Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz

435 U.S. 78, 98 S. Ct. 948, 55 L. Ed. 2d 124, 1978 U.S. LEXIS 64

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: March 1, 1978
• Docket: 76-695
• Status: Published

Opinions

Me. Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondent, a student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Medical School, was dismissed by petitioner officials of the school during her final year of study for failure to- meet academic standards. Respondent sued petitioners under 42 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleging, among other constitutional violations, that petitioners had not accorded her procedural due process prior to her dismissal. The District Court, after conducting a full trial, concluded that respondent had been afforded all of the rights guaranteed her by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and dismissed her complaint. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed, 538 F. 2d 1317 (1976), and a petition for rehearing en banc was denied by a divided court. 542 F. 2d 1335 (1976). We granted certiorari, 430 U. S. 964, to consider what procedures must be accorded to a student at a state educational institution whose dismissal may constitute a deprivation of “liberty” or “property” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

I

Respondent was admitted with advanced standing to the Medical School in the fall of 1971. During the final years of a student’s education at the school, the student is required to pursue in “rotational units” academic and clinical studies pertaining to various medical disciplines such as obstetrics-gynecology, pediatrics, and surgery. Each student’s academic performance at the School is evaluated on a periodic basis by the Council on Evaluation, a body composed of both faculty and students, which can recommend various actions including probation and dismissal. The recommendations of the Council are reviewed by the Coordinating Committee, a body composed solely of faculty members, and must ultimately be approved by the Dean. Students are not typically allowed to appear before either the Council or the Coordinating Committee on the occasion of their review of the student’s academic performance.

In the spring of respondent’s first year of study, several faculty members expressed dissatisfaction with her clinical performance during a pediatrics rotation. The faculty members noted that respondent’s “performance was below that of her peers in all clinical patient-oriented settings,” that she was erratic in her attendance at clinical sessions, and that she lacked a critical concern for personal hygiene. Upon the recommendation of the Council on Evaluation, respondent was advanced to her second and final year on a probationary basis.

Faculty dissatisfaction with respondent’s clinical performance continued during the following year. For example, respondent’s docent, or faculty adviser, rated her clinical skills as “unsatisfactory.” In the middle of the year, the Council again reviewed respondent’s academic progress and concluded that respondent should not be considered for graduation in June of that year; furthermore, the Council recommended that, absent “radical improvement,” respondent be dropped from the school.

Respondent was permitted to take a set of oral and practical examinations as an “appeal” of the decision not to permit her to graduate. Pursuant to this “appeal,” respondent spent a substantial portion of time with seven practicing physicians in the area who enjoyed a good reputation among their peers. The physicians were asked to recommend whether respondent should be allowed to graduate on schedule and, if not, whether she should be dropped immediately or allowed to remain on probation. Only two of the doctors recommended that respondent be graduated on schedule. Of the other five, two recommended that she be immediately dropped from the school. The remaining three recommended that she not be allowed to graduate in June and be continued on probation pending further reports on her clinical progress. Upon receipt of these recommendations, the Council on Evaluation reaffirmed its prior position.

The Council met again in mid-May to consider whether respondent should be allowed to remain in school beyond June of that year. Noting that the report on respondent’s recent surgery rotation rated her performance as “low-satisfactory,” the Council unanimously recommended that “barring receipt of any reports that Miss Horowitz has improved radically, [she] not be allowed to re-enroll in the . . . School of Medicine.” The Council delayed making its recommendation official until receiving reports ón other rotations; when a report on respondent’s emergency rotation also turned out to be negative, the Council unanimously reaffirmed its recommendation that respondent be dropped from the school. The Coordinating Committee and the Dean approved the recommendation and notified respondent, who appealed the decision in writing to the University’s Provost for Health Sciences. The Provost sustained the school’s actions after reviewing the record compiled during the earlier proceedings.

II

A

To be entitled to the procedural protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, respondent must in a case such as this demonstrate that her dismissal from the school deprived her of either a “liberty” or a “property” interest. Respondent has never alleged that she was deprived of a property interest. Because property interests are creatures of state law, Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593, 599-603 (1972), respondent would have been required to show at trial that her seat at the Medical School was a “property” interest recognized by Missouri state law. Instead, respondent argued that her dismissal deprived her of “liberty” by substantially impairing her opportunities to continue her medical education or to return to employment in a medically related field.

