Faulkner v. Jones
| Decision Date | 13 April 1995 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-1978,94-1978 |
| Citation | 51 F.3d 440 |
| Parties | , 99 Ed. Law Rep. 99 Shannon Richey FAULKNER; United States of America, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James E. JONES, Jr., Chairman, Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Carrol A. Campbell, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; T. Easton Marchant, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Barbara S. Nielsen, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; William F. Prioleau, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; William E. Jenkinson, III, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Leonard C. Fulghum, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; James M. Leland, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; John A. McAllister, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; David S. Boyd, Jr., Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Julian G. Frasier, III, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; James W. Bradin, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Larry J. Ferguson, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Steve D. Peper, Member of the Board of Visitors of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Wallace I. West, Jr., Director of Admissions and Recruiting at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; Claudius E. Watts, III, President of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, in their official capacities; State of South Carolina; the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina; the Board of Visitors of the Citadel, the Military Col |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
ARGUED: Morris Dawes Cooke, Jr., Barnwell, Whaley, Patterson & Helms, Charleston, Robert Holmes Hood, Hood Law Firm, Charleston, SC, for appellants. Valorie Kay Vojdik, New York University School of Law, New York City, for appellee Faulkner; Thomas Evans Chandler, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for appellee U.S. ON BRIEF: William R. Hearn, Jr., Joseph C. Wilson, IV, Hood Law Firm, Charleston, SC, Griffin B. Bell, William A. Clineburg, Jr., Dwight J. Davis, King & Spalding, Atlanta, GA, Robert H. Patterson, Jr., Anne Marie Whittemore, William G. Broaddus, J. William Boland, McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe, Richmond, VA, for appellants. Sara L. Mandelbaum, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Women's Rights Project, Henry Weisburg, Thomas F. Swift, Mary K. Warren, Vanessa Beever, Shearman & Sterling, New York City, Robert R. Black, Charleston, SC, Suzanne E. Coe, Silver & Coe, Greenville, SC, for appellee Faulkner; Deval L. Patrick, Asst. Atty. Gen., David K. Flynn, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for appellee U.S. Marcia Greenberger, Deborah L. Brake, National Women's Law Center, Walter J. Rockler, Peter G. Neiman, Arnold & Porter, Washington, DC, for amici curiae Nat. Women's Law Center, et al. Joan E. Bertin, Program on Gender, Science and Law, Columbia University School of Public Health, New York City, for amici curiae Gilligan, et al.
Before HALL, NIEMEYER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed as modified and remanded by published opinion. Judge NIEMEYER wrote the opinion in which Judge HALL concurred. Judge HALL wrote a separate concurring opinion; Judge HAMILTON wrote a dissenting opinion.
We are presented with the questions of (1) whether South Carolina and The Citadel, in refusing Shannon R. Faulkner admission to The Citadel, denied her equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and (2) whether the remedy ordered by the district court is an appropriate one. In a bifurcated remedial order, the district court directed first that Faulkner be admitted to The Citadel's Corps of Cadets "forthwith" and second that South Carolina and The Citadel proceed "without delay" to formulate, adopt, and implement a plan for women other than Faulkner by the beginning of the 1995-96 school year which conforms with the Equal Protection Clause.
We affirm the district court's ruling that South Carolina and The Citadel are denying Faulkner equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As for the remedy, we affirm with modification, remanding the case to the district court (1) to establish a new, practicable but prompt timetable in requiring defendants to formulate, adopt, and implement a remedial plan that conforms with the Equal Protection Clause, and (2) to require The Citadel to admit Faulkner to the Corps of Cadets by the date in August 1995 when the Cadets are required to report, if such plan is not approved by the court and implemented before that date.
When Shannon Faulkner, a female high school senior, was refused admission to The Citadel, South Carolina's state-supported military college, pursuant to its male-only admission policy, she filed suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, alleging that South Carolina and The Citadel denied her equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pending the litigation, the district court, by preliminary injunction, required The Citadel to allow Faulkner to attend day classes, but did not order The Citadel to admit her to the Corps of Cadets, and we affirmed that preliminary injunction. Faulkner v. Jones, 10 F.3d 226 (4th Cir.1993). Following a two-week bench trial on the merits, the district court found that the defendants were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and ordered, on July 22, 1994, that The Citadel "forthwith admit Shannon Richey Faulkner to the South Carolina Corps of Cadets under such terms and conditions as this court hereafter orders." Faulkner v. Jones, 858 F.Supp. 552, 569 (D.S.C.1994). The court also directed that for women other than Faulkner the defendants "without delay ... formulate, adopt, and implement a plan that conforms with the Equal Protection Clause." Id. Pursuant to a subsequent hearing to determine the conditions under which Faulkner would be admitted to the Corps of Cadets, the court entered an order on August 5, 1994, accepting those conditions on which the parties agreed and resolving their remaining disagreements. 1
This appeal followed.
In United States v. Commonwealth of Virginia (VMI I), 976 F.2d 890 (4th Cir.1992), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 2431, 124 L.Ed.2d 651 (1993), we held that Virginia's maintenance of a male-only admissions policy at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) without the provision of a comparable opportunity for women was not justified by a state policy of providing diversity in education, and we therefore concluded that Virginia was violating the Equal Protection Clause. We remanded the case to the district court to give Virginia the responsibility of selecting a remedial course, and we noted that, among available permissible courses of action, Virginia could (1) change its policy at VMI and admit women, adjusting the program to implement that choice; (2) establish parallel institutions or programs for men and women; or (3) abandon state support of VMI, allowing that institution to pursue its own policies as a private institution. On remand, Virginia elected to provide single-gender education to both genders by continuing to provide male-only education at VMI and by establishing a women's institute with distinctive leadership training at Mary Baldwin College. The district court approved the plan and, in United States v. Commonwealth of Virginia (VMI II), 44 F.3d 1229 (4th Cir.1995), we affirmed.
In VMI II, applying a special intermediate scrutiny test designed to analyze a state's provision of single-gender education, we held that Virginia's plan of providing single-gender education is not a pernicious state objective. On the contrary, because the state presented sufficient data to support the proposition that a sexually-neutral environment yields concrete educational benefits, we concluded that Virginia could opt for single-gender education as a legitimate and important part of its overall objective of providing higher education to its citizens. We noted, however, that when providing single-gender education to one gender, Virginia could not, without adequate justification, deny a substantively comparable benefit...
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