Wall v. Stanly County Board of Education

• Decision Date: 19 May 1967
• Docket Number: No. 11019.,11019.
• Citation: 378 F.2d 275
• Parties: Audrey Gillis WALL and the North Carolina Teachers Association, a corporation, Appellants, v. The STANLY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, a public body corporate of Stanly County, North Carolina, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

378 F.2d 275 (1967)

Audrey Gillis WALL and the North Carolina Teachers Association, a corporation, Appellants, v. The STANLY COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, a public body corporate of Stanly County, North Carolina, Appellee.

No. 11019.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued March 6, 1967.

Decided May 19, 1967.

J. LeVonne Chambers, Charlotte, N. C. (Conrad O. Pearson, Durham, N. C., Jack Greenberg and James M. Nabrit, III, New York City, on brief), for appellants.

Henry C. Doby, Jr., Albemarle, N. C. (Staton P. Williams, Albemarle, N. C., on brief), for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and SOBELOFF, BOREMAN, BRYAN, BELL, WINTER and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge:

It is now firmly established in this circuit (1) that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the selection, retention, and assignment of public school teachers on the basis of race; (2) that reduction in the number of students and faculty in a previously all-Negro school will not alone justify the discharge or failure to reemploy Negro teachers in a school system; (3) that teachers displaced from formerly racially homogeneous schools must be judged by definite objective standards with all other teachers in the system for continued employment; and (4) that a teacher wrongfully discharged or denied reemployment in contravention of these principles is, in addition to equitable remedies, entitled to an award of actual damages.¹

In derogation of these principles, the district court denied relief to Negro school teacher Mrs. Audrey Wall. We reverse.

I.

The facts found by the district court are briefly stated² below.

Audrey Gillis Wall, a Negro, is, in the words of the district judge, a teacher of "unchallenged professional and educational qualifications, who has thirteen years of teaching experience, predominantly in Stanly County," North Carolina. She holds A.B. and M.S. degrees and, despite some deficiencies in performance, was recommended by her principal for reemployment for the school year 1965-66. The School Board approved the principal's recommendation of reemployment, contingent only upon the allocation of the requisite teaching positions by the State.

Integration came to the Stanly County school system ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), occurring with the transfer of two Negro pupils from a Negro school to a formerly all-white school in the school year 1964-65. The system at that time consisted of seventeen public schools and some 7,000 students, of which approximately fifteen percent were Negro.

For the year 1965-66 and prior thereto, there was complete segregation of white and Negro teachers, i. e., no Negro teacher taught white pupils, and no white teacher taught Negro pupils. The first break in teacher segregation occurred in January 1966 when a Negro teacher was employed to teach history in a mostly white school.

On or about June 5, 1965, the allocation of teacher spaces for the school year 1965-66 was received from the North Carolina Board of Education. For the first time such spaces were granted to the Stanly County Board of Education without reference to race and without designation of the school in which the spaces might be used by the Stanly County Board. During the spring of 1965, the Board adopted a freedom of choice plan of pupil enrollment, and as a result thereof, over 300 Negro pupils who had formerly attended all-Negro schools were assigned to formerly white schools for the school year beginning September 1965.

As found by the district court, "the shifts in pupil enrollment as result of the `freedom of choice plan' resulted in a decrease in the allocation of teacher spaces to the Negro schools and an increase in the allocation of teacher spaces to formerly white or predominantly white schools." Despite this, and again in the words of the district court, "the Board adopted no specific provisions to govern assignment of teachers who might be affected by the shifting of pupil enrollment. The Board did not solicit opinions from either teachers or principals as to what, if any, policy might or should be adopted. Principals were not advised as to whether teachers whose positions were affected by the aforesaid reduced allotments to Negro schools would be reassigned to another school in the system. The Board did not advise the several white principals that they could employ Negro teachers nor Negro principals that they could hire white teachers."

II.

The meaning of the foregoing is very plain. Obviously the Board considered that transfer of Negro pupils from a Negro school diminished the need for Negro teachers in the Negro school, causing Mrs. Wall to lose her job. The premise of such a proposition is that Mrs. Wall was not employed as a teacher in the Stanly County school system but was employed as a Negro teacher in a Negro school. Such a premise is unlawful. It is repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, which "forbids discrimination on account of race by a public school system with respect to employment of teachers." Franklin v. County School Bd., 360 F.2d 325, 327 (4th Cir. 1966), citing Bradley v. School Bd., 345 F.2d 310, 316 (4th Cir.), rev'd on other grounds, 382 U.S. 103, 86 S.Ct. 224, 15 L.Ed.2d 187 (1965).

In his opinion, the district judge said: "It is obvious that if the teacher spaces at Lakeview had not been reduced, Mrs. Wall would have been re-employed for the school year 1965-66." His finding is fully supported by the evidence. It requires reversal of the decision below because Mrs. Wall was not allowed by the School Board to compete for a teaching position in the system on the basis of her merit and qualifications as a teacher. Solely because of her race, she was not considered in comparison with other teacher applicants, about fifty of whom had not previously taught in the system. This sort of invidious discrimination offends the Constitution. E. g., Chambers v. Hendersonville City Bd. of Educ., 364 F.2d 189 (4th Cir. 1966); Franklin v. County School Bd., 360 F.2d 325 (4th Cir. 1966); see generally Note, Discrimination in the Hiring and Assignment of Teachers in Public School Systems, 64 Mich.Law Review 692 (1966). We reject the erroneous conclusion of the district court that the decisions of this circuit in Chambers and Franklin, requiring an objective and comparative evaluation with all other teachers, are not controlling.

III.

Since Mrs. Wall was recommended for reemployment by her principal and his recommendation approved by the School Board — subject only to the allotment of spaces, which was controlled by the same Board — we think the belated and invidiously unfair rejection of her application for reemployment entitles her to recover damages....