Montgomery v. Carr
| Decision Date | 04 December 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-4289,94-4289 |
| Citation | 101 F.3d 1117 |
| Parties | , 114 Ed. Law Rep. 750, 12 IER Cases 460 Suzanne MONTGOMERY and Charles G. Montgomery, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Harold L. CARR, in his official capacity as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development; Board of Education, Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Frederick M. Morgan, Jr. (argued and briefed), Helmer, Lugbill, Martins & Neff, Cincinnati, OH, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
David M. Kothman (argued and briefed), Edward Earls Santen (briefed), Santen & Hughes, Cincinnati, OH, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before: MERRITT and BOGGS, Circuit Judges; and O'MEARA, District Judge. *
In this case brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, we settle an issue left open in Wright v. MetroHealth Med. Ctr., 58 F.3d 1130, 1134 n. 3 (6th Cir.1995)--the appropriate level of scrutiny to be applied to an alleged First Amendment associational rights violation caused by a governmental anti-nepotism policy. The plaintiffs, Suzanne and Charles G. Montgomery, are married teachers who work in the same public vocational school district. The anti-nepotism policy in this case caused Suzanne Montgomery to transfer to another school in the same system. We hold that rational basis scrutiny applies to the governmental policy involved and affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment to the defendants, Board of Education, Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development ("Great Oaks") and Dr. Harold L. Carr, the President and CEO of Great Oaks.
We take our summary of the facts in this case from the district court's order granting summary judgment to the defendants in this case and from its earlier published order holding that the Montgomerys had stated a claim upon which relief could be granted. Montgomery v. Carr, 848 F.Supp. 770 (S.D.Ohio 1993).
Great Oaks is a multi-campus system of secondary vocational education. Montgomery, 848 F.Supp. at 773. It consists of numerous campuses, including the Scarlet Oaks Career Development Campus in Sharonville, Ohio and the Live Oaks Career Development Campus in Milford, Ohio. Ibid. Together all of these campuses formed the Great Oaks Joint Vocational School District, now known as the Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development. This district serves 35 affiliated public school districts in southwest Ohio.
Great Oaks has an anti-nepotism policy that prevents a married couple from working together as teachers at the same campus. Ibid. The policy does not apply to those couples who are simply living together. 1 Both parties agree that the anti-nepotism policy exists, even though it is not written in the Great Oaks policy manual. The policy was first implemented in 1970 by Great Oaks's original superintendent. Dr. Carr continued the policy when he became CEO of Great Oaks. Montgomery, 848 F.Supp. at 773.
Suzanne Montgomery was a teacher of computer-assisted learning at the Scarlet Oaks campus in Sharonville for nine years. She is now married to Charles Montgomery, who has been teaching applied physics at Scarlet Oaks for 11 years. The couple was married in June 1992. Suzanne and Charles had been involved romantically since about 1990 and had been living together for about one year before they were married. The couple decided to marry because they thought it was the "right" or "moral" thing to do.
Initially, the Montgomerys attempted to conceal their relationship from Great Oaks officials, even going so far as to submit false documents to Great Oaks. The Montgomerys knew that if Great Oaks learned of their marriage, one of them would have to transfer to a different school in the Great Oaks system. They knew of friends, also teachers at Scarlet Oaks, who had been transferred upon their marriage. Tim Hunter, a campus director at Scarlet Oaks, learned that the Montgomerys were married by noticing that Suzanne was wearing a wedding ring, striking up a conversation about it, and then being told by her that she had married Charles.
Great Oaks Vice President for Human Services, Sharon Lowery, then began to consider whether Suzanne or Charles should be the teacher to be transferred in compliance with the policy. In order to retain continuity of instructors for students that academic year, Lowery decided to postpone transferring either of the Montgomerys. In July 1993, after the academic year was over, Lowery told the Montgomerys that Suzanne would be transferred to Live Oaks. The transfer was purely lateral. Suzanne's pay, benefits, and job description all remained unchanged. Suzanne simply switched places with the instructor of computer-aided learning at Live Oaks. She now teaches 200 students at Live Oaks as opposed to the approximately 600 she used to teach at Scarlet Oaks.
