Court Opinion

ID: 9426454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:01.862315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.968495
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
The issue in this case is whether the discharge of the respondent teachers by the petitioner School Board violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the Board members were not impartial decisionmakers. It is now well established that “a biased decisionmaker [is] constitutionally unacceptable [and] 'our system of law has always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness.' ” Withrow v. Larkin, 421 U. S. 35, 47, quoting In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136.
In order to ascertain whether there is a constitutionally unacceptable danger of partiality, both the nature of the particular decision and the interest of the decision-maker in its outcome must be examined. Here, Wisconsin law controls the factors that must be found before a teacher may be discharged for striking. The parties present sharply divergent views of what the Wisconsin law requires. The petitioners claim that the decision to *498discharge a striking teacher is a policy matter entrusted to the discretion of the local school board, whereas the respondents contend that a striking teacher cannot be discharged unless that sanction is reasonable in view of the circumstances culminating in the strike.
The Court acknowledges, as it must, that it is “bound to accept the interpretation of Wisconsin law by the highest court of the State.” Ante, at 488. Yet it then proceeds to reverse that court by assuming, as the petitioners urge, that under Wisconsin law the determination to discharge the striking teachers only “involved the [Board’s] exercise of its discretion as to what should be done to carry out the duties the law placed on the Board.” Ibid, It dismisses the respondents’ version of Wisconsin law in a footnote. Ante, at 490 n. 3.
But the fact is that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has not clearly delineated the state-law criterion that governs the discharge of striking teachers, and this Court is wholly without power to resolve that issue of state law. I would therefore remand this case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for it to determine whether, on the one hand, the School Board is charged with considering the reasonableness of the strike in light of its own actions, or is, on the other, wholly free, as the Court today assumes, to exercise its discretion in deciding whether to discharge the teachers.
Under the petitioners’ view of the Wisconsin law, the discharge determination is purely a policy judgment involving an assessment of the best interest of the school system. Since that judgment does not require the Board to assess its own conduct during the negotiations, and since there is no indication that the Board members have a financial or personal interest in its outcome, the only basis for a claim of partiality rests on the Board’s knowledge of the events leading to the strike acquired through its participation in the negotiation process. As *499the Court notes, however, “[m]ere familiarity with the facts of a case gained by an agency in the performance of its statutory role does not . . . disqualify a decision-maker.” Ante, at 493.
But a distinctly different constitutional claim is presented if, as the respondents contend, the School Board members must evaluate their own conduct in determining whether dismissal is a reasonable sanction to impose on the striking teachers. Last Term in Withrow v. Larkin, supra, the Court noted that “[ajilo wing a decisionmaker to review and evaluate his own prior decisions raises problems that are not present” where the bias issue rests exclusively on familiarity with the facts of a case. 421 U. S., at 58 n. 25. Apart from considerations of financial interest or personal hostility, the Court has found that officials “directly involved in making recommendations cannot always have complete objectivity in evaluating them.” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 486. See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254.
“[UJnder a realistic appraisal of psychological tendencies and human weakness,” Withrow v. Larkin, supra, at 47, I believe that there is a constitutionally unacceptable danger of bias where school board members are required to assess the reasonableness of their own actions during heated contract negotiations that have culminated in a teachers’ strike. If, therefore, the respondents’ interpretation of the state law is correct, then I would agree with the Wisconsin Supreme Court that “the board was not an impartial decision maker in a constitutional sense and that the [teachers] were denied due process of law.” 66 Wis. 2d 469, 494, 225 N. W. 2d 658, 671.
For the reasons stated, I would vacate the judgment before us and remand this case to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.