Holman v. Board of Education of City of Flint

• Decision Date: 29 January 1975
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 74-40065.
• Citation: 388 F. Supp. 792
• Parties: Ernest HOLMAN et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF FLINT, Defendants, and United Teachers of Flint, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

388 F. Supp. 792

Ernest HOLMAN et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF FLINT, Defendants, and United Teachers of Flint, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 74-40065.

United States District Court, E. D. Michigan, S. D.

January 29, 1975.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

William D. Haynes, Detroit, Mich., for plaintiffs.

C. Rees Dean, Flint, Mich., Erwin B. Ellmann, Detroit, Mich., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

PHILIP PRATT, District Judge.

Plaintiff black teachers and members of the Black Teachers Caucus of Flint bring this constitutional and statutory challenge to the agency shop clause of the master agreement between defendants Board of Education of the City of Flint and United Teachers of Flint. Because of alleged unfair representation on Boards and Committees of defendant Union, plaintiffs have submitted their resignations from membership in the United Teachers of Flint (Paragraph 5(a) of plaintiff's complaint; affidavit of P. Ernest Cole at Paragraph 4), but continue to remain bound by the agency shop clause of the master agreement with the Board of Education, which provides in pertinent part at Article III:

A. All teachers, except teachers born before November 1, 1914, shall as a condition of continued employment, by the Board:

1. Maintain membership in the UTF, or,

2. Pay, as an equivalent fee, an amount equal to the membership dues of the UTF (which dues shall include the dues of the Michigan Education Association and the National Education Association.)

E. In the event that a teacher fails to pay the membership dues or equivalent fee, the Board shall cause the termination of the employment of said teacher as of the end of the school year in which said failure occurs. The parties expressly recognize that the failure of any teacher to comply with the provisions of this article shall constitute reasonable and just cause for discharge.

It is plaintiffs' contention in this public employment setting that the above agency shop clause of the master agreement is violative of Section 1 of the Michigan Tenure of Teachers Act, M.C.L.A. 38.101, which allows discharge of a tenured teacher only for "reasonable and just cause;" and, more importantly, that said provision impermissibly chills the exercise of plaintiffs' first amendment rights of expression and association. Defendant Union has moved to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that this Court lacks jurisdiction and that the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. F.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and (6).

Plaintiffs' complaint is certainly lacking in specificity as to the jurisdictional averments and more care and precision would have been helpful in attempting to understand plaintiffs' position and would have avoided the necessity of reviewing totally inappropriate jurisdictional provisions.

Plaintiffs' reliance on the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act, Title 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201, 2202, for example, is misplaced, as that statute does not confer independent grounds of federal jurisdiction. Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U.S. 667, 70 S.Ct. 876, 94 L.Ed. 1194 (1950). In their "Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Motion to Dismiss," plaintiffs do allege jurisdiction under the federal question grant, although no specific reference is made to the appropriate section of the United States Code (Title 28 U.S.C. § 1331).

Jurisdiction under the federal question grant requires that plaintiffs' claim arise under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States and that the matter in controversy exceed the sum or value of $10,000. Claims based on the right to association and presumably the correlative right not to associate as one chooses have been recognized as falling within the ambit of the First Amendment, NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958). In addition, claims to freedom from coerced association have been argued before but have not been reached by a majority of the Supreme Court on two occasions, International Assoc. of Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740, 81 S. Ct. 1784, 6 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1961) and Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U.S. 820, 81 S. Ct. 1826, 6 L.Ed.2d 1191 (1961).

The allegations of plaintiffs' pleadings certainly fall within the parameters of NAACP v. Alabama, supra, and thereby satisfy the requirement of 28 U.S.C. 1331(a) that the case must "(arise) under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States."

It should also be noted that whether a complaint adequately states a cause of action under 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is a question of law to be determined after, and not before, the Court assumes jurisdiction. Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 682, 66 S.Ct. 773, 90 L.Ed. 939 (1946). Further, the fact that the complaint as written might arguably fail to state a cause of action upon which plaintiffs could actually recover does not necessarily divest the Court of jurisdiction. The test, posed in the negative, is that unless

". . . the alleged claim under the Constitution or federal statutes clearly appears to be immaterial and made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or where such a claim is wholly insubstantial and frivolous," Id.

the Court should assume jurisdiction. Under that standard, the complaint here is adequate for the "federal question" requirements.

