Court Opinion

ID: 9462605
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:45:19.980446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:40.471105
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The test on appeal from a preliminary injunction is whether there was a clear abuse of discretion in the district court’s balancing of the pertinent factors. Banks v. Trainor, 525 F.2d 837, 841 (7th Cir. 1975). I do not find such abuse in this case.
There are three principal propositions with which the district court had to deal.
1. Whether plaintiff is likely to succeed in showing that he did not violate instructions in failing to obtain clearance before using the “Inventory.” The notice of discharge of plaintiff, dated May 6th, gave as the reason for the discharge that the use of the Inventory caused disruption of discipline and danger of harm to people. It gave no hint of a claim that plaintiff had violated instructions by using controversial material without clearance in advance. That claim was first made in August on the motion to vacate the preliminary injunction. If an instruction had been given and violated, such violation would most naturally have been assigned as a cause on May 6th. The court could therefore properly discount the claim that an instruction had been given.
2. Whether in the absence of instructions, plaintiff is likely to succeed in showing that he need not have known that use of the Inventory was, under the circumstances, improper performance of the teaching job. Whatever one may think of the Inventory, it was germane to the general title of the course assigned to plaintiff, Contemporary Living, and to the chosen topic, Sex and the New Morality, and in plaintiff’s experience, it had been used with persons some of whom were in the same *1135age group as plaintiff’s students. It is by no means clear that in distributing the Inventory, plaintiff conveyed to the students advocacy of unlawful conduct, although it is arguable that some of the indicated answers did so.
3. The degree of disruption and danger to persons reasonably to be expected because of popular antipathy toward plaintiff. The board’s discharge appears to have treated threats of violence and other popular expressions against plaintiff as sufficient cause, standing alone for discharge. I do not believe that it was lawful cause, although it could well be weighed as a circumstance on the side of denying an injunction. Considering it as such circumstance, it should be remembered that in June, when the injunction was granted, more than three months cooling period had elapsed, the court was aware that there would be two months of vacation immediately ahead, and the court promised a prompt hearing on a motion to vacate, particularly grounded on a showing of reasonably to be expected disruption. The court ordered that plaintiff be restored to the payroll, but carefully avoided any requirement of backpay. By mid-August, when the motion to vacate was heard, almost six months had elapsed, and the district judge could, as he did, require an “extremely strong showing” of probable disruption. In the nature of human affairs it is reasonable to assume that the probability of a significant disruption as a result of one event substantially diminishes with the passage of time.
In my opinion, the district court did not abuse its discretion in deciding the probability of plaintiff’s ultimate success, and balancing that and other factors so as to determine that the preliminary injunction should not be vacated.
As I understand the facts, the property entitlement of plaintiff which was involved in the action consisted of (1) his right, in the absence of his giving cause for discharge, to complete the 1974-75 school year and (2) his right, since he had not been given timely notice otherwise, to contract for the 1975-76 school year. The preliminary injunction, beginning in June, 1975, affected primarily element (2), leaving the question of damages for loss of most of element (1) and claims for other types of relief such as expunging the record of discharge, to trial on the merits. It may well be, under the circumstances, that the order appealed from should be modified by providing expressly that it does not require defendant to employ plaintiff after the close of the 1975-76 school year, but I do not agree with reversal.