Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/342/485
Timestamp: 2016-10-24 16:10:18
Document Index: 298097546

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 12', '§ 3022', '§ 3022', '§ 1', '§ 3022', '§ 3021', '§ 12', '§ 3022', '§ 12', '§ 12', '§ 1257', '§ 12', '§ 3022', '§ 3021', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 161', '§ 3022', '§ 12', '§ 12', '§ 254', '§ 12', '§ 3021', '§ 12', '§ 51', '§ 3021', '§ 12']

Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York
Argued: January 3, 1952
Decided: March 3, 1952
Dissent, Black
Dissent, Frankfurter
Held: This Court finds no constitutional infirmity in § 12-a of the Civil Service Law of New York or in § 3022 of the Education Law. Pp. 486-496.
1. Section 3022 and the rules promulgated thereunder do not constitute an abridgment of the freedom of speech and assembly of persons employed or seeking employment in the public schools of New York. Garner v. Los Angeles Board, 341 U.S. 716. Pp. 491-493.
2. The provision of § 3022 directing the Board of Regents to provide in rules thereunder that membership in any organization so listed by the Board shall constitute prima facie evidence of disqualification for employment in the public schools does not deny members of such organizations due process of law. Pp. 494-496.
3. The use of the word "subversive" in § 1 of the Feinberg Law, which is a preamble and not a definitive part of the Act, does not render the statute void for vagueness under the Due Process Clause, in view of the fact that, in subdivision 2 of § 3022, it is given a very definite meaning -- i.e., an organization that advocates the overthrow of government by force or violence. P. 496.
4. The constitutionality of § 3021 of the Education Law not having been questioned in the proceedings in the lower courts and being raised here for the first time, it will not be passed upon by this Court before the state courts have had an opportunity to pass upon it. P. 496.
[p486]
In a declaratory judgment action, the Supreme Court of New York, Kings County, held that subdivision (c) of § 12-a of the New York Civil Service Law, § 3022 of the New York Education Law, and the rules of the State Board of Regents promulgated thereunder violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and enjoined action thereunder by the Board of Education of New York City. 196 Misc. 873, 95 N.Y.S.2d 114. The Appellate Division reversed. 276 App.Div. 527, 96 N.Y.S.2d 466. The Court of Appeals of New York affirmed the decision of the Appellate Division. 301 N.Y. 476, 95 N.E.2d 806. On appeal to this Court, affirmed, p. 496.
MINTON, J., Opinion of the Court
Appellants brought a declaratory judgment action in the Supreme Court of New York, Kings County, praying that § 12-a of the Civil Service Law,
as implemented by [p487]
the so-called Feinberg Law,
be declared unconstitutional, and that action by the Board of Education of the City of New York thereunder be enjoined. On motion for judgment on the pleadings, the court held that subdivision (c) of § 12-a, the Feinberg Law, and the Rules of the State Board of Regents promulgated thereunder violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and issued an injunction. 196 Misc. 873, 95 N.Y.S.2d 114. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court reversed, 276 App.Div. 527, 96 N.Y.S.2d 466, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Appellate Division, 301 N.Y. 476, 95 N.E.2d 806. The appellants come here by appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1257.
Section 12-a of the Civil Service Law, hereafter referred to as § 12-a, is set forth in the margin.
To implement [p488]
this law, the Feinberg Law was passed, adding a new section, § 3022, to the Education Law of the State of New York, which section, so far as here pertinent, is set forth in the margin.
The Feinberg Law was also to implement [p489]
§ 3021 of the Education Law of New York.
The constitutionality of this section was not attacked in the proceedings below.
