Court Opinion

ID: 9635743
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:02:16.761218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:25:56.885897
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Jones:
I would reverse the judgment of the Superior Court and reinstate the Common Pleas Court’s award to the plaintiff of the unpaid salary under his teaching contract with the defendant School District for the period (approximately seven weeks) between his suspension by the Superintendent of Schools and his dismissal by the Board of Public Education.
The question of law involved is a very simple one and, no doubt, would have been simply answered were it not for the fact that the real issue in the case has become submerged, on appellate review, in an imputation that the plaintiff was tainted with past Communist affiliations. Not only was he not charged by the Board with having been a Communist or a Communist sympathizer but, throughout the proceedings against him, the Board of Public Education has been at special pains to make it plain that he was neither suspended nor dismissed because of any alleged Communist association or sympathy. That was made unmistakably clear in Board of Public Education v. Beilan, 386 Pa. 82, 86-87, 125 A. 2d 327 (now pending in the Supreme Court of the United States on petition for certiorari), in language no less applicable to this case. What disposition the Supreme Court may make of the petition for certiorari in the Beilan case will have no bearing whatsoever on the question here involved. Kaplan, the present plaintiff, seeks to recover the unpaid salary under his teaching contract from the time of his suspension by the Superintendent of Schools up to his *230dismissal by the Board of Public Education while Beilan questioned the legality of his dismissal. Both cases grew out of precisely similar circumstances and as a result of the same seriatim set of School Board hearings. So that, what was avowed in this court as the motivating reasons for Beilan’s dismissal by the Board of Public Education is equally pertinent to Kaplan’s suspension by the Superintendent of Schools on the question of the ground for the action. In its brief in the Beilan case, the Board of Public Education emphasized that Beilan “was not dismissed for subversion, either past or present. The Board does not contend that subversion is to be equated with incompetency. It does not assert that subversion, past or present, is ground for dismissal under the Tenure Act. The question of subversion is not before this Court. The Board does not contend that the appellee is subversive, or that he can be or has been proved subversive by his refusal to answer the questions either of the Superintendent or the Congressional Committee.”
As indicated, Kaplan does not here challenge his dismissal by the Board of Public Education. That question is still pending in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County on his timely appeal from his dismissal which awaits, for its ultimate disposition, the final outcome of the Beilan case, supra. There need be, therefore, no misconception with respect to the scope of the legal issue here involved. The defendant School District is not at any misunderstanding concerning the matter for decision. In its brief it expressly recognizes that “The only question here is whether the Board is obligated to pay such employee his salary during the period between his suspension and his ultimate dismissal.”
The facts giving rise to the controversy are as follows. The plaintiff entered into a written teaching *231contract with the School District of Philadelphia on July 13, 1948, which date forthwith became the time of his permanent appointment. The contract was on the form prescribed and required by Section 1121 of the Public School Code of 1949.1 The contract, by its terms, was expressly made subject to the Public School Code and was to continue in force year after year unless terminated by the voluntary resignation of the professional employee (i.e., the contracting teacher) or by the Board of Public Education in accordance with the provisions of the Public School Code. On November 20, 1953 (incidentally, shortly after Kaplan had plead the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-accusation upon refusing to answer questions, touching his loyalty, propounded by counsel for the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives), the Superintendent of Schools suspended him from his teaching duties and recommended to the Board of Public Education that he be dismissed from his position as a teacher. On two occasions more than a year before his suspension he had declined to answer similar questions asked him by the Superintendent of Schools, but the latter had not taken any action against him for such refusal. Actually, in the interim, he had been officially given a satisfactory rating as a teacher down to the very day of his suspension.
As a result of the Superintendent’s action, the Board, by formal resolution, preferred against Kaplan charges of incompetency and persistent and willful violation of the school laws of the Commonwealth, citing as the basis for the charges his refusal to answer the questions of the Superintendent and of the Congressional Committee concerning his alleged Communist *232affiliations some few years before. The Board served Kaplan with notice of the charges and fixed a time for a hearing thereon as required by the Public School Code. Kaplan attended the hearing where he testified and was represented by counsel. Following the hearing, the Board, on January 7, 1954, found the charges against him to have been sustained by the evidence and, thereupon, dismissed him from his position as a teacher.
The Public School Code of 1949 alone supplies the authority of a school board or a school superintendent in respect of a teacher; and it vests solely and exclusively in the school board the power to dismiss a teacher and to terminate his professional contract: Sections 1126-1130. It is veritably a legal maxim in this State that the provisions of the Teachers’ Tenure Act, as embodied in the Code, must be strictly complied with in respect of the suspension2 or dismissal3 of a professional employee if actions to such ends are to be accorded judicial sanction. Thus, in Jacobs v. Wilkes-Barre Township School District, 355 Pa. 449, 452, 50 A. 2d 354, we said that “Where a school board undertakes to terminate a contract with a professional employee, the procedure set forth in the [Public School Code] must be strictly followed, and failure on the part of the board to comply therewith renders the attempted dismissal abortive: Swink’s Case, 132 Pa. Superior Ct. 107, 200 A. 200.” It must, therefore, be *233taken as indisputable that the only way in which a professional teaching contract with tenure provisions can be terminated is by action of the school hoard in strict accordance with the procedure prescribed by the Code. From this it follows that the School District’s obligations to the present plaintiff under his contract were not terminated by his suspension from duty by the Superintendent on November 20, 1953.
