Respondent, a tenured teacher, was denied salary increases
during the 1972-1974 school years because of her refusal to comply
with the School Board's continuing education requirement, which was
incorporated by reference into her employment contract. After the
Oklahoma Legislature enacted a law mandating certain salary raises
for teachers regardless of their compliance with the continuing
education policy, the School Board notified respondent that her
contract would not be renewed for the 1974-1975 school year unless
she enrolled in the required continuing education courses. When
respondent refused to comply, the School Board found that her
persistent noncompliance with the continuing education requirement
constituted "willful neglect of duty" under an Oklahoma statute and
refused to renew her contract for the following school year. The
District Court dismissed respondent's complaint, which claimed that
the School Board's action denied respondent her liberty and
property without due process of law and equal protection of the
laws, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of
Appeals reversed.
Held:
1. The School Board's actions did not violate respondent's due
process rights. Respondent has no colorable claim of a denial of
procedural due process: she was advised of the School Board's
decision not to renew her contract and of her right to a hearing
before the Board, and, at her request, a hearing was held at which
both she and her attorney appeared and unsuccessfully contested the
Board's determination that her refusal to enroll in continuing
education courses constituted "willful neglect of duty." Nor did
the School Board's action deny respondent substantive due process.
After the state legislature, by making pay raises mandatory,
deprived the Board of the sanction that it had earlier used to
enforce its teachers' contractual obligation to earn continuing
education credits, the Board turned to contract nonrenewal, but
applied this sanction purely prospectively, so that those who might
have relied on its past practice would nonetheless have an
opportunity to bring themselves into compliance with the terms of
their contracts. Such a course of conduct on the part of a school
board responsible for the public
Page 440 U. S. 195
education of students within its jurisdiction, and employing
teachers to perform the principal portion of that task, can
scarcely be described as arbitrary
2. Respondent was not deprived of equal protection of the laws.
The School Board's concern with the educational qualifications of
its teachers cannot, under any reasoned analysis, be described as
impermissible, and it is not contended that the Board's continuing
education requirement bears no rational relationship to that
legitimate governmental concern. The sanction of contract
nonrenewal, imposed uniformly on the "class" of teachers who refuse
to comply with the continuing education requirement, is quite
rationally related to the Board's objective of enforcing the
continuing education obligation of its teachers. That the Board was
forced by the state legislature to penalize noncompliance
differently than it had in the past in no way alters the equal
protection analysis of respondent's claim.
Certiorari granted; 579 F.2d 1192, reversed.
PER CURIAM.
Respondent Martin was employed as a teacher by petitioner School
District under a contract that incorporated by reference the School
Board's rules and regulations. Because respondent was tenured,
Oklahoma law required the School Board to renew her contract
annually unless she was guilty of, among other things, "willful
neglect of duty." Okla.Stat., Tit. 70, ยง 6-122 (Supp. 1976)
(repealed 1977). The same Oklahoma statute provided for hearing and
appeal procedures in the event of nonrenewal. One of the
regulations incorporated into respondent's contract required
teachers holding only a bachelor's degree to earn five semester
hours of college credit every three years. Under the terms of the
regulation, noncompliance with the continuing education requirement
was sanctioned by withholding salary increases.
Respondent, hired in 1969, persistently refused to comply with
the continuing education requirement, and consequently forfeited
the increases in salary to which she would have otherwise been
entitled during the 1972-1974 school years. After her contract had
been renewed for the 1973-1974 school term, however, the Oklahoma
Legislature enacted a
Page 440 U. S. 196
law mandating certain salary raises for teachers regardless of
their compliance with the continuing education policy. The School
Board, thus deprived of the sanction which it had previously
employed to enforce the provision, notified respondent that her
contract would not be renewed for the 1974-1975 school year unless
she completed five semester hours by April 10, 1974. Respondent
nonetheless declined even to enroll in the necessary courses and,
appearing before the Board in January, 1974, indicated that she had
no intention of complying with the requirement in her contract.