The preamble of the Feinberg Law, § 1, makes elaborate findings that members of subversive groups, particularly of the Communist Party and its affiliated organizations, have been infiltrating into public employment in the public schools of the State; that this has occurred and continues notwithstanding the existence of protective statutes designed to prevent the appointment to or retention in employment in public office, and particularly in the public schools, of members of any organizations which teach or advocate that the government of the United States or of any state or political subdivision thereof shall be overthrown by force or violence or by any other unlawful means. As a result, propaganda can be disseminated among the children by those who teach them and to whom they look for guidance, authority, and leadership. The Legislature further found that the members of such groups use their positions to advocate and teach their doctrines, and are frequently bound by [p490]
The Board of Regents is further authorized to provide in rules and regulations, and has so provided, that membership in any listed organization, after notice and hearing, "shall constitute prima facie evidence for disqualification [p491]
for appointment to or retention in any office or position in the school system";
but before one who is an employee or seeks employment is severed from or denied employment, he likewise must be given a full hearing with the privilege of being represented by counsel and the right to judicial review.
It is § 1-a of the Civil Service Law, as implemented by the Feinberg Law as above indicated, that is under attack here.
It is first argued that the Feinberg Law and the rules promulgated thereunder constitute an abridgment of the [p492]
The constitutionality of the first proposition is not questioned here. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 667-672, construing § 161 of the New York Penal Law. As to the second, it is rather subtly suggested that we should not follow our recent decision in Garner v. Los Angeles Board, 341 U.S. 716. We there said: We think that a municipal employer is not disabled because it is an agency of the State from inquiring of its employees as to matters that may prove relevant to their fitness and suitability for the public service. Past conduct may well relate to present fitness; past loyalty may have a reasonable relationship [p493]
to present and future trust. Both are commonly inquired into in determining fitness for both high and low positions in private industry, and are not less relevant in public employment.
341 U.S. at p. 720.
If, under the procedure set up in the New York law, a person is found to be unfit and is disqualified from employment in the public school system because of membership in a listed organization, he is not thereby denied the right of free speech and assembly. His freedom of choice between membership in the organization and employment in the school system might be limited, but not his freedom of speech or assembly, except in the remote sense that limitation is inherent in every choice. Certainly such limitation is not one the state may not make in the exercise of its police power to protect the schools from pollution and thereby to defend its own existence. [p494]
It is next argued by appellants that the provision in § 3022 directing the Board of Regents to provide in rules and regulations that membership in any organization listed by the Board after notice and hearing, with provision for review in accordance with the statute, shall constitute prima facie evidence of disqualification, denies due process, because the fact found bears no relation to the fact presumed. In other words, from the fact found that the organization was one that advocated the overthrow of government by unlawful means and that the person employed or to be employed was a member of the organization and knew of its purpose,
to presume that such member is disqualified for employment is so unreasonable as to be a denial of due process of law. We do not agree.
The law of evidence is full of presumptions either of fact or law. The former are, of course, disputable, and the strength of any inference of one fact from proof of another depends upon the generality of the experience upon which it is founded. . . .
Legislation providing that proof of one fact shall constitute prima facie evidence of the main fact in issue is but to enact a rule of evidence, and quite within the general power of government. Statutes, National and state, dealing with such methods of proof in both civil and criminal cases abound, and the decisions upholding them, are numerous.
Mobile, J. & K.C. R. Co. v. Turnipseed, 219 U.S. 35, at p. 42.
Membership in a listed organization found to be within the statute and known by the member to be within the [p495]
statute is a legislative finding that the member by his membership supports the thing the organization stands for, namely, the overthrow of government by unlawful means. We cannot say that such a finding is contrary to fact or that "generality of experience" points to a different conclusion. Disqualification follows therefore as a reasonable presumption from such membership and support. Nor is there here a problem of procedural due process. The presumption is not conclusive, but arises only in a hearing where the person against whom it may arise has full opportunity to rebut it. The holding of the Court of Appeals below is significant in this regard: The statute also makes it clear that . . . proof of such membership "shall constitute prima facie evidence of disqualification" for such employment. But, as was said in Potts v. Pardee (220 N.Y. 431, 433): The presumption growing out of a prima facie case . . . remains only so long as there is no substantial evidence to the contrary. When that is offered the presumption disappears, and unless met by further proof there is nothing to justify a finding based solely upon it.