The Court of Appeals agreed, citing this Court’s opinion in Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564 (1972).1 In that case, we held that the State had not deprived a teacher of any liberty or property interest in dismissing the teacher from a nontenured position, but noted:

“[T]here is no suggestion that the State, in declining to re-employ the respondent, imposed on him a stigma or other disability that foreclosed his freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities. The State, for example, did not invoke any regulations to bar the respondent from all other public employment in state universities.” Id., at 573.

We have recently had an opportunity to elaborate upon the circumstances under which an employment termination might infringe a protected liberty interest. In Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341 (1976), we upheld the dismissal of a policeman without a hearing; we rejected the theory that the mere fact of dismissal, absent some publicizing of the reasons for the action, could amount to a stigma infringing one's liberty:

“In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, we recognized that the nonretention of an untenured college teacher might make him somewhat less attractive to other employers, but nevertheless concluded that it would stretch the concept too far 'to suggest that a person is deprived of “liberty” when he simply is not rehired in one job but remains as free as before to seek another.’ Id., at 575. This same conclusion applies to the discharge of a public employee whose position is terminable at the will of the employer when there is no public disclosure of the reasons for the discharge.

“In this case the asserted reasons for the City Manager’s decision were communicated orally to the petitioner in private and also were stated in writing in answer to- interrogatories after this litigation commenced. Since the former communication was not made public, it cannot properly form the basis for a claim that petitioner’s interest in his 'good name, reputation, honor, or integrity’ was thereby impaired.” Id., at 348 (footnote omitted).

The opinion of the Court of Appeals, decided only five weeks after we issued our opinion in Bishop, does not discuss whether a state university infringes a liberty interest when it dismisses a student without publicizing allegations harmful to the student’s reputation. Three judges of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc on the ground that “the reasons for Horowitz’s dismissal were not released to the public but were communicated to her directly by school officials.” Citing Bishop, the judges concluded that “[a]bsent such public disclosure, there is no deprivation of a liberty interest.” 542 F. 2d, at 1335. Petitioners urge us to adopt the view of these judges and hold that respondent has not been deprived of a liberty interest.

B

We need not decide, however, whether respondent’s dismissal deprived her of a liberty interest in pursuing a medical career. Nor need we decide whether respondent’s dismissal infringed any other interest constitutionally protected against deprivation without procedural due process. Assuming the existence of a liberty or property interest, respondent has been awarded at least as much due process as the Fourteenth Amendment requires. The school fully informed respondent of the faculty’s dissatisfaction with her clinical progress and the danger that this posed to timely graduation and continued enrollment. The ultimate decision to dismiss respondent was careful and deliberate. These procedures were sufficient under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We agree with the District Court that respondent

“was afforded full procedural due process by the '[school]. In fact, the Court is of the opinion, and so finds, that the school went beyond [constitutionally required] procedural due process by affording [respondent] the opportunity to be examined by seven independent physicians in order to be absolutely certain that their grading of the [respondent] in her medical skills was correct.” App. 47.

In Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565 (1975), we held that due process requires, in connection with the suspension of a student from public school for disciplinary reasons, “that the student be given oral or written notice of the charges against him and, if he denies them, an explanation of the evidence the authorities have and an opportunity to present his side of the story.” Id., at 581. The Court of Appeals apparently read Goss as requiring some type of formal hearing at which respondent could defend her academic ability and performance.² All that Goss required was an “informal give-and-take” between the student and the administrative body dismissing him that would, at least, give the student “the opportunity to characterize his conduct and put it in what he deems the proper context.” Id., at 584. But we have frequently emphasized that “[t]he very nature of due process negates any concept of inflexible procedures universally applicable to every imaginable situation.” Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961). The need for flexibility is well illustrated by the significant difference between the failure of a student to meet academic standards and the violation by a student of valid rules of conduct. This difference calls for far less stringent procedural requirements in the case of an academic dismissal.³

Since the issue first arose 50 years ago, state and lower federal courts have recognized that there are distinct differences between decisions to suspend or dismiss a student for disciplinary purposes and similar actions taken for academic reasons which may call for hearings in connection with the former but not the latter. Thus, in Barnard v. Inhabitants of Shelburne, 216 Mass. 19, 102 N. E. 1095 (1913), the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected an argument, based on several earlier decisions requiring a hearing in disciplinary contexts, that school officials' must also grant a hearing before excluding a student on academic grounds. According to the court, disciplinary cases have

"no application. . . . Misconduct is a very different matter from failure to attain a standard of excellence in studies. A determination as to the fact involves investigation of a quite different kind. A public hearing may be regarded as helpful to the ascertainment of misconduct and useless or harmful in finding out the truth as to scholarship.” Id., at 22-23, 102 N. E., at 1097.

