Court Opinion

ID: 9448141
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:24:07.991455+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:18.367876
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The opinion of the district court in this case1 is so lucid, literate and moderate that I cannot forego expressing surprise that my brethren of the majority can find fault with it. In this dissent I shall try to avoid repeating what the lower court has so well said and to confine myself to an effort to refute the holdings of the majority where they do attack and reject the lower court’s opinion.
A good place to start is the quotation made by the majority from the recent case of Cafeteria and Restaurant Workers Union v. McElroy, 1961, 81 S.Ct. 1743, wherein the discussion is made of one’s right to “go to Bagdad.” I would add to the language quoted by the majority from that ease the sentences which follow it:
“It is the petitioner’s claim that due process in this case required that Rachel Brawner be advised of the specific grounds for her exclusion and be accorded a hearing at which she might refute them. We are satisfied, however, that under the circumstances of this case such a procedure was not constitutionally required.
“The Fifth Amendment does not require a trial-type hearing in every conceivable case of government impairment of private interests. ‘ * * The very nature of due process negates any concept of inflexible procedures universally applicable to every imaginable situation. * * * “Due process,” unlike some legal rules, is not a technical conception with a fixed content unrelated to time, place and circumstances.’ It is ‘compounded of history, reason, the past course of decisions * * * ’ Joint Anti-Fascist [Refugee] Comm[ittee] v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 162-163 [71 S.Ct. 624, 643, 95 L.Ed. 817] (concurring opinion).
“As these and other cases make clear, consideration of what procedure due process may require under any given set of circumstances must begin with a determination of the precise nature of the government *160function involved as well as of the private interest that has been affected by governmental action. Where it has been possible to characterize that private interest (perhaps in over-simplification) as a mere privilege subject to the Executive’s plenary power, it has traditionally been held that notice and hearing are not constitutionally required. * * * ” 2 [Emphasis added.]
The failure of the majority to follow the reasoning of McElroy, supra, results, in my opinion, from a basic failure to understand the nature and mission of schools. The problem presented is sui generis.
Everyone who has dealt with schools knows that it is necessary to make many rules governing the conduct of those who attend them, which do not reach the concept of criminality but which are designed to regulate the relationship between school managment and the student based upon practical and ethical considerations which the courts know very little about and with which they are not equipped to deal. To extend the injunctive power of federal courts to the problems of day to day dealings between school authority and student discipline and morale is to add to the now crushing responsibilities of federal functionaries, the necessity of qualifying as a Gargantuan aggregation of wet nurses or baby sitters. I do not believe that a balanced consideration of the problem with which we are dealing contemplates any such extreme attitude. Indeed, I think that the majority has had to adopt the minority view of the courts in order to reach the determination it has here announced.
Nor do I find of favorable (to the majority) significance the introductory sentence quoted by it from the annotation in 58 A.L.R. at page 909.3 The quoted statement implies, rather, that there is no case where a student at a public college or university has taken the position that he was entitled to a hearing before being expelled. More in point, it seems to me, is the addition to the text found on page 4 of the July 1961 pocket part of American Jurisprudence, Vol. 55, § 22, page 16, of the article on Universities and Colleges. I quote the closing sentences of 55 Am.Jur., § 22, pp. 15-16 of that article, adding the paragraph appearing in the pocket part:
“ * * * Where the conduct of a student is such that his continued presence in the school will be disastrous to its proper discipline and to the morals of the other pupils, his expulsion is justifiable. Only where it is clear that such an action with respect to a student has not been an honest exercise of discretion, or has *161arisen from some motive extraneous to the purposes committed to that discretion, may the courts be called upon for relief.
“There is a conflict of authority as to whether notice of the charges and hearing are required before suspensions or expulsion of a student. Assuming that a student is entitled to a hearing prior to his expulsion from an institution of learning, the authorities are not in agreement as to what kind of hearing must be given to him. A few cases hold that he is entitled to a formal hearing clothed with all the attributes of a judicial hearing. However, the weight of authority is to the effect that no formal hearing is required.”
The general rule covering the subtitle “Government and Discipline” in the general treatise on Colleges and Universities is thus stated in the black-typed summary of the law in Yol. 14 C.J.S. Colleges and Universities, § 26, page 1360:
“Broadly speaking, the right of a student to attend a public or private college or university is subject to the condition that he comply with its scholastic and disciplinary requirements, and the proper college authorities may in the exercise of a broad discretion formulate and enforce reasonable rules and regulations in both respects. The courts will not interfere in the absence of an abuse of such discretion.”
All of these expressions of the general rule seem to me to justify and require our adherence to that rule under the facts of this case. The majority opinion sets out many of them, but I think its statement should be supplemented and set forth in chronological order.
Appellants and other members of the student body of Alabama State College had, for a period prior to the happenings outlined, been attending meetings at Negro churches and other places where outsiders, including professional agitators, had been counseling that the students of that institution engage in “demonstrations.” Appellants, along with a total of between twenty-nine and thirty-five students of the college, proceeded en masse into a snack bar in the basement of the county court house at Montgomery, Alabama, seating themselves in the privately owned facility so as to occupy nine tables. The lady in charge of the eating place asked them to depart and they refused. Officers were called and, upon their arrival, they first asked that all white patrons leave the premises, which was promptly done. The Negroes refused their request to leave until the lights were put out, whereupon they proceeded to the hall of the court house. Inasmuch as they were blocking ingress and egress therefrom, they were ordered by the officers to take their stands against the walls, which they did. They remained in the court house about one and one-half hours following their entrance about 11:00 A.M. They refused to give their names to reporters who interviewed them. The occurrence took place on February 25, 1960.