Thus, the phrase "prima facie evidence of disqualification," as used in the statute, imports a hearing at which one who seeks appointment to or retention in a public school position shall be afforded an opportunity to present substantial evidence contrary to the presumption sanctioned by the prima facie evidence for which subdivision 2 of section 3022 makes provision. Once such contrary evidence has been received, however, the official who made the order of ineligibility has thereafter the burden of sustaining the validity of that order by a fair preponderance of the evidence. (Civil Service Law, § 12-a, subd. [d].) Should an order of ineligibility then issue, the party aggrieved thereby may avail himself of the provisions for review prescribed by [p496]
the section of the statute last cited above. In that view there here arises no question of procedural due process.
1. N.Y.Laws 1939, c. 547, as amended N.Y.Laws 1940, c. 564.
2. N Y.Laws 1949, e. 360.
§ 12-a. Ineligibility
No person shall be appointed to any office or position in the service of the state or of any civil division or city thereof, nor shall any person presently employed in any such office or position be continued in such employment, nor shall any person be employed in the public service as superintendents, principals or teachers in a public school or academy or in a state normal school or college, or any other state educational institution who: (a) By word of mouth or writing willfully and deliberately advocates, advises or teaches the doctrine that the government of the United States or of any state or of any political subdivision thereof should be overthrown or overturned by force, violence or any unlawful means; or
(b) Prints, publishes, edits, issues or sells, any book, paper, document or written or printed matter in any form containing or advocating, advising or teaching the doctrine that the government of the United States or of any state or of any political subdivision thereof should be overthrown by force, violence or any unlawful means, and who advocates, advises, teaches, or embraces the duty, necessity or propriety of adopting the doctrine contained therein;
(c) Organizes or helps to organize or becomes a member of any society or group of persons which teaches or advocates that the government of the United States or of any state or of any political subdivision thereof shall be overthrown by force or violence, or by any unlawful means;
(d) A person dismissed or declared ineligible may within four months of such dismissal or declaration of ineligibility be entitled to petition for an order to show cause signed by a justice of the supreme court, why a hearing on such charges should not be had. Until the final judgment on said hearing is entered, the order to show cause shall stay the effect of any order of dismissal or ineligibility based on the provisions of this section. The hearing shall consist of the taking of testimony in open court with opportunity for cross-examination. The burden of sustaining the validity of the order of dismissal or ineligibility by a fair preponderance of the credible evidence shall be upon the person making such dismissal or order of ineligibility.
1. The board of regents shall adopt, promulgate, and enforce rules and regulations for the disqualification or removal of superintendents of schools, teachers or employees in the public schools in any city or school district of the state who violate the provisions of section three thousand twenty-one of this article or who are ineligible for appointment to or retention in any office or position in such public schools on any of the grounds set forth in section twelve-a of the civil service law and shall provide therein appropriate methods and procedure for the enforcement of such sections of this article and the civil service law.
§ 254. Disqualification or removal of superintendents, teachers and other employes* * * *
2. List of subversive organizations to be issued. Pursuant to chapter 360 of the Laws of 1949, the Board of Regents will issue a list, which may be amended and revised from time to time, of organizations which the Board finds to be subversive in that they advocate, advise, teach or embrace the doctrine that the Government of the United States, or of any state or of any political subdivision thereof, shall be overthrown or overturned by force, violence or any unlawful means, or that they advocate, advise, teach or embrace the duty, necessity or propriety of adopting any such doctrine, as set forth in section 12-a of the Civil Service Law. Evidence of membership in any organization so listed on or after the tenth day subsequent to the date of official promulgation of such list shall constitute prima facie evidence of disqualification for appointment to or retention of any office or position in the school system. Evidence of membership in such an organization prior to said day shall be presumptive evidence that membership has continued, in the absence of a showing that such membership has been terminated in good faith.
