Case Name: Girard College Trusteeship
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1958-01-24
Citations: 391 Pa. 434
Docket Number: Appeals, Nos. 109 to 121
Parties: Girard College Trusteeship.
Judges: Before Jones, C. J., Bell, Chidsey, Musmanno and Jones, JJ.
Reporter: Pennsylvania State Reports
Volume: 391
Pages: 434–486

Head Matter:
Girard College Trusteeship.
Argued November 21, 1957.
Before Jones, C. J., Bell, Chidsey, Musmanno and Jones, JJ.
reargument refused February 12, 1958.
Abraham L. Freedman, Special Counsel, and David Berger, City Solicitor, with them David E. Pinsky and Jacob J. Siegal, Assistant City Solicitors, for appellant, City of Philadelphia.
Thomas D. McBride, Attorney General, with him Lois G. Forer, Deputy Attorney General, for appellant, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
William T. Coleman, Jr. and Raymond Pace Alexander, with them Louis U. PoTlalc, for applicants, appellants.
Arthur Littleton, with him Morgan, Lewis & Bochins, for appellees, substituted trustees.
G. Breioster Rhoads, for Girard College Alumni, Amicus Curiae.
Joseph P. Gaffney, for City of Philadelphia, trustee under will of Stephen Girard, deceased, acting by the Board of Directors of City Trusts.
January 24, 1958:

Opinion:
Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Jones,
When this matter was here before, we affirmed the action of the Orphans' Court of Philadelphia County denying admission to Girard College to William Ashe Foust and Robert Felder, poor male Negro orphans, for the reason that the will of Stephen Girard, the founder and endower of the College, expressly restricts admission to "poor male white orphans": see Girard Will Case, 386 Pa. 548, 551, 127 A. 2d 287. Although the institution is referred to as a College, the testator himself aptly termed it an "Orphan Establishment" in one of two codicils which, with the decedent's will, were probated shortly after his death in 1831.
The will nominated and appointed as trustee of the charity the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Philadelphia, the then corporate title of the City, which duly entered upon its trust duties.. But, for years, the Col lege has been administered by the Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, a body statutorily created by the Act of June 30, 1869, P. L. 1276. The Act empowered the Board to accept and execute charitable trusts bequeathed to the City of Philadelphia, as trustee, whereof a large number, following Girard's lead, had come into existence: see Philadelphia v. Food, 64 Pa. 169, 172 et seq. For the proper administration of the trusts committed to it, the Board of City Trusts is accountable to the Orphans' Court of Philadelphia County: Wilson v. Board of Directors of City Trusts, 324 Pa. 545, 188 A. 588. That court, deeming the Board of City Trusts to be like any other trustee which is a creature of statute and authorized to accept and administer private trusts, held by its decrees, which we affirmed, that the Board of City Trusts was bound to abide faithfully by the restrictions which Girard's will imposes on admissions to the College.
However, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed our judgment of affirmance and remanded the cause for further proceedings not inconsistent with that Court's opinion which held that the Board of City Trusts is an agency of the State of Pennsylvania and that, even though the Board was acting as a trustee, its refusal to admit Foust and Felder to the College because they were Negroes was discrimination by the State which is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, citing Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483: see Pennsylvania v. Board of Trusts, 353 U. S. 230.
In obedience to the Supreme Court's mandate, we vacated the decrees of the Orphans' Court and remanded the cause to that court "for further proceedings not inconsistent with the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States as set forth in its said mandate," a true and correct copy thereof being appended to our order of remand.
The Orphans' Court, construing the Supreme Court's opinion to mean no more than that the Board of City Trusts was constitutionally incapable of administering Girard College in accordance with the testamentary requirements of its founder, entered decrees removing the Board as trustee of Girard College and substituting for that purpose thirteen private citizens none of whom holds any public office or otherwise exercises any governmental power under the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or any of its political or municipal subdivisions. It is these decrees which are now before us for review on the separate appeals of Foust, Felder, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia (the State and City having voluntarily become parties to the proceedings). Simply stated, the question for decision is whether the action of the Orphans' Court is inconsistent with the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States.
