Court Opinion

ID: 9423737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:08:57.690102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:45.843812
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black joins,
concurs in the judgment of the Court for the reasons set out in his concurring opinions in Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U. S. 374, 401, Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U. S. 75, 88, and Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64, 80, and in the separate opinions of Mr. Justice Black in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U. S. 130, 170, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 293.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
A. Appellant’s letter.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
**** Newspapers, Inc. Thursday, September 24, 1964, Page 4
Dear Editor:
I enjoyed reading the back issues of your paper which you loaned to me. Perhaps others would enjoy reading them in order to see just how far the two new high schools have deviated from the original promises by the Board of Education. First, let me state that I am referring to the February thru November, 1961 issues of your paper, so that it can be checked.
One statement in your paper declared that swimming pools, athletic fields, and auditoriums had been left out of the program. They may have been left out but they got put back in very quickly because Lockport West has both an auditorium and athletic field. In fact, Lockport West has a better athletic field than Lockport Central. It has a track that isn’t quite regulation distance even *576though the board spent a few thousand dollars on it. Whose fault is that? Oh, I forgot, it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. It must have fallen out of the sky. Such responsibility has been touched on in other letters but it seems one just can’t help noticing it. I am not saying the school shouldn’t have these facilities, because I think they should, but promises are promises, or are they?
Since there seems to be a problem getting all the facts to the voter on the twice defeated bond issue, many letters have been written to this paper and probably more will follow, I feel I must say something about the letters and their writers. Many of these letters did not give the whole story. Letters by your Board and Administration have stated that teachers’ salaries total $1,297,746 for one year. Now that must have been the total payroll, otherwise the teachers would be getting $10,000 a year. I teach at the high school and I know this just isn’t the case. However, this shows their “stop at nothing” attitude. To illustrate further, do you know that the superintendent told the teachers, and I quote, “Any teacher that opposes the referendum should be prepared for the consequences.” I think this gets at the reason we have problems passing bond issues. Threats take something away; these are insults to voters in a free society. We should try to sell a program on its merits, if it has any.
Remember those letters entitled “District 205 Teachers Speak,” I think the voters should know that those letters have been written and agreed to by only five or six teachers, not 98% of the teachers in the high school. In fact, many teachers didn’t even know who was writing them. Did you know that those letters had to have the approval of the superintendent before they could be put in the paper? That’s the kind of totalitarianism teach*577ers live in at the high school, and your children go to school in.
In last week’s paper, the letter written by a few uninformed teachers threatened to close the school cafeteria and fire its personnel. This is ridiculous and insults the intelligence of the voter because properly managed school cafeterias do not cost the school district any money. If the cafeteria is losing money, then the board should not be packing free lunches for athletes on days of athletic contests. Whatever the case, the taxpayer’s child should only have to pay about 300 for his lunch instead of 350 to pay for free lunches for the athletes.
In a reply to this letter your Board of Administration will probably state that these lunches are paid for from receipts from the games. But $20,000 in receipts doesn’t pay for the $200,000 a year they have been spending on varsity sports while neglecting the wants of teachers.
You see we don’t need an increase in the transportation tax unless the voters want to keep paying $50,000 or more a year to transport athletes home after practice and to away games, etc. Rest of the $200,000 is made up in coaches’ salaries, athletic directors’ salaries, baseball pitching machines, sodded football fields, and thousands of dollars for other sports equipment.
These things are all right, provided we have enough money for them. To sod football fields on borrowed money and then not be able to pay teachers’ salaries is getting the cart before the horse.
If these things aren’t enough for you, look at East High. No doors on many of the classrooms, a plant room without any sunlight, no water in a first aid treatment room, are just a few of many things. The taxpayers were really taken to the cleaners. A part of the sidewalk in front of the building has already collapsed. Maybe Mr. Hess would be interested to know that we need blinds on the windows in that building also.
*578Once again, the board must have forgotten they were going to spend $3,200,000 on the West building and $2,300,000 on the East building.
As I see it, the bond issue is a fight between the Board of Education that is trying to push tax-supported athletics down our throats with education, and a public that has mixed emotions about both of these items because they feel they are already paying enough taxes, and simply don’t know whom to trust with any more tax money.
I must sign this letter as a citizen, taxpayer and voter, not as a teacher, since that freedom has been taken from the teachers by the administration. Do you really know what goes on behind those stone walls at the high school?
Respectfully,
Marvin L. Pickering.
B. Analysis.
The foregoing letter contains eight principal statements which the Board found to be false.1 Our independent review of the record 2 convinces us that Justice *579Schaefer was correct in his dissenting opinion in this case when he concluded that many of appellant’s statements which were found by the Board to be false were in fact substantially correct. We shall deal with each of the statements found to be false in turn. (1) Appellant asserted in his letter that the two new high schools when constructed deviated substantially from the original promises made by the Board during the campaign on the bond issue about the facilities they would contain. The Board based its conclusion that this statement was false on its determination that the promises referred to were those made in the campaign to pass the second bond issue in December of 1961. In the campaign on the first bond issue the Board stated that the plans for the two schools did not include such items as swimming pools, auditoriums, and athletic fields. The publicity put out by the Board on the second bond issue mentioned nothing about the addition of an auditorium to the plans and also mentioned nothing specific about *580athletic fields, although a general reference to “state required physical education” facilities was included that was similar to a reference made in the material issued by the Board during the first campaign.
In sum, the Board first stated that certain facilities were not to be included in the new high schools as an economy measure, changed its mind after the defeat of the first bond issue and decided to include some of the facilities previously omitted, and never specifically or even generally indicated to the taxpayers the change. Appellant’s claim that the original plans, as disclosed to the public, deviated from the buildings actually constructed is thus substantially correct and his characterization of the Board’s prior statement as a “promise” is fair as a matter of opinion. The Board’s conclusion to the contrary based on its determination that appellant’s statement referred only to the literature distributed during the second bond issue campaign is unreasonable in that it ignores the word “original” that modifies “promises” in appellant’s letter.
(2) Appellant stated that the Board incorrectly informed the public that “teachers’ salaries” total $1,297,746 per year. The Board found that statement false. However, the superintendent of schools admitted that the only way the Board’s figure could be regarded as accurate was to change the word “teachers” to “instructional” whereby the salaries of deans, principals, librarians, counselors, and four secretaries at each of the district’s three high schools would be included in the total. Appellant’s characterization of the Board’s figure as incorrect is thus clearly accurate.
(3) Pickering claimed that the superintendent had said that any teacher who did not support the 1961 bond issue referendum should be prepared for the consequences. The Board found this claim false. However, the statement was corroborated by the testimony of two other teachers, although the superintendent denied making the *581remark attributed to him. The Illinois Supreme Court appears to have agreed that something along the lines stated by appellant was said, since it relied, in upholding the Board’s finding that appellant’s version of the remark was false, on testimony by one of the two teachers that he interpreted the remark to be a prediction about the adverse consequences for the schools should the referendum not pass rather than a threat against noncooperation by teachers. However, the other teacher testified that he didn’t know how to interpret the remark. Accordingly, while appellant may have misinterpreted the meaning of the remark, he did not misreport it.
(4) Appellant’s letter stated that letters from teachers to newspapers had to have the approval of the superintendent before they could be submitted for publication. The Board relied in finding this statement false on the testimony by the superintendent that no approval was required by him. However, the Handbook for Teachers of the district specifically stated at that time that material submitted to local papers should be checked with the building principal and submitted in triplicate to the publicity coordinator. In particular, the teachers’ letters to which appellant was specifically referring in his own letter had in fact been submitted to the superintendent prior to their publication. Thus this statement is substantially correct.
The other four statements challenged by the Board, are factually incorrect in varying degrees. (5) Appellant’s letter implied that providing athletes in the schools with free lunches meant that other students must pay 35(i instead of 300 for their lunches. This statement is erroneous in that while discontinuing free lunches for athletes would have permitted some small decrease in the 350 charge for lunch to other students, the decrease would not have brought the price down to 300. (6) Appellant claimed that the Board had been spending $200,000 a year on athletics while neglecting the wants *582of teachers. This claim is incorrect in that the $200,000 per year figure included over $130,000 of nonrecurring capital expenditures. (7) Appellant also claimed that the Board had been spending $50,000 a year on transportation for athletes. This claim is completely false in that the expenditures on travel for athletes per year were about $10,000. (8) Finally, appellant stated that football fields had been sodded on borrowed money, while the Board had been unable to pay teachers’ salaries. This statement is substantially correct as to the football fields being sodded with borrowed money because the money spent was the proceeds of part of the bond issue, which can fairly be characterized as borrowed. It is incorrect insofar as it suggests that the district’s teachers had actually not been paid upon occasion, but correct if taken to mean that the Board had at times some difficulty in obtaining the funds with which to pay teachers. The manner in which the last four statements are false is perfectly consistent with good-faith error, and there is no evidence in the record to show that anything other than carelessness or insufficient information was responsible for their being made.

