Kaprelian v. Texas Woman's University, 74--1503
| Decision Date | 05 March 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 74--1503,74--1503 |
| Parties | Mary H. KAPRELIAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TEXAS WOMAN'S UNIVERSITY et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Frank C. Cooksey, Asst. Atty. Gen., John L. Hill, Atty. Gen., William C. Bednar, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Larry F. York, First Asst. Atty. Gen., Austin, Tex., for defendants-appellants.
Michael J. Whitten, Denton, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Before RIVES, GODBOLD and GEE, Circuit Judges.
This is a teacher discharge case in the Roth-Sindermann 1 vein.
Plaintiff Mary Kaprelian was employed by defendant Texas Woman's University (TWU) for the academic year commencing September 1970, primarily to teach modern dance. Formally, she was to be an assistant professor in the College of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, of which defendant Anne Schley Duggan was Dean. The record hints that Dean Duggan, under whose long guidance the department had become a college with a national reputation and who was nearing retirement, may have seen in Dr. Kaprelian a fitting successor. What ensued, instead, was a year of clashes over policy between two able and strong-minded women. Dean Duggan, expecting Kaprelian's cooperation and support in existing programs and arrangements, felt she did not receive it. For her part, Dr. Kaprelian, who enjoyed a lively appreciation of her own worth and abilities, 2 felt and demonstrated that she felt TWU's dance theory and training were behind the times and inferior, even to others available elsewhere in Denton, Texas, the small city of its location. 3 And so passed the academic year.
On July 8, 1971, shortly after its end, TWU's Vice-President for Academic Affairs requested Kaprelian's resignation, advising that he held written statements from various members of her department indicating unprofessional conduct on her part and disloyalty to TWU. He refused to particularize these charges and made no offer to show her the statements; and she declined to resign and consulted counsel.
On July 20, 1971, her attorney wrote to Dr. John A. Guinn, President of TWU and our third and last defendant, finding fault with the handling of her case and requesting that an ad hoc committee of the faculty be convened to consider it, pursuant to established procedures. 4
The next day Guinn forwarded Kaprelian a notice of her terminal reappointment to the faculty for the 1971--72 academic year, which she accepted. In a letter transmitting her acceptance to Guinn, however, her attorney reserved her rights, renewed his earlier requests, and added a request for the names and addresses of anyone who had termed Kaprelian unprofessional or disloyal to TWU. Receiving no reply, 5 he wrote again to Guinn, requesting a private conference and delivering himself somewhat freely--the letter refers to 'character assassinations,' 'dictatorial abuses of power,' 'witch hunt(s),' etc. Commencing with such expressions, and warming to the subject, counsel assured Guinn that if the case went to court Kaprelian would prevail; that testimony would be presented which would reflect unfavorably on TWU before the public, the profession and the legislature and would be painfully embarrassing to Dean Duggan (including that relating to asserted personal failings of hers); 6 and suggested that the matter would be best settled within the university and without airing the supposedly unpleasant facts.
On September 2, 1971, President Guinn wrote to Dr. Kaprelian, advising that should she make a written request he would activate the ad hoc committee contemplated by the Faculty Handbook. By now, however, Kaprelian's attorney felt this would not satisfy. He responded on September 7 with the suggestion that Dr. Guinn, as head of an administration which disagreed with Dr. Kaprelian about her rights, could not appropriately appoint the committee. Instead, Guinn should appoint a member, Kaprelian one, and the two should agree upon a third. Three days later, in a letter to Guinn's counsel, Kaprelian's enlarged upon his conditions. Guinn's offer of an ad hoc committee to hear her matter was now unacceptable, he advised, because:
1. We have been offered no part in the process of selecting the members of such a committee;
2. It has been made clear that Dr. Kaprelian will not be allowed to have counsel represent her at such a hearing;
3. It has been made clear that Dr. Kaprelian will not be allowed to make any record of the hearing by Court Reporter or tape recording;
4. The university still refuses to disclose whatever information it has which would specify the manner in which Dr. Kaprelian is alleged to have been disloyal and unprofessional, nor will the university disclose the names of any persons making such allegations, nor will the university disclose any documentary evidence it might have to support such charges.