The president of the college, H. Councill Trenholm, investigated the occurrence at the direction of the governor of Alabama and made his report and recommendation to the State Board of Education. About five o’clock on the afternoon of the occurrence he had released a mimeographed statement making an appeal to the students and staff that they “refrain from any activities which may have a damaging effect upon the reputation and relationships of college and * * * have concern that there not be any type of further involvement of any identified student of Alabama State College.” He reported that, from his investigation conducted on the campus, it was his opinion that twenty-nine students who were the leaders in the activities he had investigated were subject to expulsion.4
*162On February 26, 1960, several hundred students, including appellants, staged another demonstration at the Montgomery Court House by attending a trial where a fellow student was charged with perjury to which he pled guilty. The several hundred demonstrators marched around the court house and then walked, two by two, back to the college about two miles away. A snapshot received in evidence depicted a mob-like gathering, on the college campus on the same day, of a large number of students ganged about the college president of thirty-five years tenure. The expressions on the faces of the participants, including at least some of appellants, portrayed a group in the grip of anger, exhibiting a threatening and menacing attitude. The scene spoke more eloquently to the trial court of the spirit and attitude of the appellants and the followers they had gathered than many reams of oral testimony could have.
February 27, several hundred Negro college students, including appellants, staged mass demonstrations in Montgomery and Tuslcegee, some of which were attended by violence. On the same day a large group of students from the college, including appellants, gathered at a Negro church and one of appellants, Bernard Lee, filed a petition with the governor in which it was stated, among other things: “We strongly feel that our conduct was not of such that we should owe our college or state an apology. If our conduct has disturbed you or President Trenholm, we regret this. But we have no sense of shame or regret for our conduct * * * ”
On the same day the governor was advised by the college president that he had called upon members of the student body to behave themselves and return to classes and had urged the students not to engage in' conduct which might cause racial disturbances. A like plea was made by the Attorney General of Alabama both to white and colored people. March 1, 1960, at about 8:00 A.M., approximately six hundred students of the college marched to the steps of the state capítol, where student leaders, including appellants, made addresses calling on all the students to boycott and strike against the college if any students were expelled. The gathering was policed by a number of the state officials to prevent untoward incidents.
March 2, 1960, the State Board of Education met and heard Dr. Trenholm’s report, ordering the nine students mentioned above to be expelled and twenty to be placed on probation. The Board had the benefit of reports made by agents of the Department of Public Safety, which revealed the names of the demonstrators and of their leaders, as well as that of college president and of the governor who had witnessed portions of the demonstrations.
March 3, 1960, the date of the expulsion order, about two thousand Negro students staged a demonstration at a church near the college campus at which appellants were the leaders. They urged the students to refrain from returning to classes and from registration for the new term, and publicly denounced the State Board and the college administration. The students stayed away from classes and milled about the campus in general disorder.
These events all transpired before the expulsion of appellants. But the “demonstrations” did not cease. March 4, a wildly cheering crowd of Negro students gathered at a church and were addressed by one or more agitators of national prominence, and an appeal was made for a meeting the following Sunday on the steps of the state capítol. At the meeting, one or more of appellants and a number of other students were very critical of the governor and the college administration.
*163March 5, 1960, appellant Bernard Lee, representing the demonstrators, sent a telegram to the president of the student body at Tuskegee urging them to join in the demonstrations.
March 6, 1960, several thousand Negroes, including appellants and hundreds of the students of the college assembled near the steps of the capítol and approximately ten thousand white people gathered in the same vicinity. A large gathering of city and county officers and the use of fire hose finally avoided an open clash between the two groups. For a number of days following, there were demonstrations on the campus of the college accompanied by some violence and some arrests were made by the police.
March 11, the entire group which had initiated the demonstrations were convicted and fined. Several months later, appellants and several other students were still engaged in constant efforts to stir up trouble and dissension among the students and faculty of the college.
After appellants were expelled a document signed by one of them, on behalf of the executive committee of the student body, issued a public call to the student body of every school in Alabama, in the South and in the nation to support the appellants, and the same document called upon parents, teachers and the people of the nation to give them support.
Each of the appellants had, in his application for admission to the college, agreed in writing to abide by college policies and regulations relating to admission, attendance, conduct, withdrawal or dismissal.
A part of the foregoing recital is taken from the affidavit of Governor Patterson of Alabama. It was attached to and offered as a portion of the answer of appellees to the complaint and the motion for preliminary injunction. This motion was considered along with all of the other motions filed and with the hearing of witnesses and was included in the order from which this appeal was taken. The affidavit was competent evidence even in a court. Rule 43(e) F.R.Civ.P., 28 U.S.C.A.
The opinion of the majority stresses that definite proof was not made of the attendance of all of the appellants at all of the “demonstrations” (the word is taken from the testimony of the only appellant who testified in the court below). I think that ample showing was made to establish that the appellants were at all of the demonstrations and were the ringleaders of them. They participated in the enterprise as joint venturers from the start and every document emanating from them showed the adhesiveness of the group.
It is interesting to find what the majority considers to be the significance of an assumed absence of proof in the light of the fact that only one of the appellants took the witness stand in the court below, although they all announced at the outset that they were ready for trial and manifestly were present in court. Their presence and participation in all which transpired was shown by believable evidence and circumstances and stand wholly undenied. In a recent case charging a fraudulent civil conspiracy against a defendant5 where the proof was very slim, this Court speaking through Judge Rives, stated the rule as follows:
