Davis v. Meek

• Decision Date: 05 May 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. No. C 72-100.
• Citation: 344 F. Supp. 298
• Parties: Albert DAVIS, a minor, etc., Plaintiff, v. Clifford T. MEEK, as President of the Board of Education, etc., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

344 F. Supp. 298

Albert DAVIS, a minor, etc., Plaintiff, v. Clifford T. MEEK, as President of the Board of Education, etc., et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. C 72-100.

United States District Court, N. D. Ohio, W. D.

May 5, 1972.

Harland Britz, Toledo, Ohio, for plaintiff.

Calvin W. Bristley, Jr., City Sol., Fremont, Ohio, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

DON J. YOUNG, District Judge.

This matter was heard upon the motion of the plaintiff for a preliminary injunction, and the evidence. The complaint seeks an order restraining the defendant Board of Education members and school officials from excluding the plaintiff from extracurricular activities in the Fremont Ross High School, and also seeks damages.

At the hearing, the evidence showed that the plaintiff became eighteen years of age on January 15, 1972. On January 22, 1972, he married a young lady sixteen years of age who was at the time pregnant by him. Sometime after the marriage she suffered a miscarriage.

The plaintiff is a senior in the Fremont Ross High School. He is scholastically an honor student, and is also an excellent baseball player, having been a member of the varsity baseball team in the two immediately preceding years. Four major league scouts have talked to him, and at least four colleges have written to him expressing interest in granting him an athletic scholarship.

In March, 1970, the Board of Education of the Fremont City Schools, by a unanimous vote, adopted Section 5138 in its Policy Handbook dealing with marriage and pregnancy of school students. Among other provisions, this regulation required that a boy who "contributed to the pregnancy of any girl out of wedlock" should be restricted to classes for the balance of the school year. Normal extracurricular activities might be resumed the following school year. Any student who married, regardless of the circumstances leading to the marriage, should be restricted to classes leading to graduation.

On May 20, 1971, a new policy handbook was adopted, apparently superseding the former one. Section 6.18 of the new handbook, which was in force at all pertinent times herein, reads as follows:

Section 6.18 Marriage

A. Married pupils are permitted to attend school.

B. Married pupils are not permitted to participate in school sponsored extracurricular activities including the Junior-Senior Prom.

The plaintiff was aware of this rule before he got married. After his marriage, he was told that the rule would be enforced against him, and his name was not placed on the eligible list for baseball when the list was prepared and filed.

The defendants justify the rule by showing that students that marry usually dropped out of school, but that after the adoption of the rule, fewer students dropped out, and a larger number of those who did continued their education by a program of home instruction which was provided. Since it is desirable to keep children in school until they have graduated from high school, a policy designed to discourage marriage among students is claimed to be a proper exercise of the power of the school board.

The plaintiff's contention is that he has a constitutional right to get married, and the rule which deprives him of an important part of the school's program because of his marriage is an action taken under color of state law which interferes with his civil liberties.

This problem has been presented a few times in the past in the state courts, which have uniformly held, but often with vigorous dissents, that a rule of a board of education denying married students the right to participate in extracurricular activities is valid.

The leading case in this regard is Kissick v. Garland Ind. Sch. Dist., 330 S.W. 2d 708 (Tex.Civ.App. 1959). Other similar cases are Cochrane v. Board of Education of Mesick Consol. Sch. Dist., 360 Mich. 390, 103 N.W.2d 569 (1960); State ex rel. Baker v. Stevenson, 94 Ohio Law Abst. 545, 27 Ohio Op.2d 223, 189 N.E.2d 181 (1962), and Board of Dir. of Ind. Sch. Dist. of Waterloo v. Green, 259 Iowa 1260, 147 N.W.2d 854 (1967). In the Cochrane case, Judge Edwards, now of the Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit, was one of the majority of the members of the court which did not agree with the reasoning of the lower court, but in spite of that the decision below was affirmed by a divided court upon technical grounds, although a minority of the judges felt the decision affirmed was correct upon the merits.

The United States Courts do not seem to have addressed themselves directly to the problems involved in this action, but the questions are squarely presented here, and must be met head-on. It is not easy to do this, because on the basis of this Court's experience over almost twenty years, the plaintiff has acted wrongly, and the rules adopted by the defendants are based upon a very reasonable desire to deal with a social problem of great complexity and difficulty. This Court has previously expressed his strong approval of their objective of discouraging teenage marriages. 13 Juv. Court Judges J. 25 (April, 1962) and 11 Juv. Court Judges J. 22 (December, 1960). However, the issues cannot properly be disposed of by saying that the plaintiff does not come into equity with clean hands, or by invoking the maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio, because the strict legal basis for either of those courses is not here present.

Plaintiff's basic contention is that he has a right to get married. This is perhaps based upon a misreading of the decision of the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965). This case stands for the proposition that the right of marital privacy is within the penumbra of the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights, and that therefore neither the state or federal governments may invade that privacy.

However, the right to get married is traditionally a strictly local matter, which each state may regulate as it sees fit. Both the General Assembly of Ohio, by the enactment of marriage statutes and the Supreme Court of Ohio, by its interpretation thereof, have addressed themselves to this problem.

In keeping with the increasing complexity of our modern civilization and the absolute necessity of a certain amount of maturity and knowledge on the part of each member thereof, the General Assembly has declared that male persons under 18 and female persons under 16 do not have the maturity and knowledge requisite to the entering of the marriage relationship with a full awareness of the ensuing obligations and responsibilities to their spouses, to the society in which they would establish themselves and to the children which they would rear. The General Assembly has declared further that, although male persons between the ages of 18 and 21 and female persons between the ages of 16 and 21 might have such a degree of maturity and knowledge as to be capable of creating a stable marriage relationship in which to rear children, final judgment on such matters must be made by a mature person or an institution having such right. State v. Gans, 5 Ohio Op.2d 472, 476, 168 Ohio St. 174, 179, 151 N.E.2d 709, 712 (1958).

The Ohio Supreme Court goes on to say:

In conclusion, it is quite apparent that Section 2151.01, Revised Code, embodies some of the reasons why the public policy of this state is against `child marriages,' . . . . Thus, although the minor participants in `child marriages' are `more to be pitied than scorned,' the same attitude does not hold true of adults who participate in effecting such marriages—and it is the opinion of this court that it will behoove all adults, including parents, to discourage such marriages. Gans at 478, at 183, at 715.

This language of the Supreme Court of Ohio evidences a clear understanding of the notorious fact that the failure rate of teenage marriages is appallingly high. The defendants, too, were aware of the fact shown in evidence by plaintiff's expert witness, Dr. David Glick, that married high school students have an "unique and high drop-out rate", with almost sixty-seven percent of the girls dropping out. In the current school year, about seventy percent of the married students in the Fremont schools have dropped out.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the plaintiff did legally get married, without in doing so violating any law of the state. He had thus attained a status where his marital privacy might...