Recent Cases of Interest to California Teachers
2013-2014
While there
were plenty of legal actions undertaken during the 2013-2014 school year, some
court cases in California and in the 9th Circuit stand out. Here are
our reports from the major appellate cases--and a few others--from 2013-2014:
DeYoung v. Commission on Professional Competence—Failure to produce written charges against teacher was not a
substantive error
A tenured teacher
who was being terminated for, among other things, allegedly striking a student
and calling students “stupid,” was orally told of the allegations, received a
letter from the District regarding the charges, and he was placed on
administrative leave. The District met with the teacher in a “Skelly” meeting
and then dismissed him and then served on him a written accusation proposing
dismissal. The teacher argued he should have received written charges prior
to the District Board voting, not after the vote to dismiss. The
Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court determination that whatever error
occurred was harmless, that the charges were clear from the start, and the
teacher received a full evidentiary hearing. (California Court of Appeal—2nd
District, 7/30/14)
Hector F. v. El Centro Elementary School District—Parent (as taxpayer and citizen) has standing to sue after
student left school to enforce antiharassment laws
An elementary special ed student
who spoke English only as a second language was the victim of abuse from other
kids, according the child’s father. After complaining to school officials, the
father alleges school officials did not
intervene and provide any protection for Brian, but instead suggested Brian
change classrooms. The trial court dismissed the charges because the student no
longer attends the elementary school. The appeal court reversed this ruling: “As
a citizen and taxpayer Hector has standing to seek enforcement of laws in which
there is an identified public as well as private interest. The statutory
provisions asserted by Hector articulate a well identified public interest in
maintaining a system of taxpayer funded public education which is free of the
destructive influence of discrimination, harassment and bullying.” The father’s
“attempt to enforce the antidiscrimination and antiharassment statutes adopted
by the Legislature falls squarely within the public interest exception to the
rule which otherwise requires a beneficial interest in mandate actions.”
LAUSD v. Superior Court—Court of Appeal agrees with LAUSD to keep teacher data private
Data regarding student
performance, disaggregated by teacher, may be kept away from the public,
pursuant to the Public Records Act.
Read the California
Appellate Report, 7/23/14:
The decision in LAUSD
v. Superior Court can be found at:
Harris v. Quinn—Supreme
Court Decision Signals Trouble for Teachers; Unions Down the Road
In the 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that eight Illinois
home health-care workers cannot be required to contribute union bargaining
fees.
Read the CTA blog [7/1/14] on this case:
Vergara v. California—Trial
Court Rules that Tenure and Seniority Laws Violate the Equal Protection
Guarantee for Poor and Minority Students
This controversial case (see
more at my California Teacher Law Blog:
http://teacherlawcalifornia.blogspot.com/p/the-vergara-case.html),
will certainly be appealed by either the State or the CTA (or both). The judge
ruled, after a two-month trial, that five statutes providing teachers with
tenure very quickly and make it extremely difficult to fire ineffective
teachers, protect the more experienced teachers from economic-based layoffs at
the expense of newly hired teachers, disproportionately affect poor and minority
students and thus violate the state’s equal protection clause and the guarantee
of an “equal education” promised in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the
Serrano
v. Priest cases of the 1970s, and the Butt v. California (1992)
case.
Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School
District—School’s Ban on U.S. Flag Shirts on Cinco de Mayo Upheld by 9th
Circuit
The 9th Circuit
upheld the school’s decision to force the students who were wearing the U.S.
flag shirts to stop doing so as there a real risk of violence on the school
which was celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
The decision is at:
Much has been written about
this case elsewhere. See:
Heckler's Vetoes in High School [Jurist, 3/14/14]: Ashutosh Bhagwat argues the decision in Dariano may have constituted a
heckler's veto over the rights of free speech
The JURIST report (2/28/14)
on this case is here:
Legal blogger Eugene Volokh,
at the “Volokh Conspiracy,” has this comment (2/27/14):
The NSBA
“Legal Clips” page on the case and decision can be found at:
Attached to
the original complaint filed in 2010, you can find exhibits with pictures of
the shirts with the American flag that are in question:
LAUSD v. Superior Court (Los Angeles
Times Real party in Interest)—District’s
Teacher Ratings Survive Public Records Act challenge by LA Times
The 2nd District Court
of Appeal overturned the trial court and ruled that the public has no right to know the names of Los Angeles Unified School
District teachers in connection with their job performance ratings. The Los
Angeles Times had sued to obtain this information under the Public Records Act,
asserting the public interest of parents and others. The Court ruled, however,
that the confidentiality of the teachers served a stronger public interest.