It is the appellants' contention that the Supreme Court's mandate required the Orphans' Court to order the Board of City Trusts to admit Foust and Felder to Girard College forthwith. With that, we cannot agree. Had the Supreme Court so intended, it would have said so just as it did in Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 629 (1950), where there was involved a state-supported University's denial of admission to a Negro because of his race. The order of reversal in the Pweatt case also included a remand of the cause for further proceedings not inconsistent with the Supreme Court's opinion but, immediately preceding, and as a part of the order of reversal, there is the specific ruling by the Court that "the Fourteenth Amendment requires that petitioner be admitted to the University of Texas Law School." The mandate in the instant case contains no such directive.
The appellants' effort to make a "segregation" issue out of Stephen Girard's private charity, merely because of the inability of the Board of City Trusts, as trustee, to comply with the donor's express directions, serves only to confuse and obscure the real issue involved as to the right of a private individual to bequeath his property for a lawful charitable use and have his testamentary disposition judicially respected and enforced. In Holdship v. Patterson, 7 Watts 547, 551 (1838), Mr. Chief Justice Gibson pertinently stated that a testamentary benefactor "has an individual right of property in the execution of the trust, and to deprive him of it would be a fraud on his generosity. To appropriate a gift to a purpose or person not intended, would be an evasion of the donor's private dominion" (Emphasis supplied). As lately as Borsch Estate, 362 Pa. 581, 586, 67 A. 2d 119 (1949), we recognized, as constitutionally safe-guarded, the right of a benefactor to have enforced the limitations and restrictions affixed to his testamentary gift. The exercise of that right is but one of the manifestations of the right of private property which is fundamental to our social, economic and political order and whose preservation unimpaired is as vital to our Negro citizens as it is to their white brethren.
As we read the Supreme Court's opinion, what it holds, and all that it was presumably intended to hold, in view of what was then before the Court, is that the Board of City Trusts, being a State agency, is incapable of administering Girard College in strict compliance with the founder's prescribed racial restriction on admissions without being guilty of a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Supreme Court did not say that there is any Constitutional or other legal barrier to the removal of the Board of City Trusts as trustee of Girard College in order that the Orphanage can be administered in accordance with all of the testator's express directions including the qualifications for admission to the student body. On the other hand, there is high authority for such procedure where a trustee is either unable or fails or refuses to administer a trust in accordance with the lawful directions of the settlor.
In Vidal et al. v. Girard's Executors, 43 U. S. (2 Howard) 126, 188 (1844), which was concerned with an attempt by Stephen Girard's heirs to nullify the Girard Trust, one of the grounds of attack was that the City of Philadelphia, a municipal corporation, was legally incapable of executing the trust. In rejecting this contention Mr. Justice Story, speaking for the Supreme Court, said: "It is true that, if the trust be repugnant to, or inconsistent with the proper purposes for which the corporation was created, that may furnish a ground why it may not be compellable to execute it. But that will furnish no ground to declare the trust itself void, if otherwise unexceptionable; but it will simply require a new trustee to be substituted by the proper court, possessing equity jurisdiction, to enforce and perfect the objects of the trust."
Subsequent to the "Consolidation Act" of February 2, 1854, P. L. 21, which enlarged the physical area of the City of Philadelphia by incorporating therein outlying territory, Girard's heirs renewed their attack on the trust. The case again went to the Supreme Court of the United States where it was argued that the "Consolidation Act" had "either dissolved or destroyed the identity of the original corporation [City of Philadelphia], and it is consequently unable any longer to administer the trust." Mr. Justice Grier, who delivered the opinion of the Court, said, "Now, if this were true [that the City could no longer act as trustee of the Girard Estate], the only consequence would be, not that the charities or trust should fail, but that the chancellor should substitute another trustee": Girard v. Philadelphia, 74 U. S. (7 Wall.) 1, 12, 13 (1868).
