Hobbs v. Germany

Decision Date31 May 1909
Citation49 So. 515,94 Miss. 469
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
PartiesGEORGE A. HOBBS ET AL. v. WILLIAM T. GERMANY ET AL

March 1909

FROM the chancery court of Lincoln county, HON. G. GARLAND LYELL Chancellor.

Germany and his infant son, Henry Germany, appellees, were complainants in the court below; Hobbs and another, teachers and Vernon and others,--trustees of the separate school district of the town of Boguechitto, appellants, were defendants there. From a decree restraining the enforcement of a certain rule, regulating the hours of study for school children and providing that they should remain at home and study their lessons at night, and requiring defendants to reinstate the infant son,

Henry Germany, as a pupil in the school, defendants appealed to the supreme court.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Cassedy & Sumrall, and J. N. Yawn, for appellants.

This appeal involves the power of the public school authorities to make and enforce a rule that all pupils of the school shall remain in their homes and study, at night. The bill prayed for an injunction against the trustees and teachers to prevent the enforcement of this rule, and also prayed that they be required to reinstate young Germany in the school during the pendency of the suit. The answer admitted the adoption of the rule and its proposed enforcement. The chancellor retained the injunction against the school authorities, and from a decree to such effect this appeal is prosecuted.

The chancery court had no jurisdiction in this matter. Code 1906, § 4503, provides an inferior tribunal to settle controversies arising under the school law and also provides for an appeal from the advice of the county superintendent to the state board of education. Code 1906, § 4487, provides that the state board of education shall decide all such appeals. Sec. 203 of our state constitution of 1890 provides for a board of education not only for the management and investment of school funds but also "for the performance of such other duties as may be prescribed." And sec. 204 of the state constitution provides that there shall be a county superintendent of education whose duty shall be prescribed by law. The legislature had the authority under the constitution to create this special school tribunal and to refer to such tribunal the settlement of all controversy arising under the school law.

It is true that every citizen has the right to send his children to the public school of the state under certain conditions and restrictions. But in the exercise of such right he must conform to the rules laid down by the legislature or by the tribunal to which the legislature has delegated authority in the mattter. If the chancery court has been named as the tribunal for the exercise of such authority, the jurisdiction of such court would have been inclusive and unquestioned. But the legislature has, as shown above, expressly conferred exclusive authority upon the officers designated in Code 1906, § 4487-4503. Since the appellees did not avail themselves of this special tribunal, they can now have no standing in any court.

The powers and duties of the trustees are clearly set forth in Code 1906, § 4525. They have the undoubted authority to prescribe rules for the government of the schools in their district, and inasmuch as there is no question in this case as to whether the rules prescribed were inconsistent with those prescribed by the state board of education, the only other question presented naturally is whether the rule which they did prescribe was inconsistent with the law. Certainly the rule, which prescribed that all pupils of the school should remain in the home and study for two hours on the night of every school day, was not illegal in the sense that it was in conflict with the state constitution. The state, in providing a free school system, did so to enable the parent to perform his common law duty to educate his child, and the rules of the school are applicable to the parent as well as to the child. Cartersville Board of Education v. Purse, 101 Ga. 422. It is undoubted that the teachers and the board have jurisdiction over the pupil after school hours and in the interim of time between dismissal of the school and resumption of parental control. Deskins v. Gose, 85 Mo. 485. See also Hutton v. State, 23 Tex. Ct. App. 386; Jones v. Cody (Mich.), 62 L. R. A. 160; Burdick v. Burdick, 31 Ia. 562; v. Seaver, 32 Vt. 114.

At common law the presumption is that a rule of a board of school trustees is reasonable, and courts of law will not interfere with the enforcement thereof unless it is so palpably unreasonable as to be void. Kinzer v. Toms, 129 Ia. 441; Wayland v. School Directors, 7 L. R. A. (N. S.) 352; Ferriter v. Tyler, 48 Vt. 448.