The only provisions of the Public School Code which deal with a teacher’s suspension are contained in Section 1124. That Section, however, was designed for a school board’s use in alleviating “pedagogical over-staffing in schools”, as the majority opinion puts it, and envisions the return to duty of teachers, so suspended, if and when increased pupil enrollment should warrant. Such suspensions obviously entail a temporary, if not ultimately a permanent, cessation of the rights of a teacher under his contract, including his right to compensation, and require board action to make them legally operative in any given appropriate instance. But, certain it is that there is no power conferred upon the superintendent of schools to suspend a teacher under Section 1124.
The majority opinion reasons, however, as did also the Superior Court, that in addition to the school board’s power under Section 1124 to suspend teachers, there is an inherent power in the board and in the superintendent of schools, as well, to suspend from teaching a professional employee whose presence in the school room is deemed to have become inimical to the welfare of the pupils. So much will readily be conceded. But, there is no inherent power in the superintendent, or in anyone else for that matter, to vitiate a school district’s liability to pay a professional employee his contract salary except where the school board terminates the contract in an exercise of the. power conferred up*234on it by Sections 1128-1130 of the Public School Code and acts in strict compliance with the procedure indicated by the Code. Section 1130 in particular negatives any suggestion of authority in a superintendent of schools to abate the salary of a teacher whom he suspends.
The last sentence of Section 1130 of the Code reads as follows: “In all such cases [i.e., charges looking to a teacher’s dismissal] there shall be no abatement of salary or compensation.” The majority dismiss that very important enjoinder out of hand by declaring that the provision is inapplicable even though the Section contemplates cases where charges may be sustained as well as dismissed. If, as the majority conclude, the inhibition means that “there shall be ‘no abatement of salary’ only where the final decision ‘is in favor of the professional employe,’ ” whence, then, does the superintendent derive authority to abate a teacher’s salary upon the initiation of a suspension? To abate is to “do away with” or “to reduce or lower in amount” (Webster’s International Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1956). Until the board makes its final decision, it is obviously not possible for anyone to conclude in advance whether or not the charges will be sustained. Consequently, any diminution of salary antedating the board’s decision in the premises is in clear contravention of the intendment of Section 1130. The appellant pointedly argues that it is both significant and enlightening that the legislature selected the term “abatement” rather than provide for “reimbursement” if and when charges should fail. The latter designation would have implied power to dock the teacher’s salary pending the disposition of charges while the term actually employed negates the existence of any such power. The construction placed by the majority on Section 1130 renders the last sentence mere surplusage and, so, ig*235ñores the mandate of Section 51 of the Statutory Construction Act that “Every law shall he construed, if possible, to give effect to all its provisions.” The impact of the foregoing implicitly appears to have been perceived by the majority opinion when it finds it necessary to resort to an argument based on Kaplan’s alleged failure to perform in order to justify the Superintendent’s lopping off of his salary upon suspending him pending action by the Board on charges to be preferred. If the Superintendent possessed such power by virtue of Section 1130 of the Code, as the majority opinion implies, or any other provision of the statute, then to belabor the argument with an asserted failure of consideration, which the Superintendent and not the teacher precipitated, was patently a work of supererogation.
Notwithstanding that the plaintiff was ready, willing and able at all times to perform his duties as a professional employee and to comply otherwise with his contract of employment, the majority justify the deprivation of his salary for the period of his suspension by placing upon him the responsibility for not being permitted by the Superintendent to teach; and so, failure of consideration is ascribed to him with consequent loss of his right to the contract salary. In reality, the responsibility for not being permitted by the Superintendent to teach, thus visited upon the plaintiff by the majority opinion, is because of his refusal to testify, on a plea of the Fifth Amendment, concerning his alleged membership in the Communist Party three years before the hearing, viz., in 1950 and for several years prior thereto. That this is so is abundantly evident from a series of rhetorical questions in the majority opinion which imply that Kaplan was a member of the Communist Party and, consequently, an unfit person to teach. Thereby, his suspension by *236the Superintendent without pay before his contract had been terminated by the Board is justified.