This apparently brought the administrative process to a stand, and suit, asserting violation of Kaprelian's civil rights, 7 was filed on October 15, 1971. A hearing set for December 15, 1971, to consider temporary relief, was apparently not held; and at last, at a pre-trial hearing on February 1, 1973, the parties submitted the case on briefs and depositions. In December of that year the court entered findings and an order generally favorable to Kaprelian, from which this appeal proceeds.
The court found, as was essentially undisputed, that Kaprelian had no form of tenure and hence no 'property' interest. It concluded, however, that she had established a 'liberty' interest by filing her complaint: 8 '. . . her allegation that defendants terminated her contract because of unprofessional conduct and disloyalty to the University is sufficient to establish an interest in liberty under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.' (Emphasis added.) Since she had done so, the court reasoned, and since no hearing had been held, the matter should go back for hearing to a university forum. At that hearing plaintiff was to have the right to counsel and court reporter, both at her own expense. Moreover, to insure that the tribunal would possess the 'actual' impartiality and 'academic expertise' which the court saw as mandated by our Duke and Ferguson 9 opinions, the court reached into the administrative process itself to determine the tribunal's composition. The hearing committee would be composed of a number of persons appointed by the defendants, but only from those of '. . . academic expertise in plaintiff's field of study, 10 whether within or without the University.' A like number of such persons would be appointed by plaintiff; and the committee members, or in the event of their inability to agree the court, would appoint the final member. On motion of defendants, the order was stayed, and this appeal followed.
The matrix of legal principles which governs plaintiff's suit may be simply sketched. A state employee, such as plaintiff, having a liberty or property interest in his position must be accorded procedural due process. 11 Likewise, if it is established that the state seeks to discharge an employee for exercise of constitutional rights a hearing may be ordered. 12 A liberty interest arises, for example, when one is publicly subjected to a badge of infamy, such as being 'posted' as a drunkard. 13 In plaintiff's context, it arises when an employee is able to demonstrate that the State has made a charge 'that might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community' or that is of such a nature as to impose 'a stigma or other disability that foreclosed his freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities.' 14 Such a showing is the employee's voucher of admission to the arena of procedural due process; without it such questions do not arise. 15 Moreover to raise a liberty interest such charges must be public ones; we have recently held that even charges of the most damaging nature do not do so by their mere presence in confidential files. 16 And in Ferguson, we recognized a place for the making of private, though damaging, charges against an employee who elects to depart rather than air them. 17 Sims also recognizes, however, that where such public charges are denied 18 and discharge is resisted, they may not be a basis of discharge unless due process has been accorded. What process is 'due' in such cases is not an open question in this Circuit. It was settled in Ferguson, to the appropriate portions of which we will later refer.
That the court below erred in two respects is plain. Nor, in main, are the applicable principles of law in serious doubt. As usual the difficulties arise in applying them and the awkward questions in achieving a disposition just to both sides. We commence with the simpler matters and proceed to the more complex, hoping that thus our reasons for resolving these latter as we do will be more easily apparent.
Having made no finding, as scarcely it could, 19 that the university hearing committee lacked apparent impartiality, 20 the court nevertheless substituted another, to be selected according to procedures of its own devising, and referred all questions to it. Such a measure wants precedent in authority and is at variance with that respect for the academic administrative process and insistence that it be permitted to run its course which are indicated in our Ferguson and Duke opinions. The court's directions apply a per se rule of disqualification on suspicion 21 to rend from the structure of authority the very functions which it is created to and must perform if institutional order is to obtain. This was error.
The court erred as well in its conclusion that the presence of a 'liberty' interest was established by plaintiff's allegations in her sworn complaint. All such allegations were denied by defendan...
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