Opinion ID: 323207
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Constitutionality of the Regulations

Text: 61 Appellants last challenge their suspensions on the grounds that the Grambling College and Louisiana State Board of Education regulations they are said to have violated, see note 3 supra, are unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First and Four-teenth Amendments. Although these constitutional doctrines have been applied to regulations of educational institutions, Soglin v. Kauffman, 418 F.2d 163 (7th Cir. 1969), it is clear that school disciplinary regulations need not be drawn with the same precision as are criminal codes. Murray v. West Baton Rouge Parish School Board, 472 F.2d 438 (5th Cir. 1973). We find the Murrary case controlling: 62 Some degree of discretion must, of necessity, be left to . . . school officials to determine what forms of misbehavior should be sanctioned. Absent evidence that the broad wording in the statute is, in fact, being used to infringe on First Amendment rights . . . we must assume that school officials are acting responsibly in applying the broad statutory command. 63 Id. at 442. These regulations are codes of general conduct only. College students should have no difficulty in understanding what conduct the regulations allow and what conduct they prohibit. They ask for adherence to standards of conduct which befit a student, enhance the educational purposes of the school, and warn of the danger of mass involvement. See Esteban v. Central Missouri State College, 415 F.2d 1077, 1089 (8th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 965, 90 S.Ct. 2169, 26 L.Ed.2d 548 (1970). 64 There is no evidence in this case that the Grambling administrative officials or the Disciplinary Hearing Board utilized the regulations to infringe on constitutional rights. We do not find the challenged regulations to be so vague or so overbroad as to evade protected freedoms contrary to the First and Fourteenth Amendments.