Kaufman v. Board of Trustees, Community College District No. 508

552 F. Supp. 1143, 8 Educ. L. Rep. 618, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16386
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedOctober 8, 1982
Docket81 C 2618
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 552 F. Supp. 1143 (Kaufman v. Board of Trustees, Community College District No. 508) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kaufman v. Board of Trustees, Community College District No. 508, 552 F. Supp. 1143, 8 Educ. L. Rep. 618, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16386 (N.D. Ill. 1982).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

ASPEN, District Judge:

Plaintiffs, all of whom either are now or were, until they were discharged, tenured full-time faculty members employed by the City Colleges of Chicago, brought this civil rights action against the Board of Trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago, Community College District No. 508 (“the Board”) and Oscar Shabat (“Shabat”), chancellor and chief administrator of the City Colleges, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and compensatory and punitive damages on the ground that a rule prohibiting faculty members from engaging in concurrent full-time employment outside the Colleges is unconstitutional on its face and as applied in violation of the fourteenth amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 1 In an earlier opinion, this Court held that the rule against concurrent full-time outside employment, which is contained in the collective bargaining agreement between the Board and the Cook County College Teachers Union, Local 1600, is not unconstitutional on its face when infused with its common-sense meaning and that the rule is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. Kaufman v. Board of Trustees Community College District No. 508, 522 F.Supp. 90 (N.D.Ill.1981). 2 This matter is presently before the Court on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment 3 with respect to plaintiffs’ claims that, notwithstanding the facial validity of the rule, it has been applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner in violation of principles of substantive due process and equal protection.

*1145 In support of a motion for summary judgment, the moving party has the burden of showing that there is no dispute as to any genuine issue of fact material to a judgment in its favor as a matter of law. Cedillo v. International Association of Bridge & Structural Iron Workers, Local Union No. 1, 603 F.2d 7, 10 (7th Cir.1979). The non-moving party is entitled to all reasonable inferences that can be made in its favor from the evidence presented. United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 994, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962); Moutoux v. Gulling Auto Electric, Inc., 295 F.2d 573, 576 (7th Cir.1961).

Briefly stated, plaintiffs contend that defendants have acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of settled principles of substantive due process and equal protection of the laws in that they did not seriously enforce the rule against concurrent full-time employment from its inception in 1969 until November, 1980, despite the fact that they knew or should have known that violation of the rule was potentially widespread among City Colleges faculty. Plaintiffs maintain, however, that beginning in November, 1980, defendants revived the long-dormant rule without warning or notice and proceeded to discharge nearly 30 faculty members for violation of the rule, including most of the plaintiffs herein. 4 Plaintiffs also maintain that defendants have effectively exempted from the scope of the rule self-employed faculty members and those who are on the faculties of other area colleges while enforcing the rule against those who are employed by a third party and that they have never developed or applied any consistent standards in the course of their improvisational enforcement of the rule over the years.

Defendants deny that they had any longstanding prior knowledge of the full-time as opposed to part-time concurrent outside employment of the City Colleges faculty in general or of those faculty members who have .been terminated since November, 1980, in particular. They maintain that they have assiduously enforced the rule against concurrent outside employment since its inception both with respect to those faculty members who are employed by another as well as those who are self-employed and those who are on the faculties' of other area colleges.

The parties have submitted a wealth of material in support of their respective positions that the rule has or has not been applied in an unconstitutional manner. The Court has thoroughly sifted and reviewed the mass of material presented together with the legal memoranda submitted by counsel directed to the question of arbitrary and capricious enforcement of the rule. In our view, even if all actual or potential factual disputes are resolved in favor of defendants, the following undisputed material facts emerge. As set forth more fully below, these undisputed material facts merit summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs.

I.

The rule against concurrent full-time employment was first incorporated in the collective bargaining agreement between the Board and the Cook County College Teachers Union in 1969. From its inception, the rule was actively opposed by the Union as well as by a sizeable segment of the faculty, though the Union ultimately acceded to the inclusion of the outside employment rule in the collective bargaining agreement. As currently set forth in Article VIII.E of the collective bargaining agreement, rule 2-201 provides:

A full-time position in the Colleges is accepted with the understanding that the faculty member will not continue, or at a future date accept, a concurrent full-time *1146 position or positions equal to a full-time position with any other employer or employers while he is teaching full-time in the Colleges.

A virtually identical provision is also contained in the individual employment contracts signed by full-time faculty members at the City Colleges. Although the rule was promulgated in 1969, it was not until the fall of 1978 that the Board began requiring faculty members to fill out individual “outside employment forms” in which they were asked to disclose the nature and extent of their employment, consultation and research outside the City Colleges. The forms have been required in each academic semester since the fall of 1978 to date, with the exception of the fall 1979 and spring 1980 semesters.

It is undisputed that concurrent outside employment is widespread among the faculty of the City Colleges and that this state of affairs has long been known to and tolerated, if not expressly encouraged, by defendants. 5 As this Court noted in an earlier opinion, defendants’ toleration and even possible encouragement of such outside employment is not surprising since a faculty member with concurrent outside employment in his or her field of expertise is both able to supplement his or her moderate income from the City Colleges and bring experience drawn from the field into the classroom to the benefit of the City Colleges’ student body as a whole. Kaufman v. Board of Trustees, Community College District No. 508, supra, 522 F.Supp. at 100.

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Bluebook (online)
552 F. Supp. 1143, 8 Educ. L. Rep. 618, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16386, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kaufman-v-board-of-trustees-community-college-district-no-508-ilnd-1982.