Shenfield v. Prather

• Citation: 387 F. Supp. 676
• Decision Date: 20 December 1974
• Docket Number: No. EC 73-20-K.,EC 73-20-K.
• Parties: Mark Harold SHENFIELD et al., Plaintiffs, v. The Honorable Lenore PRATHER, Chancellor, Fourteenth Chancery Court District, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Mississippi

387 F. Supp. 676

Mark Harold SHENFIELD et al., Plaintiffs, v. The Honorable Lenore PRATHER, Chancellor, Fourteenth Chancery Court District, et al., Defendants.

No. EC 73-20-K.

United States District Court, N. D. Mississippi, E. D.

December 20, 1974.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Mark Shenfield, Jackson, Miss., for plaintiffs.

Ed Davis Noble, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, Miss., for defendants.

Before COLEMAN, Circuit Judge, and KEADY and SMITH, District Judges.

KEADY, District Judge:

This class action was brought by eight recent graduates of accredited law schools who are required by § 73-3-9, Miss.Code Ann. (1972),¹ to take and pass a bar examination prior to admission to the practice of law in Mississippi. Joining the chancery court judges of Mississippi as class defendants, plaintiffs challenge as unconstitutional the state's bar admissions plan, which requires a bar examination for all persons seeking admission to the Mississippi bar except graduates of the University of Mississippi School of Law,² and attorneys who have practiced for 5 years in states granting reciprocal admission privileges to Mississippi attorneys.³ Plaintiffs seek injunctive and declaratory relief from this scheme under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that enforcement of the bar examination requirement against plaintiffs and the classes they represent deprives them of rights guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Jurisdiction is properly laid under 28 U.S.C. § 1343.⁴

Since the plaintiffs demanded injunctive relief from the enforcement of these statutes of statewide application on federal constitutional grounds, a three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284. After evidentiary hearing, the case was submitted upon the testimony of witnesses, affidavits, and stipulated facts. Extensive briefs have also been filed, including helpful presentations from the University of Mississippi School of Law, which accepted the court's invitation to participate amicus curiae. Although the case presents issues which are primarily questions of law, some discussion of the pertinent factual background is in order.

The named plaintiffs are all graduates of duly accredited law schools located outside the State of Mississippi. Some of the plaintiffs have in addition been admitted to the practice of law in states other than Mississippi.⁵ Each of the plaintiffs has sought admission to the Mississippi bar and each has been required to take and pass the bar examination before being admitted to practice in the state. The record discloses that five of the plaintiffs — Shenfield, Walker, Bergmark, Andalman, and Brothers — have successfully passed the bar examination and have now been admitted to practice in Mississippi. It also appears that plaintiffs Osborne, Lile and Adelman have each taken the bar examination one or more times, but have not passed.⁶

Plaintiffs seek to represent, and the court finds that they do in fact represent, two sub-classes of affected individuals: first, the class consisting of graduates of accredited schools of law other than the University of Mississippi School of Law who meet all requirements for admission to the Mississippi bar except for the bar examination requirement; and second, the class consisting of attorneys admitted to the practice of law in states other than Mississippi who are not exempt from the bar examination and who satisfy all criteria for admission to the Mississippi bar except for the bar examination requirement. Defendants named in the complaint are themselves sued as representatives of a class consisting of all the chancellors of the chancery court districts of the State of Mississippi. The court finds that plaintiffs and defendants and the classes they purport to represent meet Rule 23 prerequisites; this case is properly maintainable as a class action.

Mississippi's statutory law specifies three methods by which persons meeting other qualifications not relevant here may be admitted to the Mississippi bar.