There is, however, a plain distinction between the situations where, on the one hand, a teacher’s failure to perform his contract obligations is due to some overt act of his own and, on the other, where he is forbidden to teach and excluded from the school room by order of his administrative superior. Speaking for the Court of Common Pleas in this case, Judge Flood aptly noted this distinction in the following trenchant language,— “Of course where a teacher becomes physically incapable of performing his duties there is a failure of consideration, and if this physical incapacity is his own fault and clearly demonstrable, he cannot recover his pay after he ceases to perform even though he is not dismissed until later. Hetkowski v. Dickson City School District, 141 Pa. Super. 526 (1940). Likewise a teacher’s pay may be stopped before dismissal when he refuses to perform his duty. Commonwealth ex rel. Wesenberg v. Bethlehem School District; 148 Pa. Super. 250 (1942). This, however, is a quite different thing from saying that the superintendent may decide that a teacher who is physically capable of performing his duties and has not refused to perform them, has become mentally or morally unfit to teach for the purpose of cutting off his pay. This would nullify the code provisions. Under the code this determination is to be made only by the Board of Education after notice and hearing. Until the Board dismisses him after hearing he is entitled to his pay.”
The majority opinion further poses the following significant interrogatory: “Could the Superintendent of Schools, with the responsibility he' owes the schoul children and their parents, permit on his teaching staff a member of the Communist Party, or, what amounts to the same thing (where school children are *237in. tlie picture) a person who refused to deny the Communist Party activity with which he stood accused?” (Emphasis supplied). In Slochower v. Board of Higher Education of New York City, 350 U. S. 551, 557, the Supreme Court took occasion to “condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person’s constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment”, saying, in that connection, that “The privilege against self-incrimination would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury.” Kaplan’s refusal to answer the questions of counsel for the Un-American Activities Committee, in the exercise of his constitutional privilege against self-accusation, supplied no substantive proof relative to the matter embraced by the unanswered questions. Consequently, to bottom a denial of the salary due the plaintiff under his teacher-tenure contract upon an implication unwarrantedly derived from his refusal, on a plea of the Fifth Amendment, to answer the questions of the Congressional Committee constitutes deprivation of his property without due process: Slochower v. Board of Higher Education of New York City, supra.
The majority opinion further declares that “When a school teacher refuses to answer, upon being asked by his superior, whether he forms part of this [i.e., Communist] organization which is committed to catastrophe and destruction of all that in the Western world is accepted as good, decent, just, and conducive to wholesome happiness, this is evidence, as stated in the formal charges against Samuel M. Kaplan of ‘a lack of professional fitness’ of responsibility to the teacher’s profession and to the school system, and such refusal to answer ‘constitutes a wilful violation of the school laws of this Commonwealth.’ ” The fact *238of the matter is, however, that in the Beilan case, supra, counsel for the Board of Public Education formally conceded of record that he could not point to any violation of the law to support the charge of “persistent and wilful violation of the school laws of this Commonwealth.” Thereupon, that charge dropped out of the case and Beilan was dismissed solely for “ineompetency” as evidenced by his refusal to answer questions concerning himself propounded by the Superintendent and by counsel for the Un-American Activities Committee. The evidence introduced to support the charges against Kaplan was of like character and extent. Apart from his refusal to answer questions, as already noted, nothing was shown from which he could have been found guilty of “persistent and wilful violation of the school laws of this Commonwealth.” If the ratiocination of the above quotation from the majority opinion truly reflects this court’s present thinking, then the indicated rationale of the opinion for the court in the Beilan case becomes a mockery.
The true legal situation which this case presents could not have been more cogently and succinctly stated than was done by Judge Flood when he said, — “It would seem to be obvious that a teacher may be suspended from the performance of any duties under certain circumstances pending a hearing on charges of dismissal, as was held in Intille v. Royer, supra. Certainly if by reason of some immoral action or some definite indication of mental illness, it would be unsafe or improper to have the teacher conduct classes or dangerous to his pupils that he should do so, the superintendent would be remiss if he did not remove him from the classes. But until the teacher has had the hearing provided for in the code, and there is a proper determination to dismiss him, his pay cannot be cut off. This is of the essence of tenure provisions, *239and is part of tlie price the school system has to pay for the advantages it derives from teacher tenure” (Emphasis supplied).
No depiction of the loathsomeness of the Communist plague can safely be permitted to extenuate a disregard for the above-quoted sound conception of the applicable law, especially where, as here, there is involved a fundamental legal principle upon which the right of private property in part depends, namely, the inviolability of a contract. In our zeal to scotch Communist affiliates and sympathizers, we must ever be careful not to impair the right of private property or any other of the time-honored civil rights of the individual, no matter who he may be. Unless we so act, we will but comfort the hopes and aid the machinations of Communist propagandists and adherents.

 Act of March 10, 1949, P. L. 30, 24 PS §11-101 et seq.

 See Bragg v. Swarthmore School District, 337 Pa. 363, 367, 11 A. 2cl 152; Jones v. Kulpmont Borough School District, 333 Pa. 581, 583, 3 A. 2d 914; and Goff v. Shenandoah Borough School District, 154 Pa. Superior Ct. 239, 242, 35 A. 2d 900.

 See Swink’s Case, 132 Pa. Superior Ct. 107, 113, 200 A. 200; and Snyder v. Washington Township School District, 117 Pa. Superior Ct. 448, 454, 178 A. 312. Cf. also Kapustik v. Arnold City School District, 177 Pa. Superior Ct. 268, 274-275, 111 A. 2d 169.