Source: https://openjurist.org/397/us/31
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 12:58:13+00:00

Document:
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION of and FOR the STATE OF TENNESSEE et al.
Argued Jan. 19 and 20, 1970.
Rehearing Denied March 30, 1970.
Petitioner Jones was suspended indefinitely as a student at Tennessee A. & I. State University in the summer of 1967. His indefinite suspension was confirmed after a hearing in September of that year, in which charges against him were specified, evidence taken, and findings made. He, along with two other suspended students, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, seeking to set aside the suspension on First Amendment and due process grounds. After a hearing, the District Court granted judgment on the merits to defendants with an opinion. 279 F.Supp. 190 (1968). On appeal the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 407 F.2d 834 (1969). We granted certiorari, 396 U.S. 817, 90 S.Ct. 145, 24 L.Ed.2d 69 (1969), primarily to consider the issues raised by Jones' claim that he had been separated from the university solely because of his distribution of leaflets urging a boycott of fall registration.
After oral argument, and on closer review of the record, it emerges—as it did not from the certiorari papers or the opinions of the District Court and the Court of Appeals—that Jones' indefinite suspension was based in part on a finding that he lied at the hearing on the charges against him. This fact sufficiently clouds the record to render the case an inappropriate vehicle for this Court's first decision on the extent of First Amendment restrictions upon the power of state universities to expel or indefinitely suspend students for the expression of views alleged to be disruptive of the good order of the campus. Accordingly the writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
Mr. Justice BLACK, for reasons set out in the above opinion and others stated in his dissent in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 515—526, 89 S.Ct. 733, 741—747, 21 L.Ed.2d 731, would affirm the judgment below.
Petitioner, being suspended indefinitely, brought this suit in the District Court for an injunction and other relief. That court denied relief, 279 F.Supp. 190, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 407 F.2d 834. Our failure to reverse is a serious setback for First Amendment rights in a troubled field.
'(A) function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.' Id., at 4, 69 S.Ct., at 896.
Students are certainly entitled to enjoy First Amendment rights. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 637, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 1185, 87 L.Ed. 1628; Sweezy v. New Hampshire, by Wyman, 354 U.S. 234, 250, 77 S.Ct. 1203, 1211, 1 L.Ed.2d 1311. This does not mean that free speech can be used with impunity as an excuse to break up classrooms, to destroy the quiet and decorum of convocations, or to bar the constitutional privileges of others to meet together in matters of common concern. But the campus, where this leaflet was distributed, is a fitting place for the dissemination of a wide spectrum of ideas.
This does not mean that the whole panoply of the Bill of Rights is applicable to student dismissal proceedings. It does mean, however, that where there are 'constitutional restraints upon state and federal governments' in dealing with the persons subject to their supervision, the persons in question have 'a constitutional right to notice and a hearing before they can be removed.' Cafeteria and Restaurant Workers Union, Local 473 v. McElroy, supra, 367 U.S. at 898, 81 S.Ct. at 1750.
Judge Rives, speaking for the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, stated in Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 294 F.2d 150, 157: '(No) one can question that the right to remain at the college in which the plaintiffs were students in good standing is an interest of extremely great value.' Judge Rives went on to hold that such 'privilege' or 'right' could not be taken away without notice and hearing. Id., at 158. Thus the dissent of Judge Clark in Steier v. New York State Education Comm'r, 2 Cir., 271 F.2d 13, 22—23, became the law. See Wright, The Constitution on the Campus, 22 Vand.L.Rev. 1027, 1028—1034 (1969).
At the very least the suspension raises a serious constitutional question in the absence of provision for a timely judicial determination of the First Amendment claims. Cf. Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 85 S.Ct. 734, 13 L.Ed.2d 649.
'Neither the state in general, nor the state university in particular, is free to prohibit and kind of expression because it does not like what is being said.' Wright, supra, at 1039.
'become a trap when, after they are underway, the charges are amended on the basis of testimony of the accused. He can then be given no opportunity to expunge the earlier statements and start afresh.
'How the charge would have been met had it been originally included in those leveled against petitioner * * * no one knows.
'This absence of fair notice as to the reach of the grievance procedure and the precise nature of the charges deprived petitioner of procedural due process.' Id., at 551—552, 88 S.Ct. at 1226.
Procedural due process in the present case requires that if petitioner is to be deprived of an education at Tennessee A. & I. for lying, he be given notice of that precise charge and an opportunity to be heard.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING.
'In the early years of the civil rights movement in America, college students in Nashville's black universities were in the forefront of the struggle. Today, a new vanguard has formed and once again, students at Tennessee State University are called to the helm.
'1. Students whose names appeared in the Nashville rags namely the Banner and the Tennessean—in connection with the April 'disturbances' have been dismissed from this university without pre-warning of their dismissal, and without the opportunity to appear before the student senate to hear the charges brought against them, and to appeal their cases.
'COMMENT: If the puppets want to adopt the uncivilized tactics used by the MAN, we must move to correct these erroneously acting, educated TOMS.
'2. Legislation has been taken to decrease the number of out-of-state students by increasing out-of-state fees, and adopting rigid academic standards.
'COMMENT: The puppet fools have taken this action to remove academic freedom, and student dissent from university life. Thus they secure their own shaky jobs, and their positions in the circus of white man's society. These people are too blind to see that the MAN initiated these moves so that he may 'morally' proceed to infiltrate our black university with his teachers and students who are more adept in perpetuating his culture than the puppets who are already here.
'3. Non-city students have been required to move on campus with an increase in dormitory fees.
'COMMENT: Thus the campus will become a concentration camp controlled and contained by the legislation of the racist dogs downtown, the acts of the puppet administrators, the billy clubs and guns of Nashville's racist cops, and ultimately the gestapo tactics of the honorable national guard, whose pale faces have already been seen in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga.
'2. We, as intelligent black students, will not be guarded by trembling, powerless idiots who call themselves administrators.
'3. We, as black human beings will not be recorded in the pages of history as an ununified race of people, exterminated by the guns of submission and hate.
'A generation of inactivity has given today's black students (a) responsibility of informing and uniting our fellow classmates so that we can fight to remove the injustices directed against us as black people.
'CAST YOUR VOTE FOR STUDENT POWER!!! BOYCOTT REGISTRATION SEPTEMBER 23 AND FOR AS LONG AS THE PUPPET ADMINISTRATION REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THIS IS OUR UNIVERSITY!

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