P. Z. Jones, Jno. A. McNair, and Luther L. Tyler, for appellee.

The rule promulgated by the school authorities is illegal in that it seeks to usurp parental authority. Gritt v. Snodgrass, 66 Mo. 286. While a person who teaches a private school may say upon what terms he will receive the pupil and may, before receiving the pupil, demand that the parents shall surrender so much of his or her parental authority as not to allow the pupil during the term to attend social parties, balls or theatres except on pain of expulsion, this principle will not apply with regard to officers of public schools, since every child within the school age has a right, under the law, to attend the public school of his district. When the school room is entered by the pupil the authority of the parent ceases and that of the teacher begins, but when sent to his home the authority of the teacher ends and that of the parent resumes. Certainly neither teacher nor board of school trustees can have power or authority in law to adopt any rule governing the conduct of the pupil after the pupil enters the precincts of his own home and comes within the jurisdiction of parental control; with the exception as to some matters that are per se immoral and have a direct tendency to subvert and override the power of the teacher in the proper administration of school affairs.

The question of the reasonableness of the rule and regulation established by the school officers is one of law, to be decided by the courts. Mechem, Pub. Off. § 720; Fertich v. Michener, 111 Ind. 472, 60 Am. Rep. 709, 11 N.E. 605; Kinzer v. Independent School Dist. (Kinzer v. Toms), 129 Iowa 441, 3 L. R. A. (N. S.) 496, 105 N.W. 686, 6 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 996; Rodgers v. Independent School Dist., 56 Iowa 321, 69 N.W. 544; Perkins v. Independent School Dist., 56 Iowa 476, 9 N.W. 356; Kinkle v. Saddler, 97 Iowa 526, 66 N.W. 765; Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U.S. 531, 23 L.Ed. 623; Noble v. Union River Logging R. C., 147 U.S. 172, 37 L.Ed. 126, 13 S.Ct. 271; 16 Cyc. Law & Proc. p. 36, § 4.

A school rule must be not only reasonable within itself but its enforcement must also be reasonable in the light of circumstances. Fertich v. Michener, 111 Ind. 472.

As to the jurisdiction of the chancery court, we contend that the question of the reasonableness of the rule and of the scope of authority to be exercised by the school trustees and teachers of the separate school districts, is one of law, and reviewable in the courts of the land without resort to the quasi judicial tribunal established by Code 1906, §§ 4487, 4503. The rule is uniform that if a remedy at law after statutory enlargement remains incomplete or otherwise inadequate, jurisdiction of equity is not ousted. 16 Ciy. 36, § 4. 1 Story, Eq. § 76.

Although the jurisdiction of the county superintendent and state board of education may be not concurrent but exclusive, even then the remedy as provided is now full, adequate and complete for the purpose of this case. The restraining power of equity extends through the whole range of rights and duties recognized by law. If the legal remedy does not fully come up to the requisition of the case, the exercise of equity jurisdiction may be proper and beneficial. 5 Pom. Eq. Jur. § 263; Mills v. New Orleans Seed Co., 65 Miss. 391; 4 So. 298, Irwin v. Lewis, 50 Miss. 363; 16 Cyc. 41.

OPINION

MAYES, J.

The town of Boguechitto composes a separate school district, and the appellants are trustees thereof and teachers therein. This controversy grows out of the attempted enforcement of a certain rule, adopted by the teachers of the school and ratified by the trustees, by which it is required that all pupils of the school shall remain in their homes and study from seven to nine p. m., and the rule provides that any pupil who shall violate it shall be punished, either corporally or otherwise, in the discretion of the teacher.

Henry Germany, a boy about sixteen years of age and living with his father in the town of Boguechitto, was attending this school. Some time during October, 1908, between the hours of seven and nine p. m., the father attended religious services held nearby in the town of Norfield, and took with him his son Henry, which the teachers considered a violation of the above rule. On the son's returning to school, the teachers, in pursuance of the purpose to enforce this rule undertook to punish him for this breach of their rule, and gave him his choice of submitting to corporal punishment or confinement in the schoolroom for forty minutes during the noon hour for the period of five days. Under these facts, and being guilty of no other breach of the school law, young Germany refused to submit to either of the proposed punishments, whereupon the school authorities compelled him to withdraw from the public school. When this was done, the father, individually and the son, by the father as his next friend, began this suit in the chancery court, alleging that the adoption of...

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