The inability of the Board of City Trusts to apply constitutionally the racial criterion prescribed by the testator for admissions to Girard College affects the trustee and not the trust. As the opinion for the Orphans' Court so well states, "It is a universally accepted rule of law that the disqualification or incompetency of a trustee shall not be permitted to defeat the purposes of a charitable trust, nor to impeach its validity, nor to derogate from its enforcement — the trustee must be fitted to the trust and not the trust to the trustee." It necessarily followed, therefore, that the course to be pursued in order that the trust may continue to be fully effectuated in accordance with the benefactor's intent was not to obliterate by judicial fiat an express term of his will which, as a private individual, he had a legal right to impose (see City of Philadelphia v. Girard's Heirs, 45 Pa. 9, 26) but for the court, which has jurisdiction of the trust and its fiduciary, to appoint substitute trustees capable of carrying out the testator's lawful prescriptions. And, that is precisely what the Orphans' Court has done.
The appellants argue, however, that "As a result of legislative implementation and City management, Girard College has taken on a public character" and must, therefore, be administered as a public charity by a public body subject to the inhibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment. We are unable to perceive the slightest basis for the contention either in Girard's will or in legislation passed in relation to the Girard Estate.
The testator's primary and dominant object was to found a private charitable institution for the training, education and maintenance of poor male white orphans. Thus, his will expressly declaresam particularly desirous to provide for such a number of poor male white orphan children, as can be trained in one institution, a better education as well as a more comfortable maintenance than they usually receive from the application of public funds . . . ." He directed that certain physical things be done on the land he devised for the College "so that the establishment [i.e., the College] may be rendered secure and private And, upon devoting, secondarily, specified income from the trust fund to the promotion of the prosperity of the City and the health and comfort of its inhabitants, the testator directed that such income should be applied yearly for the indicated purposes but only "after providing for the College as hereinbefore directed, as my primary object" (all emphasis above supplied).
It is not possible to read Girard's will without being deeply impressed with the fact that it was the College, as a private charity, and not the trusteeship of the City, that was the primary object of the donor's testamentary scheme. Of course, a trustee was a necessary and unavoidable incident of the trust, and the testator, desiring the continuity of the institution, availed himself of the services of the only existing local corporate body capable of administering the trust in perpetuity. What the will so clearly reveals as to the intended paramountcy of the private charity has long since been judicially recognized. In Girard v. Philadelphia, supra, the Supreme Court of the United States spoke of the College, just as the testator had done, as the "primary object" of the three objects to which the income of the whole residuary estate was to be devoted. Cf. also Vidal et al. v. Girard's Execu tors, supra. And, in City of Philadelphia, v. Girard's Heirs, supra, this court, in construing the Girard will, declared that its dispositive portion was "a devise of all the residue of his real and personal estate to the city of Philadelphia, an existing corporation, in trust, as his 'primary object', to construct, furnish, constitute, and maintain the institution now known as the Girard College . . . ."
The private character of the trust and the privacy of the Orphanage Avhich the trust was established to maintain and administer were aptly described in Girard Will Case, supra, as folloAvs: "All provisions of the will shoAV that it was not intended to be a public school; indeed, it is not merely a school at all but Avhat Girard himself called in a codicil to his will, an 'Orphan Establishment,' a home where the fatherless boys eat, sleep, study and live together, enjoying the testator's bounty which provides for them not only an education but also lodging, board, clothing and all the necessities of life. . . . Girard College is a comparatively large institution, but no different legal principles apply to it for that reason than to the smallest of private schools. It is erected on land OAvned by Girard and the buildings Avere constructed with his own funds. . . . The college has been supported and maintained for now over a century by Girard's estate; not a penny of State or city money has ever gone into it; no taxpayer has ever been called upon to contribute to it; true, it is exempt from local taxation, but so are all other charities even though restricted as to their beneficiaries and managed by private trustees."
