Court Opinion

ID: 9453558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:17:17.453076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:42.691443
License: Public Domain

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I readily concur in the court’s opinion except with respect to the granting of relief to Miss Sarah I. Peterson and Mrs. Blondie J. Segers.
The majority concedes that “no new teachers were hired in preference to them.” 1 Miss Peterson “was compared” 2 with other teachers engaged in the same certification area and found wanting.Mrs. Segers was likewise “compared to, and found less qualified than,” 3 named competitors.
It is thus established that Miss Peterson and Mrs. Segers were fairly and not discriminatorily displaced. Yet, the court holds that Miss Peterson and Mrs. Segers may not be treated differently with respect to comparison with new teacher applicants in the future than the retained teachers were treated in the past. This is the closest the court can approximate what it calls “equal protection.” That it is not very close is not the court’s fault. The disparity of treatment that remains after the court’s strenuous effort is simply the fault of non-invidious displacement. The fault of the court, as I see it, is its refusal to recognize that non-invidious displacement can and does create a teacher classification that is not unreasonable and that does not collide with the Fourteenth Amendment.
That there is such a classification— whether or not recognized by the court— is apparent from the unique status conferred on Miss Peterson and Mrs. Segers by the court’s decision. They are accorded something to be envied by other North Carolina teachers who sadly lack it: tenure of office. It is, of course, only tenure of a sort — an interrupted sort— that is given Teachers Peterson and Se-gers. The court holds that the School Board acted rightly in not employing them for the school year 1965-66 because no new teachers were hired and Miss Peterson and Mrs. Segers were not as well qualified as those retained in employment. But that does not, as I would have thought, end the matter. Although Miss Peterson and Mrs. Segers had no right to be employed in 1965-66, they are held to be entitled to employment at any time subsequently that a vacancy occurs in their areas of certification. Since this is true for no other teachers4— white or Negro — in North Carolina, I am unable to agree that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment commands it. Nor does it seem to me very equal.

. Page 744, opinion of the court.

. Pages 741, 742, opinion of the court. The court does not suggest that the comparison was unfair.

. Pages 742, 743, opinion of the court.

. The right to fill a vacancy does not pertain, of course, to retained teachers.