Court Opinion

ID: 9865370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:33:08.653413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:36.572450
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Walker,
dissenting.
I am not able to concur in the opinion of the court.
The sole ground upon which relator seeks the writ of mandamus is that the rule for the violation of which his daughter was excluded from the school was beyond 'the lawful power of the high school committee to enact. Upon this ground the opinion of the court declines to pass, but it remits the relator to the statutory appeals to the county superintendent of schools and to the state board of education.
The authorities are unanimous that mandamus is the proper remedy to compel the reinstatement of a pupil unlawfully excluded from school. 38 C. J. 734, 735; 18 R. C. L. 247; Vermillion v. State, 78 Neb. 107, 110 N. W. 736, 15 Ann. Cas. page 401, and numerous cases collected on page 407. I can not agree that this rule is changed or affected in this state by the existence of a system of appeals which terminate with the state board of education. Whether that system is available at all, where the order complained of is made by a high school committee, is *247extremely doubtful. The act providing for appeals was enacted many years before the county high school act was passed, and the appeal provided for is from an order of the ‘ ‘ district board of directors. ’ ’ The county high school act does not by reference embody these appeals provisions, and that it was intended they should be applicable can hardly be presumed when it is considered that it made the county superintendent, who under the appeals act was the first resort of the person aggrieved by the board of directors, and who was required to give notice of the appeal to the secretary of the board, ex officio a member of the county high school committee, and its secretary. At all events, I do not think that it was the intention of the Legislature to vest in the county superintendent and in the state board of education power to pass upon such a question of law as is presented in the present case. Undoubtedly there may be cases involving the interpretation of the administrative provisions of the school law in which the decisions of these school authorities should be invoked, to the end that uniformity in the construction and application of the law may prevail throughout the state, but a naked question of power, to be resolved by fundamental legal considerations, is not within this class.
The observation made in School Dist. No. 3 v. Hale, 15 Colo. 367, 370, 25 Pac. 309, though made with reference to a controversy arising out of a teacher’s contract, seems pertinent here: “In the absence of an imperative necessity, it should never be held that a tribunal which is incompetent to afford relief to the suitors, and which is regulated and restrained by none of the rules and methods of procedure essential to a satisfactory investigation, nor by those legal principles which are supposed to enter into and form a part of every contract, can oust the courts of the country of the jurisdiction and powers conferred upon them by the statutes and constitution.”
For even if it should be admitted that the Legislature intended that the county superintendent and the state *248board should take jurisdiction of such questions as are presented in this case, it is apparent that these statutory tribunals not only fail to give adequate relief, but that they cannot give any relief whatever. In the present case, if relator should be successful before the state board of'education,.the decision of that board would not ipso facto restore his daughter to the school, nor has that board any legal machinery by which it could compel the high school committee to admit her. A resort to the court would still be necessary unless the school district should vpluntarily yield to the moral suasion of the state board’s opinion; And when relator was once again in court it would not be sufficient for him to set forth the decision of the state board, as that is not binding upon the courts. People v. Van Horn, 20 Colo. App. 215, pages 230 to 232, 77 Pac. 978. He would still be required t-o plead and establish the invalidity of the rule as a matter of law. The net result of the procedure would be that relator would be in exactly the same situation as before, his daughter would have remained excluded from the school, and the court to which he then applies will have had the benefit of the opinion of a board, two of whom are laymen, upon a proposition of law. But in order to defeat mandamus, it is uniformly held that it is necessary that the other remedy available to the petitioner should be at least equal in efficacy, for the obtaining of the specific relief prayed for, as the writ of mandamus would be if issued. 38 C. J. 569; Bell v. Thomas, 49 Colo. 76, 111 Pac. 76.
That it is not necessary to prosecute an appeal to the educational authorities before obtaining a writ of mandamus to compel the readmission of a pupil wrongfully excluded from school has been specifically held in the following cases: Clay v. Independent School Dist., 187 Iowa, 89, 174 N. W. 47; Valentine v. Independent School Dist., 187 Iowa, 555, 174 N. W. 334; Knowlton v. Baumhover, 182 Iowa, 691, 166 N. W. 202; Hobbs v. Germany, 94 Miss. 469, 49 So. 515. In the case of. Knowlton v. *249Baumhover, supra, the court said: “The rule is thoroughly well settled that, while the discretion granted by statute to the board of directors can be reviewed only by appeal to the county superintendent, yet, where it ‘acts without jurisdiction, or has exceeded its powers and by some act in an official capacity has done or attempted to do that which it has not a right to do, the courts have jurisdiction to set aside the unauthorized act. ’ ’ ’
In Iowa the appeal is to the county superintendent and thence to the state superintendent. So also in Mississippi the appeal is to the county superintendent and from his decision to the state board of education, with the provision that the board’s decision shall be final.
No case has been cited where, the question involved being the power of the school board to make the regulation, it was held that resort must first be had to the educational authorities. People ex rel. Ulrich v. Board of Education, 4 N. Y. S. 102, a decision of the superior court of New York City, denied the mandamus because there had been no appeal from the decision of the principal of a school to the board of trustees, and from that board to the board of education. It appears however that the question presented was one of fact. Certainly it was not a question of the power of the school board to make the regulation involved. State ex rel. Jefferson v. Board of Education, 64 N. J. Law, 59, 45 Atl. 775, denied the writ of mandamus because the petitioner had not appealed to the state board of education. It does not appear in that case that any question of the legal authority of the school board to enact a rule or regulation was involved, but on the contrary the opinion distinguished that case from State ex rel. Pierce v. School Trustees, 46 N. J. Law, 76, where mandamus was issued to compel the readmission of a negro child who had been unlawfully excluded from school. Undoubtedly there are authorities holding that mandamus will not issue where there is an appeal from an inferior board or tribunal, where the appeal, by virtue of the statute, and as a step in the statutory proceeding, *250ultimately readies the courts. Here, however, the remedy is to be denied, because there is an appeal to a board from whose decision no appeal to the courts is provided for. It seems clear that the procedure to which the relator is relegated by the majority opinion will be barren of results, except such as might follow from -any other course, which would delay the final settlement of the controversy and leave room for its chance settlement by act or acquiescence of the parties themselves.
For the above reasons I dissent from the majority opinion, but in view of the disposition which is made of the case, I do not express any opinion upon the merits of the controversy regarding the reasonableness of the rule.