The statutes and ordinances which the appellants urge as having made a public trust of Girard College did not so operate. Certain it is that no additional legislation Avas required to clothe the City with the fiduciary powers necessary for the administration of Girard College. The Supreme Court said iu this very connection in Vidal et al. v. Girard's Executors, supra: "We think, then, that the charter of the city does invest the corporation with powers and rights to take property upon trust for charitable purposes, which are not otherwise obnoxious to legal animadversion; and, therefore, the objection that it is incompetent to take or administer a trust is unfounded in principle or authority, under the law of Pennsylvania." The legislative enactments which the appellants stress were designed in large part to enable the Commonwealth and the City to receive and use for their governmental purposes pecuniary legacies bequeathed directly to them by Girard's will. The rest of the legislative enactments were purely administrative measures neither envisioned nor required by Girard's will. And, the same can be said for the ordinances which the appellants cite.
What Mr. Chief Justice Lowrie so clearly recognized for this court in Philadelphia v. Girard's Heirs, supra, is peculiarly apposite here: "In all gifts for charitable uses the law makes a very clear distinction between those parts of the writing conveying them, which declares the gift and its purposes, and those which direct the mode of its administration. And this distinction is quite inevitable, for it is founded in the nature of things. We must observe this distinction in studying Mr. Girard's will, otherwise we run the risk of inverting the natural order of things by subordinating principles to form, the purpose to its means, the actual and executed gift for a known purpose to the prescribed or vaticinated modes of administering it, that are intended for adaptation to an unknown future, and of thus making the chief purpose of the gift dependent on the very often unwise directions prescribed for its future security and efficiency."
Little less than startling is the suggestion that the State or City could, by legislation enacted by either of them after Girard's death, alter or affect the terms of his will respecting the creation and administration of Girard College which did not call for or require legislation to make it an operating charitable institution. There is nothing in the testator's will or in any legislation by the Commonwealth or the City that serves to make Girard College a public charity or that requires that it be publicly administered. On the contrary, we hold, on the basis of the compelling testamentary evidence, already noted, that Girard College is a private charity capable of being lawfully administered by private trustees.
In removing the Board of City Trusts as trustee of Girard College and in substituting the private individuals as trustees for that purpose, the Orphans' Court acted well within its jurisdiction and powers. It has had jurisdiction over testamentary trusts at least since the Act of March 29, 1832, P. L. 190, §4: see Wilson v. Board of Directors of City Trusts, 324 Pa. 545, 548, 188 A. 588, where it was said that "Whatever may have been the uncertainty as to the jurisdiction of the orphans' court prior to 1832, the Act of March 29, 1832, P. L. 190, Section 4, and the decisions Avhich folloAved it, cleared away. It provided that the jurisdiction of the several orphans' courts shall extend to and embrace trustees who are accountable in any way for the property of a decedent." It has also had jurisdiction over trusts for the benefit of orphans since the Act of March 27, 1713, 3 Pa. Stat. at Large. 14, Chap. 197.
The Fiduciaries' Act of April 18, 1949, P. L. 512, §331(5), which is the presently applicable statute, confers exclusive power on the Orphans' Court to remove a trustee "when, for any other reason, the interests of the estate are likely to be jeopardized by his continuance in office." Over and above such statutory power, it has long been established that the Orphans' Court possesses the power of a court of chancery in aid of an exercise of its jurisdiction: see Stevens's Estate, 200 Pa. 318, 322, 49 A. 985. What was said there in the opinion of the court below, whereon this court affirmed per curiam, is presently so pertinent as to justify the following quotation: "The courts of Pennsylvania have looked with favor upon charities, and the law of the state, as administered from the beginning of this province, has always been broad enough to discern the objects of every charity and to preserve and enforce it, notwithstanding any defect, such as want of power in the trustees or otherwise: The Apprentices' Fund Case, 13 Pa. C. C. Pep. 241. Therefore, when a charity is established in any manner, such a slight impediment as a defect or want of power in the trustee to execute it does not stand in the way; the charity remains; the trustee is declared incapable of acting, and a competent trustee is appointed in his place. Chancery here steps in to enforce it and commits it to some one who may lawfully administer it: Frazier v. St. Luke's Church, 147 Pa. 256."
