Court Opinion

ID: 9602199
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:52:28.192946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:01.444480
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
Before explaining my reasons for disagreeing with the majority as to whether appellant’s right to due process has been denied, it is necessary to set forth the proper scope of review to be applied in this case. The majority correctly states the general rule that “[o]nly where the findings of fact made by the trial court are clearly erroneous will they be set aside.” However, the majority then uses this general rule to defer to the legal conclusion of the trial court that the facts adduced at trial amounted to a “meaningful opportunity” to be heard, and therefore satisfied appellant’s constitutional right to be free from deprivations of property without first having the benefit of the due process of law. In so doing, the majority abdicates its judicial responsibility to insure that the law is correctly interpreted and applied to the facts brought before the lower court. We have not been asked to review the trial court’s findings of fact. We have been asked, and properly so, to determine whether, given the facts (which neither party seriously contests), the appellant, as a legal matter, received the full benefit of the procedural rights afforded her by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We make this determination unfettered by the legal inferences or conclusions which the trial court has applied to the facts. See Harding v. Home Inv. and Sav. Co., 49 Idaho 64, 286 P. 920, rehearing denied 49 Idaho 75, 297 P. 1101 (1930); 5 Am.Jur.2d Appeal and Error § 820.
The majority opinion fails to present a clear picture of the sequence of events as they occurred here. Appellant’s “meaningful opportunity” to be heard occurred in the following manner. On October 31st, appellant was informed for the first time that she would be required to watch the class in which she was employed as a teacher’s aide while the regular teacher held parent-teacher conferences. She stated at that time that she was opposed to performing that work. Later that same day she was notified that if she would not accept the assignment, she would be terminated. The following day, November 1, appellant returned to the school, was again asked if she would accept the assignment and, when she replied in the negative, her employment was terminated. At this point in time, appellant’s only “meaningful opportunity to be heard” had been before the principal, i. e., the same person who made the initial decision to terminate her employment. Subsequent to her termination, but still on November 1, appellant was contacted over the telephone by the district superintendent, who discussed with her the reasons for her refusal to accept the assignment and the resulting termination. On November 2, appellant requested a written statement of the reasons for her termination. The district refused to give her such a statement.
A majority of the Court on these facts is willing to hold, as a matter of law, that appellant received all of the process due her upon termination of her property interest in continued employment. To my mind, the majority’s “interpretation of the law” is nothing more than a deference to the findings of fact of the trial judge. While due *556process may be a malleable concept, I for one am not prepared to say that it is now a strictly factual matter to be determined by trial courts on an ad hoc basis. The present case illustrates the very fundamental dangers which such an approach engenders.
A minimum requirement of due process is that a person be given prior notice and a hearing prior to being deprived of a protected interest. “When protected interests are implicated, the right to some kind of prior hearing is paramount.” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569-70, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2705, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972). Failure to accord an adequate, meaningful hearing prior to a decision to terminate employment is a denial of procedural due process. Wagner v. Little Rock School District, 373 F.Supp. 876, 881 (E.D.Ark.1974). A pretermination hearing is required for a state employee having a cognizable property interest in continued employment. Wilderman v. Nelson, 467 F.2d 1173 (8th Cir. 1972). Finally, a post-suspension review before the Civil Service Commission has been held insufficient to afford procedural due process to an employee suspended from work for a claimed violation of a hair regulation. A full hearing prior to suspension is required. Muscare v. Quinn, 520 F.2d 1212, 1215 (7th Cir. 1975).
Exceptions to the requirement of a prior hearing have been found only where there is a “countervailing state interest of overriding significance.” Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 377, 91 S.Ct. 780, 785, 28 L.Ed.2d 130 (1971). For example, if the action is taken to avert possible violence, as in Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 95 S.Ct. 729, 42 L.Ed.2d 725 (1975), or to prevent property from being immunized from judgment during the pendency of a hearing, as in Bob Jones University v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 94 S.Ct. 2038, 40 L.Ed.2d 496 (1974), a deprivation of property interest will be allowed prior to a hearing. The hearing, however, must follow “as soon as practicable” after the deprivation. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 583, 95 S.Ct. 729, 740, 42 L.Ed.2d 725 (1975). These cases clearly indicate that if a hearing is to follow, rather than precede, the taking of a property interest, the burden is on the state to demonstrate why the hearing should be subsequent to the taking.
In the case of appellant, the only “notice and hearing” she received prior to being terminated by the principal came from the principal himself, and occurred less than 24 hours prior to her termination. Assuming arguendo that appellant’s discussion later that same day with the superintendent amounted to a due process hearing, that discussion was subsequent to her termination. The superintendent was presented with a fait accompli by a lower official within the school district. Whether the fact that the action had already been taken influenced the superintendent’s decision to uphold the termination or not, the possibility of such influence necessarily arises where a protected interest receives only a subsequent hearing. Since the school district has advanced no compelling reason, or for that matter any reason, for terminating the appellant prior to affording her what little hearing she received, it must be concluded that there was in fact no sufficient reason for terminating her with such unseemly haste, and that appellant’s due process rights to a prior hearing were therefore denied.