7. The Court of Appeals construed the statute in conjunction with § 12-a subd. [d], supra, n. 3. The Rules of the Board of Regents provided:
In all cases all rights to a fair trial, representation by counsel and appeal or court review as provided by statute or the Constitution shall be scrupulously observed.
8. In the proceedings below, both the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals construed the statute to require such knowledge. 276 App.Div. 527, 530, 96 N.Y.S.2d 466, 470-471; 301 N.Y. 476, 494, 95 N.E.2d 806, 814-815.
This is another of those rapidly multiplying legislative enactments which make it dangerous -- this time for school [p497]
We are asked to pass on a scheme to counteract what are currently called "subversive" influences in the public school system of New York. The scheme is formulated partly in statutes and partly in administrative regulations, but all of it is still an unfinished blueprint. We are asked to adjudicate claims against its constitutionality before the scheme has been put into operation, before the limits that it imposes upon free inquiry and association, the scope of scrutiny that it sanctions, and the procedural safeguards that will be found to be implied for its enforcement have been authoritatively defined. I think we should adhere to the teaching of this Court's history to [p498]
During the thirty-two years and ten years, respectively, that these laws have stood on the books, no proceedings, so far as appears, have been taken under them. In 1949, the Legislature passed a new act, familiarly known as the Feinberg Law, designed to reinforce the prior legislation. The Law begins with a legislative finding, based on "common report" of widespread infiltration by "members of subversive groups, and particularly of the communist party and certain of its affiliated organizations," into the educational system of the State, and the evils attendant upon that infiltration. It takes note of existing laws and exhorts the authorities to greater endeavor [p499]
of enforcement. The State Board of Regents, in which are lodged extensive powers over New York's educational system, was charged by the Feinberg Law with these duties: (1) to promulgate rules and regulations for the more stringent enforcement of existing law;
Accordingly, the Board of Regents adopted Rules for ferreting out violations of § 3021 or § 12-a. An elaborate machinery was designed for annual reports on each employee with a view to discovering evidence of violations of these sections and to assuring appropriate action on such discovery. The Board also announced its intention to publish the required list of proscribed organizations, and defined the significance of an employee's membership therein in proceedings for his dismissal. These Rules by the Board of Regents were published with an accompanying Memorandum by the Commissioner of Education. He is the administrative head of New York's school system, and his Memorandum was for the guidance of school officials throughout the State. It warned of the danger of indiscriminate or careless action under the Feinberg Law and the Regents' Rules, and laid down this duty: The statutes and the Regents' Rules make it clear that it is a primary duty of the school authorities [p500]
in each school district to take positive action to eliminate from the school system any teacher in whose case there is evidence that he is guilty of subversive activity. School authorities are under obligation to proceed immediately and conclusively in every such case.
This intricate machinery has not yet been set in motion. Enforcement has been in abeyance since the present suit, among others, was brought to enjoin the Board of Education from taking steps or spending funds under the statutes and Rules on the theory that these transgressed various limitations which the United States Constitution places on the power of the States. The case comes here on the bare bones of the Feinberg Law only partly given flesh by the Regents' Rules. It was decided wholly on pleadings: a complaint, identifying the plaintiffs and their [p501]
About forty plaintiffs brought the action initially; the trial court dismissed as to all but eight. 196 Misc. at 877, 95 N.Y.S.2d at 117-118. The others were found without standing to sue under New York law. The eight who are here as appellants alleged that they were municipal taxpayers and were empowered, by virtue of N.Y.Gen. Municipal Law § 51, to bring suit against municipal agencies to enjoin waste of funds. New York is free to determine how the views of its courts on matters of constitutionality are to be invoked. But its action cannot, of course, confer Jurisdiction on this Court, limited as that is by the settled construction of Article III of the Constitution. We cannot entertain, as we again recognize this very day, a constitutional claim at the instance of one whose interest has no material significance and is undifferentiated from the mass of his fellow citizens. Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429. This is not a "pocketbook action." As taxpayers these plaintiffs cannot possibly be affected one way or the other by any disposition of this case, and they make no such claim. It may well be that the authorities will, if left free, divert funds and effort [p502]