A similar conclusion has been reached by the other state courts to consider the issue. See, e. g., Mustell v. Rose, 282 Ala. 358, 367, 211 So. 2d 489, 498, cert. denied, 393 U. S. 936 (1968); cf. Foley v. Benedict, 122 Tex. 193, 55 S. W. 2d 805 (1932). Indeed, until the instant decision by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Courts of Appeals were also unanimous in concluding that dismissals for academic (as opposed to disciplinary) cause do not necessitate a hearing before the school’s decisionmaking body. See Mahavongsanan v. Hall, 529 F. 2d 448 (CA5 1976);⁴ Gaspar v. Bruton, 513 (CA10 1975).⁵ These prior decisions of state and federal courts, over a period of 60 years, unanimously holding that formal hearings before decisionmaking bodies need not be held in the case of academic dismissals, cannot be rejected lightly. Cf. Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 118-119, 131-132 (1934); Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 69-71 (1932); Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U. S. 22, 31 (1922).

Reason, furthermore, clearly supports the perception of these decisions. A school is an academic institution, not a courtroom or administrative hearing room. In Goss, this Court felt that suspensions of students for disciplinary reasons have a sufficient resemblance to traditional judicial and administrative factfinding to call for a “hearing” before the relevant school authority. While recognizing that school authorities must be afforded the necessary tools to maintain discipline, the Court concluded:

“[I]t would be a strange disciplinary system in an educational institution if no communication was sought by the disciplinarian with the student in an effort to inform him of his dereliction and to let him tell his side of the story in order to make sure that an injustice is not done.

“{It] equiring effective notice and informal hearing permitting the student to give his version of the events will provide a meaningful hedge against erroneous action. At least the disciplinarian will be alerted to the existence of disputes about facts and arguments about cause and effect.” 419 U. S., at 580, 583-584.

Even in the context of a school disciplinary proceeding, however, the Court stopped short of requiring a formal hearing since “further formalizing the suspension process and escalating its formality and adversary nature may not only make it too costly as a regular disciplinary tool but also destroy its effectiveness as a part of the teaching process.” Id., at 583.

Academic evaluations of a student, in contrast to disciplinary determinations, bear little resemblance to the judicial and administrative factfinding proceedings to which we have traditionally attached a full-hearing requirement. In Goss, the school’s decision to suspend the students rested on factual conclusions that the individual students had participated in demonstrations that had disrupted classes, attacked a police officer, or caused physical damage to school property. The requirement of a hearing, where the student could present his side of the factual issue, could under such circumstances “provide a meaningful hedge against erroneous action.” Ibid. The decision to dismiss respondent, by comparison, rested on the academic judgment of school officials that she did not have the necessary clinical ability to perform adequately as a medical doctor and was making insufficient progress toward that goal. Such a judgment is by its nature more subjective and evaluative than the typical factual questions presented in the average disciplinary decision. Like the decision of an individual professor as to the proper grade for a student in his course, the determination whether to dismiss a student for academic reasons requires an expert evaluation of cumulative information and is not readily adapted to the procedural tools of-judicial or administrative decisionmaking.

Under such circumstances, we decline to ignore the historic judgment of .educators and thereby formalize the academic dismissal process by requiring a hearing. The educational process is not by nature adversary; instead it centers around a continuing relationship between faculty and students, “one in which the teacher must occupy many roles — educator, adviser, friend, and, at times, parent-substitute.” Goss v. Lopes, 419 U. S., at 594 (Powell, J., dissenting). This is especially true as one advances through the varying regimes of the educational system, and the instruction becomes both more individualized and more specialized. In Goss, this Court concluded that the value of some form of hearing in a disciplinary context outweighs any resulting harm to the academic environment. Influencing this conclusion was clearly the belief that disciplinary proceedings, in which the teacher must decide whether to punish a student for disruptive or insubordinate behavior, may automatically bring an adversary flavor to the normal student-teacher relationship. The same conclusion does not follow in the academic context. We decline to further enlarge the judicial presence in the academic community and thereby risk deterioration of many beneficial aspects of the faculty-student relationship. We recognize, as did the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court over 60 years ago, that a hearing may be “useless or harmful in finding out the truth as to scholarship.” Barnard v. Inhabitants of Shelburne, 216 Mass., at 23, 102 N. E., at 1097.