Finding her persistent noncompliance with the continuing education
requirement "willful neglect of duty," the Board voted at its
April, 1974, meeting not to renew her contract for the following
school year. After unsuccessfully pursuing administrative and
judicial relief in the Oklahoma state courts, respondent brought
this action in the United States District Court for the Western
District of Oklahoma. She claimed that the Board's action had
denied her liberty and property without due process of law and
equal protection of the laws, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The District Court dismissed her complaint; it refused to assert
"pendent jurisdiction" over respondent's state law claim that her
refusal to comply with the continuing education provision in her
contract did not constitute "willful neglect of duty" within the
meaning of the Oklahoma tenure statute, and it concluded upon the
stipulated evidence that the Board had not violated the Fourteenth
Amendment in refusing to renew her contract. The Court of Al,peals
for the Tenth Circuit reversed. 579 F.2d 1192 (1978). Following its
own precedent of
Weathers v. West Yuma County School Dist.
R-J-1, 530 F.2d 1335 (1976), the Court of Appeals determined
that respondent had no protected "liberty" interest under the
Fourteenth Amendment, but nonetheless held that, under an amalgam
of the equal protection and due process
Page 440 U. S. 197
guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, she had a constitutional
right to retain her employment as a teacher. The Board's "arbitrary
and capricious" action, concluded the Court of Appeals, "violated
Fourteenth Amendment notions of fairness embodied in the Due
Process Clause generally and the Equal Protection Clause
particularly." 579 F.2d 1192, 1200 (1978).
While our decisions construing the Equal Protection and Due
Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment do not form a
checkerboard of bright lines between black squares and red squares,
neither do they leave courts, and parties litigating federal
constitutional claims in them, quite as much at sea as the Court of
Appeals apparently thought was the case. It is true, as that court
observed, that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
not only accords procedural safeguards to protected interests, but
likewise protects substantive aspects of liberty against
impermissible governmental restrictions.
Kelley v.
Johnson, 425 U. S. 238,
425 U. S. 244
(1976). But our cases supply an analytical framework for
determining whether the Fourteenth Amendment rights of a person in
the position of respondent have been violated. Employing that
framework here, we conclude that the Court of Appeals' judgment
should be reversed.
The School District has conceded at all times that respondent
was a "tenured" teacher under Oklahoma law, and therefore could be
dismissed only for specified reasons. She was accorded the usual
elements of procedural due process. Shortly after the Board's
April, 1974, meeting, she was advised of the decision not to renew
her contract and of her right to a hearing before the Board. At
respondent's request, a hearing was held at which both she and her
attorney appeared and unsuccessfully contested the Board's
determination that her refusal to enroll in the continuing
education courses constituted "willful neglect of duty." Thus, as
the Court of Appeals recognized, respondent has no colorable claim
of a
Page 440 U. S. 198
denial of procedural due process.
See Arnett v.
Kennedy, 416 U. S. 134
(1974);
Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.
S. 593,
408 U. S.
599-603 (1972). If respondent is to succeed in her
claims under the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be on the basis of
either "substantive" due process or equal protection.
Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of the
"substantive aspects" of "life, liberty, and property," the Court
of Appeals held, apparently, that the School Board's decision to
substitute the sanction of contract nonrenewal for the sanction of
withholding routine pay increases was so "arbitrary" that it
offended "notions of fairness" generally embodied in the Due
Process Clause. Here, however, there is no claim that the interest
entitled to protection as a matter of substantive due process was
anything resembling "the individual's freedom of choice with
respect to certain basic matters of procreation, marriage, and
family life."
Kelley v. Johnson, supra at
425 U. S. 244;
see Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113
(1973);
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.
S. 438 (1972);
Stanley v. Illinois,
405 U. S. 645
(1972);
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.
S. 479 (1965);
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.
S. 390 (1923). Rather, respondent's claim is simply that
she, as a tenured teacher, cannot be discharged under the School
Board's purely prospective rule establishing contract nonrenewal as
the sanction for violations of the continuing education requirement
incorporated into her contract.
The School Board's rule is endowed with a presumption of
legislative validity, and the burden is on respondent to show that
there is no rational connection between the Board's action and its
conceded interest in providing its students with competent, well
trained teachers.
See Kelley v. Johnson, supra at
425 U. S. 247;
Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U.
S. 421,
342 U. S. 423
(1952);
Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.