The contention which the appellants advance that the Act of 1869, supra, which created the Board of Directors of City Trusts, divested the Orphans' Court of any power to remove the Board of City Trusts as trustee is utterly lacking in merit. As this court recognized in Philadelphia v. Fox, 64 Pa. 169, 183 (1870), all. that the Act of 1869 did was to make a change in the internal organization of the municipality by providing that one class of its functions (i.e., as fiduciary for private charities) should be administered in a manner different from what it had been theretofore. In Wilson v. Board of Directors of City Trusts, supra, where the Orphans' Oonrt was held to possess plenary powers over trusts administered by the Board of City Trusts, it was pointed out that "The Act [of 1869] in no way ousted [the Orphans' Court's] jurisdictional control, and the fact that [the Act] required reports to be made to the City Council and others did not divest the orphans' court of the normal control that it had hitherto exercised over all trust estates created by will. Its power has been recognized since the passage of that Act."
No useful purpose would be served by discussing at greater length the jurisdiction of the Orphans' Court over testamentary trusts and their fiduciaries or the power of that court to remove a trustee who is incapable or fails or refuses to carry out a trust as its creator directed. Such a situation calls for the removal of the incapable trustee and the substitution of a fiduciary able to administer the trust as its provisions require; and the jurisdiction and power of the Orphans' Court to that end is not open to question. Here, there is a conclusively adjudicated want of capacity in the Board of City Trusts to administer Girard College in accordance with the intention and directions of the testator's will. There was, therefore, nothing other for the Orphans' Court to do in the circumstances but to remove the inhibited trustee and appoint trustees capable of administering the College as Stephen Girard intended and prescribed.
The appellants assert that the action of the Orphans' Court in removing the Board of City Trusts and in substituting therefor trustees capable of administering Girard College in accordance with the settlor's directions constituted State action which denied to the minor applicants the equal protection of the laws guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment. As support • for this contention, they cite Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1, and Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249. The pertinently distinguishing feature of those cases is that in each of them it was a constitutionally guaranteed right of an individual that was subjected to the inhibited discrimination based on race or color. No such right is involved here, as we believe will clearly appear.
Coneededly, it has long been authoritatively established that an official act of a member of a State's judiciary constitutes State action within the contemplation of the Fourteenth Amendment. No one will gainsay that. See Ex Parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; also, Shelley v. Kraemer and Barrows v. Jackson, supra. The fallacy in the appellants' argument lies in the fact that the complained-of discrimination in the instant case does not impinge upon any civil right to which the minor petitioners have a constitutional claim along with all other members of the community. Not coming within the qualifications required by Stephen Girard's will for admission to his Orphanage, the present applicants have no right to be beneficiaries thereof in defiance of the settlor's plainly expressed and legally valid testamentary provisions. Neither Shelley v. Kraemer nor Barrows v. Jackson, supra, teaches otherwise.
On the contrary, in Shelley v. Kraemer, where a party to a racially restrictive agreement relative to private property sought equitable enforcement of the covenant against Negro purchasers of portions of the restricted property, the Supreme Court took occasion to observe, first of all, that "among the civil rights intended to be protected from discriminatory state action by the Fourteenth Amendment are the rights to acquire, enjoy, own and dispose of property" and then declared that "Equality in the enjoyment of property rights . . . [is] an essential pre-condition to' the realization' of other basic civil fights' and liberties which the Amendment was intended to guarantee." The undisputed facts in the Shelley case made' it clear that, but for the active intervention of the State court, the Negro purchasers would have been free to occupy the properties in question without restraint.' Thus, the State had made available to the covenantees the full coercive power of government to deny to the Negro purchasers, on the ground of race or color, their constitutional right to own and enjoy property which they were willing and financially able to acquire and which the grantors were willing to sell. As contrasted by the Supreme Court, "The difference between judicial enforcement and non-enforcement of the restrictive covenants is the difference to the petitioners between being denied rights of property available to other members Of the community and being accorded full enjoyment of those rights on an equal footing." In the instant case, no one not possessing the qualifications prescribed' by Girard's will for admission to the Orphanage can claim any right that entitles him to share Stephen Girard's largesse on an equal, or any, footing with those whom Girard himself expressly made the beneficiaries of his bounty.