The trial court found the interests of the plaintiffs as parents inconsequential. 196 Misc. at 875, 95 N.Y.S.2d at 816. I agree. Parents may dislike to have children educated in a school system where teachers feel restrained by unconstitutional limitations on their freedom. But it is like catching butterflies without a net to try to find a legal interest, indispensable for our jurisdiction, in a parent's desire to have his child educated in schools free from such restrictions. The hurt to parents' sensibilities is too tenuous or the inroad upon rightful claims to public education [p503]
An apt contrast is provided by McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, where a parent did present an individualized claim of his own that was direct and palpable. There, the parent alleged that Illinois imposed restrictions on the child's free exercise of faith, and thereby on the parent's. The basis of jurisdiction in the McCollum case was not at all a parental right to challenge in the courts -- or at least in this Court -- educational provisions in general. The closely defined encroachment of the particular arrangement on a constitutionally protected right of the child, and of the parent's right in the child, furnished the basis for our review. The Feinberg Law puts no limits on any definable legal interest of the child or of its parents.
This leaves only the teachers, Adler, Spencer, and George and Mark Friedlander. The question whether their interest as teachers was sufficient to give them standing to sue was thought by the trial court to be conclusively settled by our decision in United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75. I see no escape from the controlling relevance of the Mitchell case. There, individual government employees sought to enjoin enforcement of the provisions of the Hatch Act forbidding government employees to take active part in politics. The complaint contained detailed recitals of the desire, intent and specific steps short of violation on the part of plaintiffs to engage in the prohibited activities. See id. at 87-88, n. 18. There, as here, the law was attacked as violating constitutional guaranties of freedom of speech. We found jurisdiction wanting to decide the issue except as to one [p504]
This case proves anew the wisdom of rigorous adherence to the prerequisites for pronouncement by this Court on matters of constitutional law. The absence in these plaintiffs of the immediacy and solidity of interest necessary to support jurisdiction is reflected in the atmosphere of abstraction and ambiguity in which the constitutional issues are presented. The broad, generalized claims urged at the bar touch the deepest interests of a democratic society: its right to self-preservation and ample scope for the individual's freedom, especially the teacher's freedom of thought, inquiry and expression. No problem of a free society is probably more difficult than the reconciliation or accommodation of these too often conflicting interests. The judicial role in this [p505]
process of accommodation is necessarily very limited, and must be carefully circumscribed. To that end the Court, in its long history, has developed "a series of rules" carefully formulated by Mr. Justice Brandeis, "under which it has avoided passing upon a large part of all the constitutional questions pressed upon it for decision." Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 346.
the distinction is one of degree, and it is for this reason that the effect of the statute in proscribing beliefs -- like its effect in restraining speech or freedom of association -- must be carefully weighed by the courts in determining whether the balance struck by [the State] comports with the dictates of the Constitution.
American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 409. But, as the case comes to us, we can have no guide other than our own notions -- however uncritically extrajudicial -- of the real bearing of the New York arrangement on the freedom of thought and activity, and especially on the feeling of such freedom, which are, as I suppose no one would deny, part of the necessary professional equipment of teachers in a free society. The scheme for protecting the school system from being made the instrument of purposes other than a school system should serve in a free society -- certainly a concern within the constitutional powers of a State bristles with ambiguities which must enter into any constitutional decision we may make. Of these, only a few have been considered by the courts below. We are told that an organization cannot be listed by the Regents except after hearing. 301 N.Y. at 488, 493, 494, 95 N.E.2d at 810-811, 814-815. From this it may be assumed that the hearing contemplated is that found wanting by some members of this Court in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath,
[p506]
341 U.S. 123. The effect of the requirement that membership in a listed organization be prima facie evidence of disqualification in a dismissal proceeding is enlarged upon. 301 N.Y. at 494, 95 N.E.2d at 814-815. And the Court of Appeals indicates that only one who "knowingly holds membership in an organization named upon any listing" is subjected to the operation of that rebuttable presumption. Id. at 494, 95 N.E.2d at 814.