“Judicial interposition in the operation of the public school system of the Nation raises problems requiring care and restraint. ... By and large, public education in our Nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities.” Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968). We see no reason to intrude on that historic control in this case.⁶

Ill

In reversing the District Court on procedural due process grounds, the Court of Appeals expressly failed to “reach the substantive due process ground advanced by Horowitz.” 538 F. 2d, at 1321 n. 5. Respondent urges that we remand the cause to the Court of Appeals for consideration of this additional claim. In this regard, a number of lower courts have implied in dictum that academic dismissals from state institutions can be enjoined if “shown to be clearly arbitrary or capricious.” Mahavongsanan v. Hall, 529 F. 2d, at 449. See Gaspar v. Bruton, 513 F. 2d, at 850, and citations therein. Even assuming that the courts can review under such a standard an academic decision of a public educational institution, we agree with the District Court that no showing of arbitrariness or capriciousness has been made in this case.⁷ Courts are particularly ill-equipped to evaluate academic performance. The factors discussed in Part II with respect to procedural due process speak a fortiori here and warn against any such judicial intrusion into academic decisionmaking.⁸ The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore

Reversed.

1 Respondent concedes that petitioners have not “invoke[d] any regulations to bar” her from seeking out employment in the medical field or from finishing her medical education at a different institution. Brief for Respondent 21. Cf. Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S., at 573. Indeed, the Coordinating Committee in accepting the recommendation of the Council that respondent be dismissed, noted that “as with all students, should sufficient improvement take place, she could be considered for readmission to the School of Medicine.” The Court of Appeals, however, relied on the testimony of a doctor employed by the Kansas City Veterans’ Administration to the effect that respondent’s dismissal would be “a significant black mark.” On the Medical School side, it was the doctor’s view that respondent “would have great difficulty to get into another medical school, if at all.” As for employment, if two people were applying for a position with the Veterans’ Administration with “otherwise . . . equal qualifications, roughly, I would lean heavily to the other person who was not dismissed from a graduate school.” 538 F. 2d 1317, 1320-1321, n. 3 (1976).

2 The Court of Appeals held without elaboration that the dismissal had been “effected without the hearing required by the fourteenth amendment.” 538 F. 2d, at 1321. No express indication was given as to what the minimum requirements of such a hearing would be. One can assume, however, that the contours of the hearing would be much the same as those set forth in Greenhill v. Bailey, 519 F. 2d 5 (CA8 1975), which also involved an academic dismissal and upon, which the Court of Appeals principally relied. Greenhill held that the student must be “accorded an opportunity to appear personally to contest [the allegations of academic deficiency]. We stop short,, however, of requiring full trial-type procedures in such situations. A graduate or professional school is, after all, the best judge of its students’ academic performance and their ability to master the required curriculum. The presence of attorneys or the imposition of rigid rules of cross-examination at a hearing for a student . . . would serve no useful purpose, notwithstanding that the dismissal in question may be of permanent duration. But an ‘informal give-and-take’ between the student and the administrative body dismissing him . . . would not unduly burden the educational process and would, at least, give the student ‘the opportunity to characterize his conduct and put it in what he deems the proper context.’ ’’ Id., at 9 (footnote omitted), quoting Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S., at 584. Respondent urges us to go even further than the Court of Appeals and require “the fundamental safeguards of representation by counsel, confrontation, and cross-examination of witnesses.” Brief for Respondent 36.