Barrows v. Jaclcson was also a suit by a covenantee of a racially restrictive agreement, brought to recover from a breaching covenantor the contractually stipulated damages due for selling restricted property to a Negro. The only parties to the suit Were the signatories to the restrictive agreement. No attempt was made to enjoin the Negro purchaser from enjoying the property which he had so acquired. The State court, on the rationale of the Shelley casé, denied the plaintiff a recovery. The Supreme Court, in affirming the judgment of the State court, reasoned as follows: "To compel respondent to respond in damages would bé for the State to punish her for her failure to perform her covenant to continue to discriminate against non-Caucasians in the use of her property. . If the State may thus punish respondent for her failure to carry out her covenant, she is coerced to continue to use her property in a discriminatory manner, which in essence is the purpose of the covenant."
Thus in Barrows, just as in the Shelley case, although in a different form of action, it was the supplicated judicial enforcement of a claim arising out of a racially restrictive covenant in impairment of a Negro's constitutionally guaranteed civil right that was deemed to be discrimination by State action which the Fourteenth Amendment inhibits. This seems plain enough, for, immediately after referring to the effects of the restrictive covenant on the owner's exercise of her property rights, the Supreme Court at once said, —"The next question to emerge is whether the state action in allowing damages deprives anyone of rights protected by the Constitution". Thereupon, the Court concluded that the State action did so operate, saying, — "If a state court awards damages for breach of a restrictive covenant, a prospective seller of restricted land Avill either refuse to sell to non-Caucasians or else Avill require non-Caucasians to pay a higher price to meet the damages which the seller may incur. Solely because of their race, non-Caucasians will be unable to purchase, own, and enjoy property on the same terms as Caucasians. Denial of this right by state action deprives such non-Caucasians, unidentified but identifiable, of equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Shelley, supra."
Nowhere in Shelley v. Kraemer or in Barrows v. Jackson did the Supreme Court denounce as void the restrictive covenants respectively involved in those cases. Such covenants are recognized as valid inter partes so long as they are adhered to voluntarily. Notwithstanding the discriminatory nature of a covenant restricted on the basis of race or color, no one can compel the covenantor to sell his property in violation of his restrictive agreement or otherwise force him to desist from abiding by his covenant. To do so would be to invade Ms constitutionally guaranteed right of dominion over his own property. And, that would be no less true of Stephen Girard's trust were we to hold that, because of his testamentary limitation on admissions to Girard College to "poor male white orphans", he has been guilty of an unconstitutional discrimination by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, wherefor all poor male orphans, regardless of color, are eligible for admission to that institution.
The elements which brought the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment into play in Shelley v. Kraemer and Barrows v. Jackson consisted of State action for the enforcement of a discrimination based on race or color in impairment of a constitutionally protected right of an individual to which he, along with all other members of the community, is entitled as a matter of public law. It is plain enough from the words of the Fourteenth Amendment that it is "laws", and not claims under some private testament, whereof the Amendment guarantees everyone "equal protection". Manifestly, therefore, an element essential to the invocation of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is absent in this case.
We are not unmindful that, when the Supreme Court reversed our former action in this case and remanded the record for further proceedings not inconsistent with its opinion, there was likewise present only the action of the State agency as trustee of Girard College and the racial discrimination on admissions imposed by Girard's will which the trustee was enforcing. In'short, then as now, there was no violation of a constitutionally protected right possessed alike by everyone. We have already indicated our belief that, had the Supreme Court intended that the court below, having jurisdiction and supervisory control over the trustee of Girard College, should admit the Negro applicants forthwith, it Avould have plainly said so just as it did in Sweatt v. Painter, supra. This deduction is, of course, a negative approach to the intended scope of the Supreme Court's ruling. Our positive interpretation of it is that a State agency, even when acting as the trustee of a private charity, can have no part in the enforcement of a racially discriminatory restriction regardless of what type of rights it affects. It need hardly be remarked that, had our study of the Supreme Court's opinion led us to the conclusion that no trustee, other than the Board of City Trusts, can laAvfully administer Girard College, we would have been alert to carry out the ruling to the full extent of its implications.