“Certainly, the proof was sufficient to make out a prima facie case of appellant’s involvement in each of the transactions and liability to respond civilly in liquidated damages under the statute; * * * his failure either to take the stand, or show that he was unable to testify, or even to offer any excuse whatever for his failure to testify in explanation of suspicious facts and circumstances peculiarly within his knowledge, fairly warrants the inference that his testimony, if produced, would have been adverse.”
See to the same effect these additional eases from this Circuit: United States v. Leveson, 1959, 262 F.2d 659; United *164States v. Marlowe, 1956, 235 F.2d 366; Williams v. United States, 1952, 199 F.2d 921; Paudler v. Paudler, 1950, 185 F.2d 901, certiorari denied 341 U.S. 920, 71 S.Ct. 742, 95 L.Ed. 1354; and United States v. Priola, 1959, 272 F.2d 589.
A fortiori, in an equity case where parties are seeking the extreme remedy of injunction against state officers, it does not lie in the mouths of appellants to decry the weakness of the opposition proof when they, having all the facts in their possession, sit silently by when challenged by assertions which it behooved them to refute if they would support their case. They were accused and convicted by competent proof, including a picture and writings authored by them, of public boorishness, of defying the authority of the officials of their school and state, of blatant insubordination, of endeavoring to disrupt the school they had agreed to support with loyalty, as well as to break up other schools, and had openly incited to riot; and when their time came to speak, they stood mute, offering only one of their group along with the college president and two newspaper reporters as witnesses.
Before they were notified of their expulsion they had issued public statements admitting everything which was the basis of their expulsion, and had disclosed everything they could have brought forward in any hearing which might have been given them before they were notified that their conduct required their separation from connection with the college. It is difficult to perceive the validity of the argument that they were not given a hearing when, called upon to refute proof offered against them and themselves carrying the burden of proof throughout, they failed to say a word in their defense.
We are trying here the actions of State officials, which actions we are bound to invest with every presumption of fairness and correctness. Certainly the Board had before it a responsible and credible showing which justified their finding that these appellants were guilty of wilful disobedience of the rules and directives of the head of the college they were attending and of conduct prejudicial to the school and unbecoming a student or future teacher in the schools of Alabama, as well as of insubordination and insurrection and inciting other peoples to like conduct. It is undisputed that the Board made a leisurely and careful investigation and passed its judgment in entire good faith. The State of Alabama had no statute and the school had no rule or regulation requiring any other hearing than that which was had, and the Board was entirely justified in declining “to continue to accept responsibility for the supervision and service to any student with whom the relationship becomes unpleasant and difficult.” It is worth noting, too, that President Trenholm, testifying as a witness for appellants, stated that the rules of the school had been in effect more than thirty years; and that there was no requirement in them for notice or hearing and that prior practices did not include such as a precedent.
It is undisputed that failure to act as the Board did act would have resulted in a complete disruption of discipline and probable breaking up of a school whose history ran back many years, and whose president had held the position for thirty-five years. If he and the School Board had done less, they would, in my opinion, have been recreant to their duties. The moderate action they took did bring order out of chaos and enable the school to continue operation.
I do not feel that we are called upon here to volunteer our ideas of procedure in separating students from state colleges and universities. I think each college should make its own rules and should apply them to the facts of the case before it, and that the function of a court would be to test their validity if challenged in a proper court proceeding.
A sane approach to a problem whose facts are closely related to the one before us was made by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Steier v. New York State Education Commission et al., 1959, 271 F.2d 13. Its attitude is thus epitomized on page 18:
“Education is a field of life reserved to the individual states. The *165only restriction the Federal Government imposes is that in their educational program no state may discriminate against an individual because of race, color or creed.
“As so well stated by Judge Wyzanski in Cranney v. Trustees of Boston University, D.C., 139 F.Supp. 130, to expand the Civil Rights Statute so as to embrace every constitutional claim such as here made would in fact bring within the initial jurisdiction of the United States District Courts that vast array of controversies which have heretofore been raised in state tribunals by challenges founded upon the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. It would be arrogating to [the] United States District Courts that which is purely a State Court function. Conceivably every State College student, upon dismissal from such college, could rush to a Federal Judge seeking review of the dismissal.
“It is contrary to the Federal nature of our system — contrary to the concept of the relative places of States and Federal Courts.
“Whether or not we would have acted as did the Administrator of Brooklyn College in dismissing the plaintiff matters not. For a Federal District Court to take jurisdiction of a case such as this would lead to confusion and chaos in the entire field of jurisprudence in the states and in the United States.”
Certainly I think that the filing of charges, the disclosure of names of proposed witnesses, and such procedures as the majority discusses are wholly unrealistic and impractical and would result in a major blow to our institutions of learning. Every attempt at discipline would probably lead to a cause célébre, in connection with which federal functionaries would be rushed in to investigate whether a federal law had been violated. I think we would do well to bear in mind the words of Mr. Justice Jackson:6
“ * * * no local agency which is subject to federal investigation, inspection, and discipline is a free agency. I .cannot say that our country could have no central police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.”
I think, moreover, that, in these troublous times, those in positions of responsibility in the federal government should bear in mind that the maintenance of the safety, health and morals of the people is committed under our system of government to the states. More than a hundred year ago Chief Justice Marshall7 stated the principle in these words:
“The power to direct the removal of gunpowder is a branch of the police power, which unquestionably remains, and ought to remain, with the states.”
I dissent.