3 We fully recognize that the deprivation to which respondent was subjected — dismissal from a graduate medical school — was more severe than the 10-day suspension to which the high school students were subjected in Goss. And a relevant factor in determining the nature of the requisite due process is “the private interest that [was] affected by the official action.” Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 335 (1976). But the severity of the deprivation is only one of several factors that must be weighed in deciding the exact due process owed. Ibid. We conclude that considering all relevant factors, including the evaluative nature of the inquiry and the significant and historically supported interest of the school in preserving its present framework for academic evaluations, a hearing is not required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

4 “The district court’s grant of relief is based on a confusion of the court’s power to review disciplinary actions by educational institutions on the one hand, and academic decisions on the other hand. This Court has been in the vanguard of the legal development of due process protections for students ever since Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 5 Cir. 1961, 294 F. 2d 150, cert. denied 1961, 368 U. S. 930 .... However, the due process requirements of notice and hearing developed in the Dixon line of cases have been carefully limited to disciplinary decisions. When we explained that ‘the student at the tax supported institution cannot be arbitrarily disciplined without the benefit of the ordinary, well recognized principles of fair play’, we went on to declare that ‘[w]e know of no case which holds that colleges and universities are subject to the supervision or review of the courts in the uniform application of their academic standards. Indeed, Dixon infers to the contrary.’ Wright v. Texas Southern University, 5 Cir. 1968, 392 F. 2d 728, 729. Misconduct and failure to attain a standard of scholarship cannot be equated. A hearing may be required to determine charges of misconduct, but a hearing may be useless or harmful in finding out the truth concerning scholarship. There is a clear dichotomy between a student’s due process rights in disciplinary dismissals and in academic dismissals.” 529 F. 2d, at 449-450.

5 In Greenhill v. Bailey, supra, the Court of Appeals held that a hearing had been necessary where a medical school not only dismissed a student for academic reasons but also sent a letter to the Liaison Committee of the Association of the American Medical Colleges suggesting that the student either lacked “intellectual ability” or had insufficiently prepared his course work. The court specifically noted that “there has long been a distinction between cases concerning disciplinary dismissals, on the one hand, and academic dismissals, on the other” and emphasized that it did not wish to “blur that distinction.” 519 F. 2d, at 8. In the court’s opinion, the publicizing of an alleged deficiency in the student’s intellectual ability removed the case from the typical instance of academic dismissal and called for greater procedural protections. Cf. Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341 (1976).

6 Respondent contends in passing that she was not dismissed because of “clinical incompetence,” an academic inquiry, but for disciplinary reasons similar to those involved in Goss. Thus, as in Goss, a hearing must be conducted. In this regard, respondent notes that the school warned her that significant improvement was needed not only in the area of clinical performance but also in her personal hygiene and in keeping to her clinical schedules. The record, however, leaves no doubt that respondent was dismissed for purely academic reasons, a fact assumed without discussion by the lower courts. Personal hygiene and timeliness may be as important factors in a school’s determination of whether a student will make a good medical doctor as the student’s ability to take a case history or diagnose an illness. Questions of personal hygiene and timeliness, of course, may seem more analogous to traditional factfinding than other inquiries that a school may make in academically evaluating a student. But in so évaLuating the student, the school considers and weighs a variety of factors, not all of which, as noted earlier, are adaptable to the factfinding hearing. And the critical faculty-student relationship may still be injured if a hearing is required.

7 Respondent alleges that the school applied more stringent standards in evaluating her performance than that of other students because of her sex, religion, and physical appearance. The District Court, however, found: “There was no evidence that [respondent] was in any manner evaluated differently from other students because of her sex or because of her religion. With regard to [respondent’s] physical appearance, this in and of itself did not cause [her] to be evaluated any differently than any of the other students.” App. 45.

8 Respondent also contends that petitioners failed to follow their own rules respecting evaluation of medical students and that this failure amounted to a constitutional violation under Service v. Dulles, 354 U. S. 363 (1957). We disagree with both respondent’s factual and legal contentions. As for the facts, the record clearly shows that the school followed its established rules, except where new rules had to be designed in an effort to further protect respondent, as with the practical “appeal” that petitioners allowed respondent to take. The District Court specifically found that “the progress status of [respondent] in the medical school was evaluated in a manner similar to and consistent with the evaluation of other similarly situated students, with the exception that [respondent’s] docent . . . went to even greater lengths to assist [respondent] in an effort for her to obtain her M. D. degree, than he did for any of his other students.” App. 45. As for the legal conclusion that respondent draws, both Service and Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U. S. 260 (1954), upon which Service relied, enunciate principles of federal administrative law rather than of constitutional law binding upon the States.