Cotter v. City of Chelsea

• Decision Date: 30 September 1952
• Citation: 329 Mass. 314,108 N.E.2d 47
• Parties: COTTER et al. v. COTY OF CHELSEA.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 47

108 N.E.2d 47

329 Mass. 314

COTTER et al. v. COTY OF CHELSEA.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

Argued May 7, 1952.

Decided Sept. 30, 1952.

A. K. Carey, Boston, F. J. Gronding, Danvers, for petitioners.

A. E. Finger, City Solicitor, Chelsea, for the respondent.

C. B. Cross and C. C. Worth, Boston, by leave of court, submitted a brief as amici curiae.

Before QUA, C. J., and LUMMUS, RONAN, WILKINS and SPALDING, JJ.

QUA, Chief Justice.

This is a petition by ten or more taxable inhabitants of the city under G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 71, § 34, as appearing in St.1939, c. 294, to require the city to provide a sum of money (plus twenty-five per cent thereof) equal to an alleged 'deficiency' resulting from the failure of the city to appropriate for public schools in 1950 the full amount estimated and requested by the school committee. The case was presented to the Superior Court on a statement of agreed facts, and was reserved and reported without decision.

On November 25, 1947, the school committee voted 'that all married teachers who are the sole support of his own wife, her own husband or his or her own children under eighteen years of age be granted a dependency allowance of $300 per annum.' The principal question presented is whether this vote was valid, so that the city was obliged to appropriate a sum sufficient to cover the so called allowances. The city had previously accepted the 'equal pay law,' G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 71, § 40. This section as appearing in St.1949, c. 684, contained these provision, 'Women teachers employed in the same grades and doing the same type of work with the same preparation and training as men teachers shall be paid at the same rate as men teachers. Such equal pay shall not be effected by reducing the pay of men teachers.' ¹ In 1950 there were in Chelsea two hundred thirty day school teachers of whom seventy-one were men and one hundred fiftynine were women. Under the vote of the committee sixty-five men and five women would be entitled to the 'dependency allowance.' ²

The city has argued that this 'dependency allowance' was a mere gift. We do not think so. It was not intended as a single payment for services previously rendered. It was evidently intended as a permanent future increase in the salaries of those entitled to it as a part of the compensation for their work. It was actually paid to them for more than two years before the city refused the necessary appropriation for the year 1950. It had fewer of the elements of a gift than did the so called 'bonus' held valid in Attorney General v. Woburn, 317 Mass. 465, 58 N.E.2d 746, or the pay for 'sick leave' held valid in Averell v. City of Newburyport, 241 Mass. 333, 135 N.E. 463, and in Quinlan v. Cambridge, 320 Mass. 124, 68 N.E.2d 11, or the vacation pay held valid in Wood v. Haverhill, 174 Mass. 578, 55 N.E. 381. Compare Whittaker v. City of Salem, 216 Mass. 483, 104 N.E. 350. See Friend v Gilbert, 108 Mass. 408; Selectmen of Brookline v. Allen, 325 Mass. 482, 485-486, 90 N.E.2d 903.

It is also argued that the vote violates the equal pay law. We do not see that it does. We think that this statute must be construed in the light of its obvious purpose, which was to secure general equality between men and women teachers in the matter of pay. We do not think that it was intended to prevent differentiation among teachers based upon classifications which the school committee could reasonably and lawfully make, whether or not based upon grade, type of work, and preparation and training, so long as they were not discriminatory between the sexes. It does not mean that every woman teacher must necessarily receive the same pay as every man teacher, even if doing the same type of work in the same grade with the same preparation and training without regard to any other consideration, any more than it means that every woman teacher must necessarily receive the same pay as every other woman teacher in the same circumstances. If the statute meant that committees could take into account nothing but the three factors mentioned in the statute, its practical effect would be to forbid them to make any salary differences based upon such important factors as demonstrated ability to teach, 'capacity for the government of schools' G.L. (Ter.Ed.) c. 71, § 38, and other important factors, and so would cut down the committees' freedom of action in matters having nothing to do with sex. See School District No. 10 in Uxbridge v. Mowry, 9 Allen 94; Board of School Trustees v. Moore, 218 Ind. 386, 33 N.E.2d 114, 133 A.L.R. 1431; Morris v. Williams, 8 Cir., 149 F.2d 703, 708. We do not think that the vote here in question does discriminate between the sexes. It does directly affect more men than women, but this must be because there are more married men teachers with dependents than there are married women teachers with dependents. Married women teachers with dependents, of whom there are a few, do share in the benefit on an exact level with the men. This view seems to be substantially the same as that expressed in relation to a similar statute in Liva v. Board of Education of Lyndhurst, 126 N.J.L. 221, 18 A.2d 704. See Moses v. Board of Education of Syracuse, 245 N.Y. 106, 156 N.E. 631.

We are now brought to the question whether the school committee had power to classify any teachers as to compensation with relation to their having or not having persons dependent upon them for support. School committees have 'general charge' of public schools and undoubtedly have full power to make reasonable and proper contracts with teachers and to fix their pay. G.L.(Ter.Ed.) c. 71, §§ 37, 38. Batchelder v. Salem, 4 Cush. 599. Watt v. Chelmsford, 323 Mass. 697, 700, 84 N.E.2d 28, and cases cited. Attorney General v. Town of Ware, 328 Mass. 18, 20, 101 N.E.2d 365. But, as with other boards charged with the performance of public functions, all of their acts must be within the authority committed to them and must bear some rational relation to the furthering of the objects for which the board exists. Quinlan v. Cambridge, 320 Mass. 124, 130-131, 68 N.E.2d 11; Kinzer v. Directors of the Independent School District of Marion, 129 Iowa 441, 444, 445, 105 N.W. 686, 3 L.R.A.,N.S., 496. When a public board sets up standards of pay not directly related to the work performed but varying with the private personal status of the employee it is treading upon dangerous ground. See Houghton v. School Committee of Somerville, 306 Mass. 542, 544, 28 N.E.2d 1001. School committees are not charged with the task of ironing out the inequalities of life or setting up systems of social welfare. If the vote is to be held valid it must be because the committee could reasonably believe that it would be for the good of the school system to pay more for teachers having dependents. In Rinaldo v. School Committee of Revere, 294 Mass. 167, 1 N.E.2d 37, we held, following Sheldon v. School Committee of Hopedale, 276 Mass. 230, 177 N.E. 94, that a school committee could exclude married women from its teaching force, but that decision rested upon special grounds, including the existence of a widely held belief that it was better for the schools that married women should not teach in them. To the same effect is Houghton v. School Committee of Somerville, 306 Mass. 542, 28 N.E.2d 1001. See Coleman v. School District of Rochester, 87 N.H. 465, 471-472, 183 A. 586. In Opinion of the Justices, 303 Mass. 631, at pages 646, 650, 656, 22 N.E.2d 49, 123 A.L.R. 199, all...