 We shall not bother to enumerate some of the statements which the Board found to be false because their triviality is so readily apparent that the Board could not rationally have considered them as detrimental to the interests of the schools regardless of their truth or falsity.

 This Court has regularly held that where constitutional rights are in issue an independent examination of the record will be made in order that the controlling legal principles may be applied to the actual facts of the case. E. g., Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587 (1935); Pennekamp v. Florida, 328 U. S. 331 (1946); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 285 (1964). However, even in cases where the upholding or rejection of a constitutional claim turns on the resolution of factual questions, we also consistently give great, if not controlling, weight to the findings of the state courts. In the present case the trier of fact was the same body that was also both the victim of appellant’s statements and the *579prosecutor that brought the charges aimed at securing his dismissal. The state courts made no independent review of the record but simply contented themselves with ascertaining, in accordance with statute, whether there was substantial evidence to support the Board’s findings.
Appellant requests us to reverse the state courts’ decisions upholding his dismissal on the independent ground that the procedure followed above deprived him of due process in that he was not afforded an impartial tribunal. However, appellant makes this contention for the first time in this Court, not having raised it at any point in the state proceedings. Because of this, we decline to treat appellant’s claim as an independent ground for our decision in this case. On the other hand, we do not propose to blind ourselves to the obvious defects in the fact-finding process occasioned by the Board’s multiple functioning vis-a^-vis appellant. Compare Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510 (1927); In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133 (1955). Accordingly, since the state courts have at no time given de novo consideration to the statements in the letter, we feel free to examine the evidence in this case completely independently and to afford little weight to the factual determinations made by the Board.