Court Opinion

ID: 9458159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:44:04.251332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:39.105245
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
If the sovereign elects to provide its citizens with protection against violence, disease and ignorance through public police, garbage collection and schools, such protection must be afforded to all on an equal basis. It is not necessary to decide that an individual has a constitutional right to appear as he pleases to recognize that a state may not deprive a child of a public education because he is ugly or ignorant, or because his hair style differs from that preferred by the majority at any given point in time.
On the other hand, the fact that absurd arguments have been advanced to support certain dress codes, or the fact that the older generation has overreacted in its response to the younger generation’s desire to do its own thing, should not obscure the fact that society does have a legitimate interest in both the continuity and the mutability of its mores.
Personal appearance, which comprises forms of dress and cleanliness, as well as hair styles, is merely one aspect of social behavior which the British broadly describe as “manners.” For centuries the older generation has forcefully imposed its manners on the young. With equal regularity the young have demonstrated that particular manners have no rational basis or cannot be justified by any compelling social interest. So manners continually change at varying rates. Conformity and nonconformity both serve legitimate ends.
In the process of requiring the young to conform to the manners of their elders, parents and teachers are necessarily partners. If they agree that a child should be compelled to observe a given form of tradition, no matter how irrational it may be, the child has no legitimate recourse but to obey. To the extent that parents and teachers stand together, a child has no enforceable constitutional right to do his own thing.
It is only when the parent supports a child’s attempt to accelerate a change in *945customs that a meaningful conflict arises. Regardless of whether parental support of a child’s attack on one aspect of our manners has a constitutional predicate, as a matter of policy that support is certainly entitled to respect. If that respect produces an accommodation which avoids an irreconcilable confrontation (such as a choice between a denial of education on the one hand and conformity to manners unacceptable to the child’s own parents on the other), the need for judicial participation in the process of 'social change can be obviated.1 Such an accommodation is reflected by this case.
As in so many matters of school administration which appropriately recognize a parent’s interest in nonconformity,2 this dress code excused the child from compliance upon the request of his parents. Since the child has no enforceable right to remain unshorn or unwashed without parental consent, I find nothing offensive in a dress code which merely requires conformity unless excused by a child’s parents.3
I would not open the federal courts to a parent who, by simply giving the school administrators appropriate evidence of his consent, has available an adequate remedy to protect his child’s interest in nonconformity or in a particular mode of appearance.4 The interest which plaintiff and his child seek to vindicate by this litigation does not, in my opinion, warrant invasion of an area in which other parents, in partnership with the teachers, and possibly also a substantial majority of the student body,5 have agreed that a measure of conformity to tradition is desirable. Just as the majority must learn to tolerate the nonconformist, so must he learn to tolerate the transient customs of his elders.6
*946In sum, there are three reasons why the federal writ should not have issued: (1) the record discloses no danger that a child may be arbitrarily deprived of an education, nor any threat to the fundamental values of freedom of speech, of inquiry, and of belief' — the threat of irreparable injury is wholly absent; (2) if we ignore the admonition not to “intervene in the resolution of conflicts which arise in the daily operation of school systems and which do not directly and sharply implicate basic constitutional values,” 7 the quality of our work, and the respect which it commands in the community, must inevitably decrease as our workload increases; and (3) of greatest importance, I believe the decision nourishes the pernicious seed of intolerance by encouraging confrontation rather than accommodation. I would not force Gregory to fast on Saturday when he visits Rome, but I would teach him not to sneer at Romans who do.
I respectfully dissent.

. It does not take the wisdom of Solomon to recognize that dress codes which have been judicially condemned were doomed to fall in due course in any event. Judicial participation in the i>roeess of changing mores can affect the rate of change, but we certainly do not decide whether or not the change will occur. Economic conditions in England, which tended to exclude the cost of tonsorial services from the average man’s budget, and thus to develop a jiublic attitude favorable to the hairstyle of the Beatles, probably did more to accelerate this particular social change than all of the constitutional analysis which litigation like this has engendered.

. See e. g., footnote 7 in Judge Kiley’s opinion.

. The form by which such consent should be evidenced in order to ensure its reliability certainly raises no issue of constitutional dimensions. Quite obviously, the constitutional objection to placing the power, prestige, and financial support of government behind a particular religious belief, see Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 430-431, 82 S.Ct. 1261, 8 L.Ed.2d 601; School District of Abington Tp. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 224-225, 83 S.Ct. 1560, 10 L.Ed.2d 844, has no application to a public school’s attempt to teach children acceptable manners.

. If the principle of federalism requires the great writ of habeas corpus to be withheld from a prisoner detained, possibly for years, in violation of his constitutional rights, I cannot understand why we should intervene in this case to save a child’s parent from walking over to the principal’s office where the only relief his son lias standing to obtain is available for the asking. Invalidation of the entire dress code may make it possible for this child both (1) to wear his own hair style and (2) to have more of his peers do likewise, and thus enable him to be more of a conformist. It does nothing to protect any significant interest in nonconformity. Indeed, if the slight inconvenience to his father of evidencing his consent in person has a “chilling effect” on that interest, our would-be nonconformist might as well get a haircut.

. The fact that 75% of the student body may have voted in favor of the dress code set forth in the record is not necessarily persuasive because neither the alternatives presented to them, nor the actual volun-tariness of the vote, can be determined on tiie basis of the pleadings.

. “The state’s authority over children’s activities is broader than over like actions of adults. This is peculiarly true of public activities and in matters of employment. A democratic society rests, for its continuance, upon the healthy, well-rounded growth of young people in full maturity as citizens, with all that implies.” Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 168, 64 S. Ct. 438, 443, 88 L.Ed. 645.

. See Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 104, 89 S.Ct. 266, 270, 21 L.Ed.2d 228.