Hunter testified that he was aware of no disruptions at school resulting from the fact that the Montgomerys were married for a part of the period during which they both taught at Scarlet Oaks. However, Suzanne's supervisor, Mary Helen Steinauer, testified that she and other teachers believed that the Montgomerys were spending too much time together. Steinauer was also concerned about Charles putting his feet up on the table in Suzanne's classroom and relayed these concerns to Charles. Steinauer testified that it was her opinion that if Charles were having a problem with a student, Suzanne might be more reluctant to deal with that student, and vice versa. Steinauer also testified that some teachers who had attempted to talk to either Charles or Suzanne at various times were turned away when the couple was talking among themselves during school hours. A Great Oaks personnel evaluation of each of them shortly after their marriage made no mention of any problems in job performance related to their marriage, however. Suzanne is described by Great Oaks alternately as an "excellent" or a "fine" teacher.
Dr. Carr testified that he was aware of "many, many successful marriage situations" involving spouses working together. Nevertheless, Dr. Carr told the district court he believed that Great Oaks's anti-nepotism policy was justified because it is based on "known management concepts" and because married couples in the same school have historically created problems for school systems that do not impose anti-nepotism policies on their teachers. While Great Oaks has not had many such problems, Dr. Carr thinks this is because its anti-nepotism policy has prevented them from arising. The district court noted that the only specific danger Dr. Carr believed the anti-nepotism policy protected against, however, was "the basic concern [that] you've got to deal with the animosity and the hostility of these two people instead of doing what you're supposed to be doing as an administrator." The district court also emphasized that Dr. Carr thought that "total chaos" would result if the anti-nepotism policy were violated, because doing so might disrupt other unwritten personnel policies.
Dr. Carr illustrated his concerns with married individuals teaching together at the same school by discussing, among other incidents, a case that he represented had arisen in the Lorain County Joint Vocational School District, where one spouse had received a negative evaluation, and the two spouses then "turned upon the school system" by using physical violence. The district court inaccurately summarized Dr. Carr's testimony when it stated that Dr. Carr had offered only one justification for the Great Oaks anti-nepotism policy, however. Dr. Carr was concerned that potential hostility from a married couple was "totally unhealthy for the school system," because this hostility "[c]onsumed energy that should have been directed to the basic mission of the school system and took away from the collegiality of the institution...." Furthermore, Dr. Carr testified that this hostility could lead to lost teacher productivity for the spouses involved, and for other teachers who were distracted by a couple's leaving a school building early together. He testified that married couples can create management problems because "[a]dministrators tend to shy away from one person because of a problem with another in a married situation."
The anti-nepotism policy has caused two kinds of harm for the Montgomerys. First, the Montgomerys now need to drive collectively about 65 miles per day more than when they drove in together, making Suzanne very uncomfortable, as she dislikes freeway driving, and costing her an extra hour per day in commuting time. Second, starting in October 1993, Suzanne began to suffer psychiatric problems, allegedly traceable to her transfer, including two breakdowns at school where she became totally overwhelmed, hysterical, and incoherent. Suzanne claims that she has been unable to work at all since April 1994. She is still under the care of a psychiatrist. She takes various antidepressant medications and sleeping pills. Nevertheless, Suzanne testified that whatever happens as a result of the anti-nepotism policy, her marriage with Charles would survive intact.
Great Oaks and Dr. Carr argue that these problems stem only from the fact that the Montgomerys grew accustomed to teaching together in the same school, and if they had simply informed Great Oaks of their marriage earlier and thus been separated earlier, these problems would not have occurred. This conclusion is, of course, not a necessary one. It could just as easily be true that the harms allegedly suffered by the couple flow directly from the anti-nepotism policy, rather than from the actions the couple took to postpone the policy's application by concealing their marriage from school officials.
The Montgomerys filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that the...
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