Read the California Appellate Report comment at:
LAUSD v. Superior Court can be found at:
Nathan G. v. Clovis USD—Appeal court
upholds students’ involuntary transfer to continuation school
When a school attempts to
transfer a student involuntarily to a continuation school (Ed.C. sec. 48432.5),
a hearing should be held (if requested), but the school is not required to
exhaust “all other mans of correction” before a student can be transferred.
While the right to an education is a “fundamental right” (and thus require an
independent review by the Court), a transfer as in this case to another school
does not deny the student a right to attend school. This means the Court has
only to find “substantial evidence” that the school discipline of the student
is entitled to deference by the Court.
Frudden v. Pilling—Public
School can’t require Students to Display a Motto on their Uniforms
Public elementary school students had to wear a uniform that displayed
the school motto, “Tomorrow’s Leaders.” This, the Court said, was “compelled
speech” and subject to strict scrutiny review. The lower court had not
exercised this level of review, and the case was sent back to the lower court.
Further, the school allowed “nationally recognized youth organizations such as
Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts on regular meeting days” to wear their non-school
uniforms. This is a “content-based” exemption might also violate the First
Amendment, and the lower court did not examine this, the lower court ruling was
overturned.
The 9th Circuit decision is at:
Read Public school can't require students to display a motto on their
uniforms [Volokh Conspiracy / Trial Insider, 2/14/14]
You can read the
original District Court ruling:
Read Professor
Volokh (the advocate for the students in this case) essay: “Can Public Elementary School
Require Students to Wear Shirts With Mottoes?”:
You can view the
YouTuber video of the oral argument in the 9th Circuit:
Demers v. Austin—9th
Circuit holds Garcetti rule on public
employee speech does not apply to teaching and academic writing
The 9th Circuit
ruled that not all things that a public school employee writes and distributes
in connection with his or her official duties are without 1st
Amendment protections. Demers, a faculty member at Washington State University,
had distributed a document for change to high-level administrators and media
and others. He suffered negative employment actions, which he blamed on his
distribution of the documents, and he alleged illegal retaliation that violated
the 1st Amendment. Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) had held
that “when public employees make statement pursuant to their official duties,
the employees are not speaking as citizens for 1st Amendment
purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communication from
employer discipline.” However, the 9th Circuit ruled in Demers
that the Garcetti rule does not apply to “speech related to scholarship
or teaching,” but rather the Pickering v. Board of Education
(1968) test should apply. There, if the teacher can demonstrate that his or her
speech was about a “matter of public concern,” then it is protected if the
teacher’s interest “in commenting outweighs the interest of the State, as an
employer, in promoting the efficiency of the [school].”
Read the “Verdict” piece, “Precisely How Much Academic Freedom Should
(Does) the 1st Amendment Afford to Professors and Teachers at Public
Schools?” by Professors Vikram Amar and Alan Brownstein at:
Wynar v. Douglas County School District—9th
Circuit Upholds School Discipline Against Student for Sending Messages from
Home to Friends
Landon Wynar, a high school
sophomore, was suspended after he made sent
increasingly violent and threatening instant messages from his home to his
school friends. The 9th Circuit said that, when faced with an
identifiable threat of school violence, schools could take disciplinary action
in response to off-campus speech under the Tinker v. Des Moines
(1969) rule that “schools may prohibit speech that ‘might reasonably
[lead] school authorities to forecast substantial disruption of or material
interference with school activities’ or that collides ‘with the rights of other
students to be secure and to be let alone.’
The court cited LaVine
v. Blaine School District (2001) in which the schools temporary
expulsion was upheld because of a poem written at home about a school shooting
and suicide that the student showed to his English teacher.
Read Julie Hilden’s
“Verdict” piece, “When is a Public
School Student’s Online Speech About School Violence
Cause for Concern?” at:
E.M. v. Pajaro Valley Unified School
District—District Action Denying Special Education to Student
Upheld by 9th Circuit
The 9th Circuit
agreed the District had acted reasonably in determining that a student “did not
qualify for special education services under the “specific learning disability”
category because he lacked the required severe discrepancy between his
intellectual ability and his achievement. Further, the student failed to show
that the school district acted unreasonably in not considering him for benefits
under the “other health impairment” category in 2005.
The decision in E.M.
v. Pajaro Valley Unified School Dist. can be found at:
No comments:
Post a Comment