Court Opinion

ID: 9425013
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:13:25.977214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:53.228067
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.*
I concur in the Court’s judgments and opinions in Sindermann and Roth, but there is one central point in both decisions that I would like to underscore since it may have been obscured in the comprehensive discussion of the cases. That point is that the relationship between a state institution and one of its teachers is essentially a matter of state concern and state law. The Court holds today only that a state-employed teacher who has a right to re-employment under state law, arising from either an express or implied contract, has, in turn, a right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to some form of prior administrative or academic hearing on the cause *604for nonrenewal of his contract. Thus, whether a particular teacher in a particular context has any right to such administrative hearing hinges on a question of state law. The Court's opinion makes this point very sharply:
“Property interests ... are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law . . . .” Board of Regents v. Roth, ante, at 577.
Because the availability of the Fourteenth Amendment right to a prior administrative hearing turns in each case on a question of state law, the issue of abstention will arise in future cases contesting whether a particular teacher is entitled to a hearing prior to non-renewal of his contract. If relevant state contract law is unclear, a federal court should, in my view, abstain from deciding whether he is constitutionally entitled to a prior hearing, and the teacher should be left to resort to state courts on the questions arising under state law.

This opinion applies also to No. 71-162, Board of Regents of State Colleges et al. v. Roth, ante, p. 564.