In addition to arising under federal law, a claim under 28 U.S.C. 1331(a) must also involve a matter in controversy in excess of $10,000. With respect to this second requirement the defendant Union contends that its terms have not been met. It suggests that all that is at issue here is the $144.00 annual dues, which it would take more than a lifetime for any one plaintiff to amass to the $10,000 requirement. If in fact the claims of plaintiffs and the class they purport to represent can be viewed as "separate and distinct," then defendant's analysis at least correctly perceives the thrust of the Supreme Court's decision last term in Zahn v. International Paper Co., 414 U.S. 291, 94 S.Ct. 505, 38 L.Ed. 2d 511. The Court in Zahn held in a diversity context that the claims of class members which did not individually meet the $10,000 amount in controversy requirement should be dismissed. In dicta, at footnote 11, the Court recognized that the same analysis would apply in federal question cases.

What defendant's analysis in this respect may misperceive is the measure of the amount in controversy in an action in which the primary relief sought is injunctive and declaratory. In such cases, at least one Court of Appeals has held that it is the "value of the right sought to be protected" which is the measure of the amount in controversy. Spock v. David, 469 F.2d 1047, 1052 (3rd Cir. 1972). In that case, the Third Circuit in an interlocutory appeal from the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction, found a sufficient jurisdictional amount for § 1331 purposes in plaintiffs' claimed deprivation of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly to withstand defendants' motion to dismiss. In so deciding, that Court expressly declined to follow the decision of the Sixth Circuit in Goldsmith v. Sutherland, 426 F.2d 1395 (6th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 960, 91 S.Ct. 353, 27 L.Ed.2d 270 (1970), insofar as the latter suggested a contrary result.

Goldsmith, like Spock, involved a challenge to the sufficiency of the amount in controversy requirement of 28 U.S.C. 1331(a) where an injunction to protect alleged First Amendment rights had been sought. The Court in Goldsmith did not apply a principle followed by some courts that where basic, constitutional rights are at issue, the $10,000 requirement is ipso facto satisfied at least in the preliminary stages. See e. g. Cortright v. Resor, 325 F.Supp. 797, 810 (E.D.N.Y.1971), rev'd on other grounds 447 F.2d 245 (2nd Cir. 1971). Goldsmith involved the right to distribute leaflets on a military reservation. The plaintiff apparently made no studied effort to value his alleged rights in question,¹ nor was there any indication or basis presented to the Court on which it could value the alleged infringement. The Court found no exception to the amount in controversy requirement where a claim was incapable of monetary valuation, albeit it raised an alleged constitutional infringement. The Court therefore affirmed the dismissal of the action by the lower court for want of jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1331.

From a close reading of Goldsmith it appears clear that Circuit applies the test that, "the amount in controversy is not the amount that the plaintiff might recover at law, but rather the value of the right to be protected or the extent of the injury to be prevented," supra, 426 F.2d at 1398. It is at least arguable that the extent of the injury to be prevented in the instant case is the monetary loss to each individual plaintiff which would be occasioned by his or her discharge for failing to contribute to the union an amount equal to the membership dues as per the master agreement. While this type of loss is neither direct nor immediate, it is a necessary element of the potential injury to be prevented. The plaintiffs not only want to be absolved of the requirement to pay dues or their equivalent but also want to be free from the threat or even inevitability of discharge for their continued refusal to pay. It thus appears that the requisite amount in controversy is present.

Even were this Court to hold that the damages alleged are too speculative or too indirect to meet the amount in controversy requirement, this Court finds additional grounds upon which to base jurisdiction under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3). The gravamen of the plaintiffs' claim is that Article III of the master contract between the United Teachers of Flint and the Board of Education of the City of Flint infringes upon certain federal constitutional and statutory rights. These assertions would appear to satisfy the initial jurisdictional requirements of ...