Trietley v. Board of Ed. of City of Buffalo
| Decision Date | 10 November 1978 |
| Citation | 65 A.D.2d 1,409 N.Y.S.2d 912 |
| Parties | Kevin M. TRIETLEY, an infant, by Myran K. Trietley, his parent, et al., Appellants, v. The BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF BUFFALO, Florence E. Baugh, et al., constituting the Board of Education of The City of Buffalo and Eugene T. Reville, as Superintendent of Schools of the City of Buffalo, Respondents. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Michael J. Brown, Buffalo, for appellants.
Joseph P. McNamara, Corp. Counsel, Buffalo, for respondents (William E. Carey, Buffalo, of counsel).
Before MARSH, P. J., and MOULE, SIMONS, SCHNEPP and WITMER, JJ.
The question presented on this appeal is whether the Board of Education of the City of Buffalo must grant a request made by a member of the clergy and petitioners, six high school students, for permission to form bible clubs in Buffalo public schools.
In a letter dated December 2, 1977, Reverend Byron Lutz of the Sycamore Tree Youth Center and petitioners requested permission from the Buffalo Board of Education to form bible clubs at Burgard, Kensington and McKinley High Schools 1 in the City of Buffalo. This letter contained proposed guidelines for the establishment of the bible clubs. The guidelines provided: that each club must choose as officers, a bible reading chairman, a recording secretary and a memory verse chairman; that club membership must be voluntary and each club and meeting must be led by students, with no meeting dominated by any one person; that the clubs must have at least one teacher volunteer as an advisor who would attend and supervise meetings; that each club must be interdenominational; that meetings must be conducted before or after the official school class day for no longer than 15 minutes, in a place which would not interfere with the conduct of normal school activities; that the meetings would not be for socializing or the discussion of churches or church doctrines; and that each club "must be an asset to the school, providing moral and spiritual assistance to the students." The letter further stated that the proposed clubs would follow criteria established for other clubs or student organizations presently existing in the Buffalo public high schools and would adhere to other reasonable requirements imposed by the Buffalo Board of Education or Superintendent of Schools.
The Superintendent of Schools, relying upon a written opinion of the Buffalo Corporation Counsel, 2 recommended to the Board of Education that permission to form bible clubs in the Buffalo public schools be denied. The Board of Education approved the recommendation of the Superintendent of Schools and denied permission to form bible clubs in the schools.
Petitioners, by their parents, brought this proceeding pursuant to CPLR, article 78, by service of an order to show cause and petition for a judgment compelling respondents Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools of the City of Buffalo to permit them to form bible clubs at the three public high schools under the guidelines set forth in the letter of December 2, 1977. In the petition it was asserted that many other student organizations 3 are permitted to function freely in Buffalo public high schools and that these organizations conduct meetings and other activities in order to provide for the interchange of ideas and for the character and moral development of their student members. Petitioners alleged that the purpose of their bible clubs "is to accommodate the religious interest and to provide moral and spiritual assistance to the students; " that in each high school there were at least 30 students who wished to participate in the proposed bible clubs; and that there was at least one full-time faculty member willing, voluntarily, to moderate and supervise each club. As a result, petitioners claimed that the denial of their request to form bible clubs was arbitrary and capricious and violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and Article I, sections 3 and 11, of the New York State Constitution. Special Term denied the petition and petitioners have appealed. 4
Section 414 (subd. 1) of the Education Law provides in part that schoolhouses, the grounds connected therewith, and all property belonging to a school district shall be in the custody and under the control and supervision of the board of education of the district. Under this section, the board of education may adopt reasonable regulations and permit the use of schoolhouses and schoolrooms for enumerated purposes when they are not in use for school purposes if, in the opinion of the board, such use will not be disruptive of normal school operations (Education Law, § 414, subd. 1, pars. (a)-(h)). The expressed purpose of petitioners' bible clubs is the accommodation of the religious interests of its members and the provision of moral and spiritual assistance to them. Religious purposes are not included in the enumerated purposes for which a school may be used under section 414 of the Education Law (cf Lewis v. Board of Educ. of City of New York, 157 Misc. 520, 525-526, 285 N.Y.S. 164, 168-169, mod. on other grounds, 247 App.Div. 106, 286 N.Y.S. 174). Consequently, the Board of Education had no authority to grant petitioners' request to form bible clubs in the public high schools.
Even if we were to assume that the Board of Education possessed statutory authority to permit petitioners' proposed bible clubs to use the public schools for religious purposes, nevertheless, the Board was not required to exercise its discretion to grant such permission. As was stated in Stein v. Oshinsky, (2 Cir.) 348 F.2d 999, 1002, cert. den. 382 U.S. 957, 86 S.Ct. 435, 15 L.Ed.2d 361, the "(d)etermination of what is to go on in public schools is primarily for the school authorities." Moreover, given the discretionary power to control the use of schoolrooms, the Board of Education has the concomitant power to make reasonable classifications concerning the extent to which schools will be available for nonschool purposes (see Ellis v. Dixon, 349 U.S. 458, 460, 75 S.Ct. 850, 99 L.Ed. 1231, reh. den., 350 U.S. 855, 76 S.Ct. 37, 100 L.Ed. 759). It is petitioners' burden to show that the Board of Education has exercised its discretion differently from the requests of other organizations of a similar character (see Ellis v. Dixon,supra, at 460-461, 75 S.Ct. 850; Matter of Ellis v. Allen, 4 A.D.2d 343, 344, 165 N.Y.S.2d 624, 626, app. dsmd., 4 N.Y.2d 693, 171 N.Y.S.2d 86, 148 N.E.2d 302, lv. to app. den., 4 N.Y.2d 674, 171 N.Y.S.2d 1027, 148 N.E.2d 915). Petitioners have neither alleged nor shown that any other organization similar in character to their proposed bible clubs has been granted permission to use public school facilities for religious purposes. Therefore, the determination of the Board of Education to exclude petitioners' religious activities from public high schools was neither arbitrary nor capricious.
We conclude that the Board of Education had no statutory authority to permit petitioners to use the public schools for religious purposes and that, in any event, its discretionary decision to exclude all organizations formed for such purposes is one with which we should not interfere. Nevertheless, inasmuch as the Board of Education's principal reason for denying petitioners' request to form bible clubs was that the granting of such a request would violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, we find it necessary to consider the constitutional issues. 5
The mandate of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has been made wholly applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment (School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 215, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844). A determination by a board of education, the entity which is charged with the supervision of public schools pursuant to statutory authority, constitutes state action within the scope of these amendments (see School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, supra; Johnson v. Huntington Beach Union High School Dist., 68 Cal.App.3d 1, 137 Cal.Rptr. 43, cert. den.434 U.S. 877, 98 S.Ct. 228, 54 L.Ed.2d 156).
In deciding whether the proposed bible club meetings in public high schools would violate the Establishment Clause of...
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