These are the only islands of clarity. Otherwise, we are at sea. We are not told the meaning to be attributed to the words "treasonable or seditious" in § 3021 of the Education Law, though that is one of the two sections of preexisting law which the elaborate apparatus of the Feinberg Law is designed to enforce. In light of the experience under the Sedition Act of 1798, 1 Stat. 596, "seditious" can hardly be deemed a self-defining term or a word of art. See Miller, Crisis in Freedom, 136-137. Nor can we turn to practical application or judicial construction for sufficient particularity of the meaning to be attributed to the range of activity proscribed by § 12-a. Concern over the latitude afforded by such phrases as "the overthrow of government by . . . any unlawful means" when positions of trust or public employment are conditioned upon disbelief in such an objective cannot be deemed without warrant. See American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 415, 435; Garner v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles, 341 U.S. 716, 724. In those cases, the Court had ground for limiting the reach of a dubious formula. No such alternative is available here.
These gaps in our understanding of the precise scope of the statutory provisions are deepened by equal uncertainties in the implementing Rules. Indeed, according to the Appellate Division, these Rules are not in the case. 276 App.Div. at 531, 96 N.Y.S.2d at 471. And the Court of Appeals was silent on the point. Therefore, we [p507]
are without enlightenment, for example, on the nature of the reporting system described by the Rules. This may be a vital matter, affecting not the special circumstances of a particular case but coloring the whole scheme. For it may well be of constitutional significance whether the reporting system contemplates merely the notation as to each teacher that no evidence of disqualification has turned up, if such be the case, or whether it demands systematic and continuous surveillance and investigation of evidence. The difference cannot be meaningless, it may even be decisive, if our function is to balance the restrictions on freedom of utterance and of association against the evil to be suppressed. Again, the Rules seem to indicate that past activities of the proscribed organizations or past membership in listed organizations may be enough to bar new applicants for employment. But we do not know, nor can we determine it. This, too, may make a difference. See Garner v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles, supra, at 729 (MR. JUSTICE BURTON dissenting in part). We do not know, nor can we ascertain, the effect of the presumption of continuing membership in proscribed organizations that is drawn from evidence of past membership "in the absence of a showing that such membership has been terminated in good faith." We are uninformed of the effect in law of the Commissioner's memorandum, and there is no basis on which to appraise its effect in practice. As for the order of the Board of Education of the City of New York, it is not even formally in the case. In the face of such uncertainties, this Court has in the past found jurisdiction wanting, howsoever much the litigants were eager for constitutional pronouncements. Alabama State Federation of Labor v. McAdory, 325 U.S. 450; Congress of Industrial Organizations v. McAdory, 325 U.S. 472; Rescue Army v. Municipal Court, 331 U.S. 549; Parker v. County of Los Angeles, 338 U.S. 327. [p508]
I have not been able to accept the recent doctrine that a citizen who enters the public service can be forced to sacrifice his civil rights.
I cannot, for example, find in our constitutional scheme the power of a state to place its employees in the category of second-class citizens by denying them freedom of thought and expression. The Constitution guarantees freedom of thought and expression to everyone in our society. All are entitled to it, and none needs it more than the teacher.
The present law proceeds on a principle repugnant to our society -- guilt by association. A teacher is disqualified because of her membership in an organization found to be "subversive." The finding as to the "subversive" character of the organization is made in a proceeding to which the teacher is not a party and in which it is not [p509]
The law inevitably turns the school system into a spying project. Regular loyalty reports on the teachers must be made out. The principals become detectives; the [p510]
This, I think, is what happens when a censor looks over a teacher's shoulder. This system of spying and [p511]
United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75; Garner v. Board of Public Works of Los Angeles, 341 U.S. 716.