As to the form which appellant’s “hearing” took, it should not be seriously contended that the appellant’s telephone conversation with the superintendent amounted to a “hearing” within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is clear that conferences between a teacher and principal are not “hearings” within the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ferguson v. Thomas, 430 F.2d 852 (5th Cir. 1970); Wagner v. Little Rock School District, supra at 881. “Due process requires a more formalistic confrontation of facts and positions.” Ferguson, supra at 857. The statement of the trial court that “the plaintiff had, on two separate occasions, the opportunity to have and was afforded a hearing, both by her principal and by her superintendent. . . .’’is incorrect to the extent that it assumes that a conference with the person who made the initial deci*557sion to terminate her property interest (the principal) is capable of fulfilling the requirements of due process. While we held in Ferguson v. Board of Trustees, 98 Idaho 359, 564 P.2d 971 (1977), that only actual bias on the part of a person conducting a due process hearing will cause that hearing to be constitutionally insufficient, we have never held, and I would not read the decision of the Court today as holding, that the person initially making the decision to take away the property interest of a third person may sit in a hearing to determine the correctness of that decision. The possibility of bias in such a case is too great to allow for anything but a per se rule of disqualification of initial decisionmakers.1 In the welfare context, the United States Supreme Court has noted that “[p]rior involvement in some aspects of a case will not necessarily bar a welfare official from acting as a decision-maker. He should not, however, have participated in making the determination under review.” Goldberg v. Kelley, 397 U.S. 254, 271, 89 S.Ct. 1469, 22 L.Ed.2d 751 (1970) (emphasis added).
We are left, then, with a solitary telephone conversation between appellant and the district superintendent as the source of appellant’s due process “hearing.” I am unwilling to hold, as a matter of law, that a telephone conversation, no matter how well each side believes they understand the position of the other,2 is ever capable of qualify*558ing as the “hearing” which due process demands. This is particularly true where, as here, the person being deprived of the property interest has had less than 24 hours in which to marshall her arguments, collect her wits, and gather any evidence which might tend to support her position. It should be observed that not every person confronted with a problem immediately resorts to legal advice. It may not be argued here that appellant could not have presented any different evidence in a face-to-face hearing in any event. As the majority opinion makes clear, we are not addressing the merits of the appellant’s substantive position; that was not formally presented to nor tried by the court below. Where we are to determine if due process is required by the peculiar facts of each case, we do not sit to evaluate whether the merits of each particular case warrant a particular amount of due process. Thus, we cannot know whether appellant, or a retained attorney, would have been able to sway the superintendent if allowed the time and opportunity to present her case in a more formal (and face-to-face) setting. We can say only that given the property interest of the individual and given the administrative interests of the state, due process demands a certain type of hearing.
The property interest of the appellant here is not so de minimus, and the administrative interest of the school district is not so great, that we should forego all past ideas of what constitutes a due process hearing in order to uphold a trial court’s novel ruling that a telephone conversation will suffice. It will seem to some to be inconsistent for this Court to so hold when only recently, in Cooper v. Board of Commn’r’s, 101 Idaho 407, 614 P.2d 947 (1980), we held that a property owner’s due process rights were not met by three formal hearings before several administrative bodies, without any analysis of the extent of the property interest involved in the zoning decision at issue there. The majority’s opinion seems to have forgotten the statement made in Cooper that “[t]o allow the discretion of local [officials] to remain virtually unlimited in the determination of individual rights is to condone government by men rather than government by law.” 3
*559Lawrence Tribe, one of the most respected constitutional scholars in the nation, made a comment in his recent treatise on constitutional law which strikes me as extremely apropos to my criticism of today’s decision, a decision which allows telephone conversations to supplant traditional due process hearings.
“Among the formal procedural safeguards ordinarily held to be required by due process, perhaps the two most striking — the right to be heard and the right to hear why-are ultimately more understandable as inherent in decent treatment than as optimally designed to minimize mistakes. When God asked Adam if he had eaten of the tree of life, the Midrash explains, the point of the exchange was less to minimize the risk of divine error than to afford Adam a moment to regain his composure. And the Code of Wild Bill Hickock — the code that forbids shooting someone without first looking him in the eye-was likewise concerned with something deeper than reducing mistakes. Those procedural formalities that are implicit in treating persons with respect as members of the community should thus be required by due process for reasons more basic than any utilitarian calculus of accuracy, although accuracy of course matters as well when the procedure is ancillary to a substantive interest of great importance to the individual.” L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 10-15 at 554 (1978).