. 1960, 186 F.Supp. 945.

. The dissenting opinion in that ease contains language which further illuminates the problem before us:
“ :¡: * * But the Court goes beyond that. It holds that the mere assertion by government that exclusion is for a valid reason forecloses further inquiry. That is, unless the government official is foolish enough to admit what he is doing — and few will be so foolish after today’s decision — he may employ ‘security requirements’ as a blind behind which to dismiss at will for the most discriminatory of causes.
“Such a result in effect nullifies the substantive right — not to be arbitrarily injured by Goverment — which the Court purports to recognize. * * * For under today’s holding petitioner is entitled to no process at all. She is not told what she did wrong; she is not given a chance to defend herself. She may be the victim of the basest calumny, perhaps even the caprice of the government officials in whose power her status rested completely. In such a case, I cannot believe that she is not entitled to some procedures.
“ ‘[T]he right to be heard before being condemned to suffer grievous loss of any kind, even though it may not involve the stigma and hardships of a criminal conviction, is a principle basic to our society.’ ” [Citing McGrath, supra.]

. “The cases involving suspension or expulsion of a student from a public college or university all involve the question whether the hearing given to the student was adequate. In every instance the sttifficiency of the hearing was upheld.” [Emphasis added.]

. The governor recommended, however, that only Bernard Lee, Norfolk, Ya.; St. John Dixon, National City, Cal.; Edward E. Jones, Pittsburg, Pa.; Leon Rice, Chicago, Ill.; Howard Shipman, New York, N. Y. ; Elroy Emory, Ragland, *162Ala. ; James McFadden, Prichard, Ala.; Joseph Peterson, Newcastle, Ala.; Marzette Watts, Montgomery, Ala., be expelled at the end of the current term and that the remainder be placed on probation and allowed to remain in school pending good behavior.

. Daniel v. United States, 5 Cir., 1956, 234 F.2d 102, 106, certiorari denied 352 U.S. 971, 77 S.Ct. 362, 1 L.Ed.2d 324.

. “The Supreme Court in the American System of Government,” p. 70.

. Brown v. Maryland, 1827, 12 Wheat. 419, 6 L.Ed. 678.