Court Opinion

ID: 9461290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:10:36.600417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:58.992744
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
While I join fully in both the reasoning and the result of the Court’s opinion with respect to the named plaintiffs: Small, Nance, Heatrice, Long and Pittman, I must dissent in a very limited way because of an issue that is not even discussed by the Court. I remain convinced that the ten-day suspensions of the approximately 120 remaining students for leaving Marianna High School on January 6, 1972 should be expunged from their school records because this punishment was meted out without notice to the students of the consequences of their actions.
While I am mindful of the potential confusion that arises when participants in volatile events must recall precise incidents long afterwards, the testimony of all witnesses consistently indicates that *682Principal Centers did not limit his offer solely to the approximately 40 students participating in the auditorium meeting, nor did he ever suggest that the offer was contingent on their not soliciting other students to join in the walkout. His ultimatum to the students in attendance at the auditorium meeting was to go to class or go home and take a zero for the day. When subsequently the students began to spread the news of the impending march and the zero option through the school, Principal Centers then announced over the school intercom that the students were to go home— again without any indication that the offer was extended only to the auditorium group or that it was subject to a tacit pledge not to enlist others in the walkout. As students came up to him to say that they had a sister or brother in another class and were afraid to leave them at school, Principal Centers said that the siblings could go home but they too would get zeros. It was not until . later that afternoon, after the downtown march and arrests, that Principal Centers announced over local radio that those who had left school were suspended for 10 days or until the administration could meet with their parents.
The mass suspensions that Principal Centers invoked that afternoon lasted technically only a few days but as a practical matter their effect continues up to the present day because the suspensions remain a part of each student’s permanent school record. Such reports could obviously be a substantial reflection on their career options long after they have left school. These students are actually being punished for violating an order that was never given — a sanction that goes to the core of due process. It is unquestionable that these students are vested with a Fourteenth Amendment “liberty” interest by virtue of these records and their ramifications. Cf. Board of Regents v. Roth, 1972, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548; Perry v. Sindermann, 1972, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570, 578.