Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, AFL CIO v. Norberg, AFL-CIO

• Citation: 630 F.2d 850
• Decision Date: 21 August 1980
• Docket Number: AFL-CIO,No. 79-1558,79-1558
• Parties: RHODE ISLAND FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. John H. NORBERG, Defendant-Appellee. Appeal of J. Fred LIPKIND et al.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

Page 850

630 F.2d 850

RHODE ISLAND FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. John H. NORBERG, Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal of J. Fred LIPKIND et al.

No. 79-1558.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Argued May 5, 1980.

Decided Aug. 21, 1980.

William T. Murphy, Providence, R. I., with whom Albert K. Antonio, Sheila Tobie Swan, Murphy, Mullen & Jarret, Providence, R. I., and Robert M. Andersen were on brief, for appellants.

Lynette Labinger, Providence, R. I., with whom Julius C. Michaelson, and Abedon, Michaelson, Stanzler, Biener, Skolnik & Lipsey, Providence, R. I., were on brief, for appellees.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, CAMPBELL and BOWNES, Circuit Judges.

BOWNES, Circuit Judge.

The parents of school-age Rhode Island children appeal denial of their motion to intervene as of right as party defendants in a suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against a Rhode Island statute granting a state income tax deduction for expenses incurred in sending children to public and private primary and secondary schools in New England. We affirm the denial of intervention, not on the basis of untimeliness, as held by the district court, but on the grounds that the parents failed to plead a colorable defense to the challenged statute.

On August 22, 1979, a coalition of individuals and labor, civic and educational organizations brought suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the first and fourteenth amendments challenging the constitutionality of Rhode Island General Law § 44-30-12(c)(2), ¹ as amended, and seeking injunctive relief against implementation of the statute by John H. Norberg, Tax Administrator of the State of Rhode Island. The district court granted a temporary restraining order on August 30, 1979. In recognition of the need of the State of Rhode Island to send income tax forms to the printer no later than November 15, 1979, the parties agreed to start discovery immediately, to limit it to ten days and to start the trial on September 18, 1979. The trial was later rescheduled to be the first matter heard following completion of a trial beginning on September 25, 1979. The plaintiffs took depositions on September 11 and 12, 1979. The defendants filed an answer to the original complaint on September 14, 1979.

On September 14, 1979, ten parents of school-age Rhode Island children filed a motion to intervene as of right as party defendants, Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(a)(2). ² The plaintiffs objected on September 26, 1979, on the grounds that the intervention was not timely and the intervenors were adequately represented by the defendants. The district court denied the motion to intervene two days later:

While it is true that the applicants filed their motion within four weeks of the complaint and before any extensive discovery was conducted, timeliness is not dependent merely on the calendar, but on all the circumstances at hand. Chase Manhattan Bank v. Corp. Hotelera de Puerto Rico, 516 F.2d 1047 (1st Cir. 1975); (Abbotts Dairies Division of) Fairmont Foods, Inc. v. Butz, 421 F.Supp. 415 (E.D.Pa.1976) ... Quite frankly, the Court is worried that if it allows the applicants to intervene, the ensuing delay might result in a severe burden to the defendant. It is on record that if this matter is not resolved by November 1, the processing of income tax forms for the 1979 income tax year will be severely jeopardized.

I feel constrained, therefore, to deny the motion. However, if the applicants can assure the Court that their intervention will not delay the adjudication of this case, this ruling will be reconsidered. A hearing is granted the applicants on Tuesday, October 2, 1979 at 8:30 a. m. prior to the commencement of the trial.

Rhode Island Federation of Teachers v. Norberg, Civ. No. 79-0429 (D.R.I. Sept. 29, 1979).

The parents subsequently submitted a memorandum to the court outlining the theories of their case, requesting a ten-day continuance to conduct discovery and informing the court of their intention to call an expert witness who would be available to testify only on October 18 and 19, 1979.

The district court heard argument on the renewed motion to intervene on October 2, 1979, and reaffirmed its earlier denial of the motion:

Let's leave it this way: I am not going to grant the intervention unless an order can be formulated entirely satisfactory to the plaintiffs and satisfactory with Mr. Norberg, which will keep in full force and effect the restraining order that we now have until such time as this Court renders its opinion on the preliminary hearing that we are about to start this morning. If that can be worked out, fine, if it cannot be worked out, then we'll just carry right on, because if we can't work it out it just means that the resulting harm to the State of Rhode Island will be just too severe. It's for Mr. Norberg to tell me that it will not throw his whole administrative process into utter confusion.

Defendant Norberg informed the Court that such delay would indeed jeopardize the printing of the tax forms. On October 12, 1979, the court denied intervention, but granted the parents permission to participate as amici curiae.

Throughout consideration of the motion to intervene, two problems were of concern to the district court. The first, and the one on which the district court based its decision, was the likelihood that intervention would necessitate the retaking of depositions, initiation of more extensive discovery and the retention of expert witnesses by the plaintiffs, thereby delaying a decision on the merits and disrupting the schedule for the collection of taxes by the State of Rhode Island. We rest our decision on the failure of the parents to state a defense relevant to the challenged statute, also a matter of concern to the district court, ³ but not the basis of its decision. The appellees have urged this alternative ground upon us as a basis for affirmance, and the record below shows consideration of the matter by the district court. See United States v. American Railway Express Co., 265 U.S. 425, 435, 44 S.Ct. 560, 563, 68 L.Ed. 1087 (1924); Chapman v. Commissioner, 618 F.2d 856, 862 (1st Cir. 1980).

We have pursued the legal theory of the parents so far as to find its constitutional footing quite infirm and insufficient to support intervention. The parents offered the following explanation of their defense of the challenged statute:

The position of the intervenors is that any educational system necessarily promotes a system of values. A public educational system, which avoids promoting values based on theistic beliefs, nonetheless promotes a system of values if it proposes that any particular choice, alternative, option, or opinion is superior to or inferior to another. For instance, the mere rejection of traditional concepts of morals, values, and of right and wrong itself constitutes the adoption of a system of values, variously described as situation ethics, relative morality, and secular humanism. ...

Either the adoption of humanistic, nontheistic moral values by a public educational system, or a purported rejection of any moral values by an educational system is, for purposes of the First Amendment, the establishment of a religion. The great amounts of public funding for public education, when contrasted with the absence of direct support for schools affiliated with theistic religions constitutes an abandonment of the neutrality required by the Constitution in matters of religion. The contrast between direct funding for public education and no direct funding for education affiliated with theistic religions creates an imbalance, which the statute challenged in this action will in part remedy. In making private, sectarian education more affordable by parents who for religious reasons send their children to sectarian schools, the challenged statute restores the neutrality, which has been abandoned by the funding of secular education in such great amounts, and further promotes the constitutionally guaranteed and desired end of free exercise of religion. See generally, Note, "Government Neutrality and Separation of Church and State: Tuition Tax Credits," 92 Harvard Law Review 696.

In summary the intervenors' legal theory is that the excessive funding of public education amounts to an advancement of the religion of Secular Humanism in violation of the establishment clause, infringes upon the free exercise rights of the intervenors since there is no concomitant aid to those who seek sectarian education, and is an abandonment of the governmental neutrality towards religion which the First Amendment commands. The statute challenged in this action is remedial legislation to remedy those defects.

Memorandum of Intervenor Defendants Summarizing The Theory Of Their Case.

The first amendment provides, in relevant part:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ....

The Supreme Court has carefully defined the meaning of the established clause:

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all...