Warren v. National Ass'n of Sec. School Principals, Civ. A. No. CA-5-74-15.

• Decision Date: 21 May 1974
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. CA-5-74-15.
• Citation: 375 F. Supp. 1043
• Parties: Weldon Robert WARREN et al., Plaintiffs, v. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

375 F. Supp. 1043

Weldon Robert WARREN et al., Plaintiffs, v. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. CA-5-74-15.

United States District Court, N. D. Texas, Lubbock Division.

May 21, 1974.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Thomas J. Purdom, Robert E. Garner, Jack O. Nelson, Jr., Garner, Boulter, Jesko & Purdom, Lubbock, Tex., for plaintiffs.

James H. Milam, Crenshaw, Dupree & Milam, Lubbock, Tex., Ivan B. Gluckman, Nat'l Assoc. of Secondary School Principals, Reston, Va., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

WOODWARD, District Judge.

Plaintiffs allege a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and claim jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1343. Plaintiffs are Robert Weldon Warren, a student in Tahoka High School, and his parents. Defendants are the four teachers who compose the faculty council of the National Honor Society at Tahoka High School and the national association which sponors the National Honor Society. Plaintiffs assert that defendants have deprived young Warren of certain rights in violation of the fourteenth amendment. This memorandum opinion will serve as the court's findings of fact and conclusions of law.

This case was tried before the court without a jury on May 9, 1974 and all parties were present with their counsel in open court. At the termination of the trial, the court orally entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the defendants from taking any further action with respect to the dismissal of Weldon Robert Warren from the National Honor Society or the Tahoka chapter of the National Honor Society.

Weldon is presently a senior at Tahoka High School and will graduate within a few weeks. His school record is quite impressive and includes election to the National Honor Society in his sophomore year, quarterbacking a successful football team and being named salutatorian of his senior class. He has been generally recognized as a leader in all student activities and his scholastic ability, character and service to the school have been acknowledged by all parties as exceptional.

The National Honor Society is sponsored in many high schools throughout the country by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Tahoka chapter has had a charter from the national association since 1946. The Tahoka chapter has its own constitution (Pltf's Ex. 1), which governs the admission of students to and the conduct of the business of the chapter. Certain conflicts appear in the constitution which have a bearing on the case before the court. Section 1 of Article III provides that a council, consisting of the principal and four or more teachers selected by the principal are to conduct the election of the members to the chapter. There is no other provision in the constitution concerning the number to serve on this council, but in all actions in this suit the council was comprised of only three faculty members and the principal. Section 6 of Article II provides that dismissal "is the province of the faculty or the faculty council and principal." This follows the paragraph providing for dismissal of a member who deliberately violates a school or civil law or acts in a manner unbecoming as a member of the National Honor Society. The following section, Section 7, states that any member of the National Honor Society who falls below the standards which were the basis of his election for membership shall be dismissed from the chapter by the majority vote of the faculty upon the recommendation of the council.

As the disciplinary actions taken against Weldon were all initiated by the faculty council with no intervention by the entire faculty, it is obvious that the provisions of Section 7 were not followed. The decisions were all made by the faculty council acting alone, even though one of the members of the council was a complaining witness, placed the evidence against Weldon before the council and then voted in favor of Weldon's dismissal.

On the evening of October 14, 1973 Weldon, along with several of his fellow students, visited the Pizza Hut in Lubbock, Texas. On this occasion Barbara Kitchens, a defendant herein and a member of the faculty council of the National Honor Society, was present at the same establishment with her date. Weldon ordered a beer and drank approximately six ounces of it while defendant Kitchens observed. The other students, although not ordering a beer themselves, witnessed the event and apparently one or two of them took a sip of the beer along with the plaintiff.

By some means or another, the event was well known in the Tahoka school on the following Monday. The principal of the high school, defendant Clifton Gardner, was out of the city and defendant Kitchens did not attempt to take any official action until he returned. However, informal discussions of the event occurred among defendant Kitchens and other members of the faculty during the first few days of the week of October 15th.

The event had been made known to the high school football coach and he imposed certain penalties, not involved in this case, because the plaintiff had broken athletic training rules. When defendant Gardner returned to Tahoka, on Thursday, October 18, 1973, conferences were held by the faculty council concerning this alleged "flagrant violation of the National Honor Society's rules." Ironically, the plaintiff was 18 years of age on the date of Mr. Gardner's return to the city, October 18, 1973, thus he was four days shy of the legal age for consuming alcoholic beverages when the Pizza Hut incident occurred. Apparently, however, this age difference was of no concern to members of the council as defendant Kitchens testified that her actions and opinions regarding the seriousness of Weldon's offense would have been the same regardless of whether or not he had been 18 years of age.

On the 18th, Weldon was called into the principal's office and he in effect admitted the facts as above outlined. His parents were out of town on the 18th but on the following day they met with the faculty council for over two hours during which the matter was fully discussed. Immediately after this meeting, an emergency meeting of the National Honor Society of Tahoka High School was convened in the school auditorium and the event was described to the students, after which two or three members submitted their resignations because they felt they could not abide by some of the rules of conduct. In this connection, Miss Kitchens had informed the chapter at an earlier meeting that it would be a violation of the rules of conduct for the members to drink. But there is no written rule or regulation that has been produced to this court stating that a member could not drink. Indeed, the testimony indicated that several other members of the National Honor Society also drink on occasion. The reason others have not been reprimanded and punished for these violations is that no witness has come forward to present the charges to the faculty council. Unfortunately for Weldon, his offense was committed in the presence of a council member who was able to testify personally as to each detail of the event.

The standards to be applied in these cases are not set forth in any written rule or regulation of the Tahoka chapter although there is a...