S. 158,
321 U. S.
168-170 (1944);
CSC v. Letter Carriers,
413 U. S. 548
(1973). Respondent's claim that the Board acted arbitrarily in
imposing a new penalty for noncompliance with the continuing
Page 440 U. S. 199
education requirement simply does not square with the facts. By
making pay raises mandatory, the state legislature deprived the
Board of the sanction that it had earlier used to enforce its
teachers' contractual obligation to earn continuing education
credits. The Board thus turned to contract nonrenewal, but applied
this sanction purely prospectively, so that those who might have
relied on its past practice would nonetheless have an opportunity
to bring themselves into compliance with the terms of their
contracts. Indeed, of the four teachers in violation of the
continuing education requirement when the state legislature
mandated salary increases, only respondent persisted in refusing to
enroll in the necessary courses. Such a course of conduct on the
part of a school board responsible for the public education of
students within its jurisdiction, and employing teachers to perform
the principal portion of that task, can scarcely be described as
arbitrary. Respondent's claim of a denial of substantive due
process under these circumstances is wholly untenable.
The Court of Appeals' reliance upon the equal protection
guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment was likewise mistaken. Since
respondent neither asserted nor established the existence of any
suspect classification or the deprivation of any fundamental
constitutional right,
see San Antonio Independent School Dist.
v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1,
411 U. S. 40
(1973), the only inquiry is whether the State's classification is
"rationally related to the State's objective."
Massachusetts
Board of Retirement v. Murgia, 427 U.
S. 307,
427 U. S. 315
(1976). The most cursory examination of the agreed facts
demonstrates that the Board's action met this test.
The School District's concern with the educational
qualifications of its teachers cannot, under any reasoned analysis,
be described as impermissible, and respondent does not contend that
the Board's continuing education requirement bears no rational
relationship to that legitimate governmental concern.
Page 440 U. S. 200
Rather, respondent contests
"the permissibility of the classification by which [she] and
three other teachers were required to achieve [by April, 1974,] the
number of continuing education credits that all other teachers were
given three years to achieve."
Brief in Opposition 7.
The Board's objective in sanctioning violations of the
continuing education requirement was, obviously, to encourage
future compliance with the requirement. Admittedly, imposition of a
penalty for noncompliance placed respondent and three other
teachers in a "class" different from those teachers who had
complied with their contractual obligations in the past. But any
sanction designed to enforce compliance with a valid rule, whatever
its source, falls only on those who break the rule. Respondent and
those in her "class" were the only teachers immediately affected by
the Board's action, because they were the only teachers who had
previously broken their contractual obligation. There is no
suggestion here that the Board enforces the continuing education
requirement selectively; the Board refuses to renew the contracts
of those teachers and only those teachers who refuse to comply with
the continuing education requirement.
That the Board was forced by the state legislature in 1974 to
penalize noncompliance differently than it had in the past in no
way alters the equal protection analysis of respondent's claim.
Like all teachers employed in the School District, respondent was
given three years to earn five continuing education credits. Unlike
most of her colleagues, however, respondent refused to comply with
the requirement, thus forfeiting her right to routine pay raises.
Had the legislature not mandated salary increases in 1974, the
Board presumably would have penalized respondent's continued
refusal to comply with the terms of her contract by denying her an
increase in salary for yet another year. The Board, having been
deprived by the legislature of the sanction previously employed to
enforce the continuing education requirement, merely
substituted
Page 440 U. S. 201
in its place another, albeit more onerous, sanction. The
classification created by both sanctions, however, was between
those who had acquired five continuing education credits within the
allotted time and those who had not.
At bottom, respondent's position is that she is willing to forgo
routine pay raises, but she is not willing to comply with the
continuing education requirement or to give up her job. The
constitutional permissibility of a sanction imposed to enforce a
valid governmental rule, however, is not tested by the willingness
of those governed by the rule to accept the consequences of
noncompliance. The sanction of contract nonrenewal is quite
rationally related to the Board's objective of enforcing the
continuing education obligation of its teachers. Respondent was
not, therefore, deprived of equal protection of the laws.
The petition for certiorari is granted, and the judgment of the
Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concurs in the result.