If he began with American Jurisprudence he would have read the following in 47 Am.Jur., Schools § 171:

'Clothes or Personal Appearance of Pupils.--In accord with the general principle that school authorities may make reasonable rules and regulations governing the conduct of pupils under their control, school authorities may prescribe the kind of dress to be worn by students or make reasonable regulations as to their personal appearance. Thus, so long as students are under the control of school authorities they may be required to wear a designated uniform or may be forbidden to use face powder or cosmetics or to wear transparent hosiery, low-necked dresses, or any style of clothing tending toward immodesty in dress.'

Referring to the annotations cited, he would have learned that in Jones v. Day, 1921, 127 Miss. 136, 89 So. 906, 18 A.L.R. 645, the Supreme Court of Mississippi upheld a rule of the trustees of the Wilkinson County Agricultural High School requiring students to wear khaki uniforms. In 1923 the Supreme Court of Arkansas upheld the suspension of a girl for failure to remove powder she had worn for cosmetic purposes. Pugsley v. Sellmeyer, 158 Ark. 247, 250 S.W. 538, 30 A.L.R. 1212. A glimmer of dissent as to reasonableness of such regulations appears: Mr. Justice Hart said, 'Miss Pearl Pugsley was eighteen years old on the 15th of August, 1922. I think that a rule forbidding a girl pupil of her age from putting talcum powder on her face is so far unreasonable and beyond the exercise of discretion that the court should say that the board of directors acted without authority in making and enforcing it. 'Useless laws diminish the authority of necessary ones.' The tone of the majority opinion exemplifies the wisdom of this old proverb.'

In 1965 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts unanimously upheld the power of the school authorities to deny admission to a long-haired student. Leonard v. School Committee of Attleboro, 1965, 349 Mass. 704, 212 N.E.2d 468, 14 A.L.R.3d 1192. In the annotation which follows at page 1201, the legal scholar following this method of research would read of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1966, 258 F.Supp. 971, in which the federal district court upheld the right of a school board to forbid the wearing of black armbands protesting our involvement in Vietnam.

But he would not learn of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, 1969, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731, which reversed that decision and makes it perfectly clear that students are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and entitled to due process.

We follow Tinker and hold that this complaint was at least prematurely dismissed. Fla.Const. Decl. of Rights § 9, F.S.A., U.S.Const. Amend. XIV.

But what is due process? This is a larger and more complex question.

The order appealed from is grounded on the theory that parental authority has been transferred by the will of the majority to the board, and that the board has authority to prescribe the students' dress. The corollary of this proposition is that if these long-haired young, grown to legal age, sufficiently persuade their fellow citizens to elect, by a bare majority, a bare majority of a school board, then that governmental body shall have the authority, by vote of its new majority, to suspend the student who cuts his hair during the term.

We cannot uphold the regulation for violation of which Conyers was suspended without according the same right of governance to future school boards. We would surmise that many who are not offended in the slightest by the imposition of the collective will on the long-haired boy of today would be early advocates of the short-haired individual's right to be different in a long-haired society. It is principle, not fashion, to which judges must repair in determining the extent to which government may invade the rights of the individual. Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510. The opinions in Griswold reveal the difficulty our Justices have in ascribing to some specific constitutional inhibition their view that the state has overstepped the limits of its power. But the one clear consequence of Griswold is that some showing of overriding public necessity is a necessary predicate to state action interfering with the freedom of the individual. Cf. State v. Eitel, Fla.1969, 227 So.2d 489. Conyers has never had a hearing on the reasonableness of this regulation and has been denied public education--a valuable right--for failure to comply with it. It is not as if he had asked and was refused permission to absent himself momentarily from the classroom. The failure to comply is punished by summary suspension of his education, and on the meager record before us there is no justification for this. We can understand how, after reading American Jurisprudence and cases reported in A.L.R., the trial judge might think himself on sound ground when he states:

'I cannot and do not question the authority of the people of this state, speaking through their constitution and their legislature, to have entrusted to their duly elected and appointed school officials responsibility and authority respecting many matters concerning their children which a few years past would have been considered the exclusive prerogative and duty of the parents. Among such matters which have been entrusted to the school authorities are those of dress and appearance and conduct during school hours or on school property. I firmly believe the legislature could require that all persons over six and under sixteen attend public school six days per week and wear a uniform specified by the legislature: by the same authority the legislature has authorized the public school authorities to adopt reasonable rules and regulations respecting appearance, conduct and attire. So long as the regulations adopted are reasonable, so long as they do not exceed the authority constitutionally delegated by the legislature, they will not be abrogated by this court.'

But the trouble is that the school board and the parent are in disagreement: one says he may not and the other says he may wear his hair long. If the school board said simply that Conyers could not scuff the floor with cleats on his shoes it would have unquestioned authority to do so and would not conflict with the parent's authority to let the child tap dance on the dining room table if he wanted to. ¹ Both the board and the parent cannot prevail with respect to the length of the boy's hair. Appellees' argument that the Marines cut the hair of recruits overlooks the facts. The Marine does not go home every afternoon, and the high school is not a Marine barracks. The question here is whether the parent or the board is to control with respect to a matter as to which both cannot prevail. Unless the board can show some overriding necessity, this part of the child's nurture rests with the parent.

The trial judge asks: 'Can it be questioned that our citizens expect and demand that our public schools teach manners and morals and that these manners and morals be taught consistent with the prevailing thought of the majority? Whatever we may think about it, however we may deplore it, a fact of existence in this country and this state today is that a great proportion of our parents have abdicated their parental duties and authorities except in a most general way and insist these are the responsibilities of the public school system.' This statement is overbroad. The family is not obsolete in American life. Conyers has parental consent to wear his hair long. If the Pinellas County School Board wishes to Teach Conyers what the sentiments of the American majority are it may do so. But it cannot deny him the right to an education in the absence of a showing that his conduct As an individual infringes on the rights of other students to an education. This it failed to do. The question of hair length is one of fashion, ² not morality. Throughout history, fashion has changed, and to suggest a moral question here is to malign the memory of our leaders whose portraits are on our currency, of Minute Men who took up muskets to win the right of the individual to make his own decisions free of unwarranted governmental interference. A clear majority of the Chief Justices of the United States would be ineligible by the Pinellas Board's standards to matriculate at Clearwater High School. ³

The cases in which suspension of students for wearing long hair has been upheld fall either into the category of those upholding school board authority either prior to or without acknowledging the change in constitutional standards wrought by such cases as Tinker and In re Gault, 1967, 387 U.S....