If we are to insure that the dignity of individuals is preserved, at least where their life, liberty or property is threatened by the increasingly pervasive presence of state action, then we must be vigilant in our guard against procedures which dehumanize the hearing process. I fear that the decision of the Court today, allowing a telephone conversation to fulfill the purposes of a due process hearing, will be regarded as evincing a callous disregard of the intrinsic value of face-to-face human interaction, and an unseemly preference for the utilitarian values of administrative efficiency.

. The majority’s opinion notes that the appellant met with the principal on two separate occasions, however this appears to strike the majority as important only as evidence that the employee was informed as to why she was being fired, not as evidence that a hearing was provided. I would certainly expect a more detailed explanation of the majority’s reasoning had they intended that the discussions with the principal be viewed in some manner as a “hearing," since such a holding would be contrary to every concept of neutrality found in both our cases and cases from the United States Supreme Court. See Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U.S. 134, 94 S.Ct. 1633, 40 L.Ed.2d 15 (1974); Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972); Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 91 S.Ct. 499, 27 L.Ed.2d 532 (1971); Goldberg v. Kelley, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970); Ferguson v. Board of Trustees, 98 Idaho 359, 564 P.2d 971 (1977). See also L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 10-16 (1978).

. The opinion of the majority indicates that “[ejmployee was aware of the reasons for her dismissal” but says nothing about the awareness of the district of employee’s reasons for refusing to accept the assignment. If appellant had been accorded more time in which to prepare a presentation of her reasons for refusing the assignment, she might not have been terminated in the first instance. The facts of this case stand as testimony to the injustice which may result from hasty and emotional decision-making.
Appellant testified that her reason for refusing to take over the kindergarten class was that she was not a qualified substitute teacher for an elementary school. I.C. § 33-1201 requires that every person serving in the capacity of a teacher have a certificate to so serve from the state, and appellant did not have such a certificate.
The record indicates the degree of misunderstanding which existed between the school district and employee as to why the job assignment was refused. The principal of the school district testified as follows:
“Q You understood that Laurie Simmons was not a qualified elementary or kindergarten teacher?
“A No, I didn’t know that. She never got around to telling me that. I didn’t know that she was even a certified teacher until later on.
“Q You didn’t have any idea she was a certificated teacher at any level, isn’t that true?
“A No, I really didn’t know that.
“Q So when you assigned her to the duty you had no knowledge that she was qualified as a substitute teacher?
“A Not in the legal respect. I had observed her work and felt that she was fully qualified to go into the room because of the fact that she had been in the room an hour a day and understood what went on.
“Q But if a kindergarten teacher had called in and indicated she would be absent, would you have hired a person as a substitute teacher who was not qualified under the laws of the State of Idaho?
“A No. We are required to take a substitute teacher off the certified substitute list which is provided by the district.
“Q And isn’t that in fact what Laurie Simmons told you her reason for not accepting the assignment was?
“A She didn’t think it was ethical to do the assignment. That is what she told me.
“Q And you understood that was because she was not properly qualified under the laws of the State of Idaho to be a teacher?
“A I can’t recall that she told me that, no. She just said that she didn’t want to do the assignment.
*558“Q So you really didn’t know the reason that she was refusing to do the assignment.
“A I know the assignment was given to her and she refused it flatly; consequently, the procedure proceeded from there.
“Q You didn’t know the reason?
“A The reason she refused?
“Q Right.
“A Yes, she told me she didn’t think it was ethical.
“Q But you didn’t know that there might be some legal cause for her not pursuing the assignment?
“A No, I didn’t think there was any legal cause for not-
“Q You didn’t know that she was asserting some legal cause?
“A She didn’t assert that to me.
“Q And if there had been a hearing for Laurie Simmons prior to her discharge and if it had appeared that there was legal cause, then maybe she wouldn’t have been discharged, isn’t that true?
“A It is possible.”
Further evidence of a misunderstanding between the parties is revealed through their appellate briefs-employee consistently refers to her refusal to “take over” the classroom, in the sense of being a teacher, as her reason for refusing the assignment. The school district, on the other hand, refers to employee’s refusal to “monitor" the classroom as its reason for terminating her employment. From their usage of these terms, it becomes apparent that the parties did not contemplate the same task which employee would perform in the classroom for the three day period. A hearing would have eliminated the confusion about whether employee was expected to “teach” or merely “monitor” the classroom.
Thus, to the extent that the majority opinion gives the impression that each side fully understood the other as a result of the procedures actually followed, it is simply wrong.

. I also note that one of the procedural infirmities condemned in Cooper was the lack of a verbatim transcript and specific findings of fact. Appellant in the instant case specifically requested written reasons for the termination of her property interest but was denied them, allegedly because it was not district “policy” to give such written statements. While I undertake no direct comparison of the property interests involved in Cooper with those involved in the instant case, it does seem to me that they are not so disparate as to warrant the remarkable disparity in the procedural safeguards accorded in each case.