Furthermore, if all that is necessary to constitute a denial of equal protection of the laws in Adolation of the Fourteenth Amendment is State action and a racial or' religious discrimination, then no private charity created by will can any longer dispense its benefits on the basis of race, creed or color according as its settlor has stipulated. A avíII is Avithout any force or effect whatsoever until it is probated. This is so elementary as not to require citation of authority; and, equally fundamental it is that the admission of a will to probate constitutes judicial action whether it be by the register, the. surrogate or some other officer thereunto •authorized by Iuav. It is plain enough, therefore, that State action is necessary to effectuate a will Avhich creates- a private charity Avhose benefits are dispensed on the basis of race, creed or color. What keeps such a charity, so created and restricted, from constituting a violation of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is that no one who does not come within the settlor's definition of beneficiary has a constitutionally protected right (or any right for that matter) to share in the charity's benefits.
Further dissimilarity between the Shelley and Barrólas cases on the one hand and the instant case on the other is in the fact that in the former cases the full power of the State by way of court enforcement of the racially restrictive covenants was sought and relief refused, while in the present instance all that has happened is that, in the course of the proceeding instituted by the two Negro boys for admission to Girard College, the Orphans' Court, having been authoritatively advised that the Board of City Trusts is incapable of administering Girard College as its founder directed, removed the incapable trustee and appointed other fiduciaries who can administer the College in the manner Stephen Girard prescribed. In so doing the Orphans' Court did no more than it would do in any case upon ascertaining that a trustee was no longer capable of discharging his fiduciary duties competently and adequately.
The appellants argue, however, that, because the substituted trustees will continue to restrict admissions to Girard College to poor male orphans of a particular race, whom Girard by his will specified as alone eligible for admission, the action of the Orphans' Court will deny the present applicants of a different race the equal protection of the laws guaranteed them by the Fourteenth Amendment. In aid of this argument, the appellants unwarrantedly .charge that • the Orphans' Court's exercise of its judicial power in-the, premises was "for the sole purpose of excluding Negroes from Girard College" and that the action "was taken solely in order to enable the school to remain segregated." The Orphans' Court did not act to exclude Negroes from Girard College. None had ever been admitted. What the Orphans' Court did was to refuse to admit the Negro applicants because they did not qualify for admission under the terms of Girard's will. And, to speak of Girard College as remaining "segregated" as a result of the Orphans' Court action is to use a term whose present-day stigmatizing connotation has no proper place in this case.
The appellant City persists in its complaint that it was denied procedural due process by the Orphans' Court's entry of its decrees, after the remand, Avithout further hearing before that court. Brief reference to the procedural steps pursued in this litigation will at once disclose that all parties have been fully heard. Hearings on the petitions of Foust and Felder were held for days before the Orphans' Court where testimony was taken in extenso and the matter thoroughly argued by counsel. Exceptions to the hearing judge's decrees were filed and thereafter argued by counsel for appellants before the court sitting en bane. Following entry of the final decrees, the matter was appealed to this court and then carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. When the cause was lately remanded to the Orphans' Court pursuant to the Supreme Court's mandate, there was no occasion for any further hearing in the matter. The record was complete. It was the duty of the Orphans' Court, just as it is our duty now, to proceed in a manner not inconsistent with the opinion of the Supreme Court. And, that, Ave think we are doing.
The decrees are affirmed at the cost of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia.
Mr. Justice Arnold and Mr. Justice Cohen took no part in the consideration or disposition of these appeals.