The first avenue is provided by the "diploma privilege" of § 73-3-33 which allows graduates of the University of Mississippi School of Law to be admitted to the bar upon ex parte petition to the appropriate chancery court, without the necessity of examination.⁷

Applicants may also be admitted to the bar without examination through the reciprocity provisions of § 73-3-25, which allows out-of-state attorneys with 5 years experience in practice and who have resided in Mississippi for 6 months immediately preceding their application to be admitted to practice, provided the state from which the applicant comes maintains equivalent requirements for bar admission and grants reciprocal privileges to Mississippi attorneys. Mississippi now practices reciprocity with approximately 37 other states.⁸

The final method of admission to the Mississippi bar is by submitting to, and passing, a written bar examination, which is prepared and administered by the Board of Bar Admissions, a body composed of six attorneys licensed to practice in the State of Mississippi.⁹ Board members are nominated by the state supreme court and appointed by the governor.¹⁰

In addition to investigating the moral qualifications of all applicants, the Board is empowered to prepare and administer to applicants not falling within the diploma privilege and reciprocity exemptions an examination designed to test the applicants' legal learning. This examination, which is currently offered twice each year, covers 13 subjects, 12 of which are required by statute.¹¹ Subjects are covered in separate sections of the examination, which consists of short essays, hypothetical problems, and definition questions familiar to law students. The examination is directed at the applicant's knowledge of legal principles and state and federal statutory and constitutional law. It does not purport to examine skill in trial advocacy, writing ability, negotiation, client relations, or business acumen. It does not test maturity, sound judgment, tenacity, or a practical knowledge of legal or governmental affairs. Upon an applicant's completion of the examination, it is graded by the Board, which assigns a passing or failing grade for each section. By present practice the Board designates a percentage score of 70 as the minimum passing grade for each section. Although applicants must successfully pass each of the 13 sections of the examination to be admitted to the bar, an applicant who passes at least one-half of the subjects on which he is examined at any examination period is required to be reexamined only on those subjects in which he has failed to achieve passing grades. Applicants who fail more than one-half of the subjects receive no credit for any subject passed and must repeat the entire examination. There is no limit to the number of times an unsuccessful applicant may take the bar examination.

As previously noted, Board members are attorneys licensed to practice in the State of Mississippi; as such practitioners they must be presumed to possess wide knowledge of the subject matters covered by the examination. None of the present board members, however, has had specialized training in the field of testing, and the bar examination itself has never been validated as a reliable test of legal skills by educational psychologists or other experts in the field of testing. The evidence reveals that every state in the union currently uses the bar examination method to admit attorneys to practice, that only six states now employ professionals trained in the field of testing to assist the bar examiners, and that the remaining 44 states, including Mississippi, prepare and administer bar examinations without such expert guidance.

Mississippi law thus creates two classes of applicants for admission to the state bar: One, the favored class, is admitted to the practice of law without the necessity of examination, through the diploma privilege or reciprocity exemption; the other, the disfavored class, must take and pass the bar examination prior to admission. This class includes graduates of accredited law schools other than the University of Mississippi (and hence outside the state) and sister-state attorneys who do not meet the state's reciprocity requirements.

Plaintiffs, who are members of the disfavored class, claim that this statutory arrangement fails to satisfy the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause in several respects. Plaintiffs' first and most serious contention is that the bar examination statute, by imposing on them the onerous examination requirement not demanded of the favored class, thereby penalizes the exercise of plaintiffs' fundamental right to interstate travel. Plaintiffs' thesis is that the two groups who comprise the disfavored class of bar applicants are placed in that class solely because they have exercised their right to travel by attending accredited law schools elsewhere and by seeking to enter Mississippi as practicing attorneys. The penalty imposed by the state bar examination cannot stand, plaintiffs argue, unless necessary to promote a compelling state interest. Plaintiffs assert that no such interest is here present and that the examination requirement is invalid, at least insofar as it applies to them and to members of their class.

Plaintiffs contend in the alternative that the classifications created by the diploma privilege and reciprocity exemption are arbitrary and unrelated to any legitimate state purpose and hence violate equal protection, even when judged by the traditional, rational relation standard of review. Finally, plaintiffs urge that the bar examination itself, as it is currently administered in Mississippi, denies them equal protection in that the content and grading of the examination bears no rational relation to professional competence in the practice of law.

Each of plaintiffs' challenges must fail, for we are satisfied that...