Claudette Tardif v. Thomas Quinn, 545 F.2d 761, 1st Cir. (1976)
545 F.
2d 761
12 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 11,262
Claudette TARDIF, Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
Thomas QUINN et al., Defendants, Appellees.
No. 76-1389.
United States Court of Appeals,
First Circuit.
Dec. 16, 1976.
Jeffrey M. Freedman, Boston, Mass., with whom Brown, Rudnick, Freed
& Gesmer, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.
Matthew R. McCann, Worcester, Mass., with whom Maher, McCann &
Talcott, Worcester, Mass., was on brief, for defendants, appellees.
Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge, and
GIGNOUX, District Judge.*
ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge.
In the spring of her third year as a non-tenured French teacher at Southbridge
High School plaintiff-appellant Claudette Tardif was notified that her contract
would not be renewed. She was 25 years old. For over a year she and Rose
Proulx, her department head, who had been a teacher for 35 years, had disputed
the length of plaintiff's skirts, and its alleged effect upon her students. The
termination letter gave four reasons, all facially sound, and none relating
directly to plaintiff's dress. In this Civil Rights action under 42 U.S.C. 1983
and 1985 against Proulx and a number of school officials, plaintiff alleges that
her constitutional rights were violated because the real reason for her
termination was the length of her dress.
In the fall of 1969, the beginning of her second year, plaintiff, according to her
testimony, shortened her dresses. This was met with vigorous objection on the
part of Mrs. Proulx. The court found that "from this time on (plaintiff's)
relations with her supervisor were strained, and marked with frequent hostile
exchanges. . . . In January 1971, . . . Mrs. Proulx stated that, unless plaintiff
changed her mode of dress, she would no longer be in the school system."
Plaintiff made no change. Near the end of March she was asked to resign, and
on her refusal, the ax fell. At that time she was unable to obtain a statement of
reasons. Thereafter, possibly because of our decision in Drown v. Portsmouth
School Dist., 1 Cir., 1970, 435 F.2d 1182, she received a letter giving four
reasons: lack of interest in professional growth, insufficient participation in
school activities, unwillingness to work with students after school, and poor
"image."
3
After three days of trial, and considerable post trial activities, the court found
that plaintiff had been a superior teacher, that the charges in the letter relating
to her abilities and asserted non-activities were contradicted by the
"overwhelming weight of the evidence,"1 and that her "image was that of an
energetic, imaginative and dedicated teacher." As to "professional growth,"
however, the court agreed that plaintiff had failed to meet her contractual
requirements with respect to taking outside courses for credit. On that basis it
dismissed the action, without reaching the question whether termination on
account of dress would violate her constitutional rights.
The parties, consistent with the practice they set in the district court, have filed
elaborate briefs. Defendants, although accusing plaintiff of seeking to relitigate
the facts, spend much of their time doing precisely that themselves, to the
extent of even misstating a crucial finding, and fail even to argue the
constitutional issue, stating that the whole question of dress was a "non-issue."
We cannot find ourselves so restricted.
The court's conclusion that plaintiff failed to meet the outside courses
requirement raises questions of contract interpretation. More important, in the
light of its late appearance,2 coupled with defendants' total failure to support
other reasons given, causes us to believe, following familiar principles in Labor
Board cases, that it should be disregarded as "pretextual." See NLRB v.
Teknor-Apex Co., 1 Cir., 1972, 468 F.2d 692; NLRB v. Joseph Antell, Inc., 1
Cir., 1966, 358 F.2d 880, 883. We must, therefore, reach the questions
presented on the assumption that plaintiff was terminated only because of her
"image," in particular that it was over-exposed.
The school principal testified that he "never . . . consider(ed) her method of
dress in reviewing her image on students." This was not only inconsistent with
his other testimony, but was contradicted by what the court found the school
superintendent told plaintiff, and by Mrs. Proulx herself, who testified that
image meant to her, dress. The court, having taken a view, found that plaintiff's
dresses, which came "half-way down (her) thigh," were "comparable in style to
dresses worn by young, respectable professional women during the years when
the plaintiff was teaching." It further found that her dresses in fact "had no
startling or adverse effect on her students or on her effectiveness as a teacher."
7
We will assume that by this finding the court meant that plaintiff's dress length
was within reasonable limits, and we further assume that this finding was
warranted. On the other hand, the court's independent judgment as to the
impact and propriety of plaintiff's dress does not amount to a finding that
defendants' objections to the length were irrational in the context of school
administration concerns. On this basis we consider plaintiff's claim that
freedom of choice in matters of personal appearance is an aspect of the
Fourteenth Amendment's "commodious concept of liberty, embracing freedoms
great and small." See Richards v. Thurston, 1 Cir., 1970, 424 F.2d 1281, 1285.3
In Thurston we held that, in the absence of any showing of an affirmative
justification, prohibiting schoolboys from wearing long hair was
constitutionally offensive. At the same time, we remarked in our general
discussion that "a school rule which forbids skirts shorter than a certain length
while on school grounds would require less justification than one requiring hair
to be cut, which affects the student twenty-four hours a day . . .." 424 F.2d at
1285. But apart from the less restrictive nature of the school's requirement here,
what is more important is that we are not dealing with personal appearance in
what might be termed an individual sense, but in a bilateral sense a contractual
relationship. Whatever constitutional aspect there may be to one's choice of
apparel generally, it is hardly a matter which falls totally beyond the scope of
the demands which an employer, public or private, can legitimately make upon
its employees. Cf. Kelley, Comm'r v. Johnson, 1976, 425 U.S. 238, 96 S.Ct.
1440, 47 L.Ed.2d 708; Earwood v. Continental Southeastern Lines, Inc., 4 Cir.,
1976, 539 F.2d 1349. We are unwilling to think that every dispute on such
issues raises questions of constitutional proportions which must stand or fall,
depending upon a court's view of who was right. As Judge, now Mr. Justice,
Stevens said in a similar case, Miller v. School Dist. No. 167, 7 Cir., 1974, 495
F.2d 658, 667,
9 a school board should correctly conclude that a teacher's style of dress or
"If
plummage, has an adverse impact on the educational process, and if that conclusion
conflicts with the teacher's interest in selecting his own life style, we have no doubt
that the interest of the teacher is subordinate to the public interest. We must assume,
however, that sometimes such a school board determination will be incorrect. Even
on that assumption, we are persuaded that the importance of allowing school boards
sufficient latitude to discharge their responsibilities effectively and inevitably,
therefore, to make mistakes from time to time outweighs the individual interest at
stake."
10
In employee-employer relationships the constitutional area is, and should be,
small. However successful school teachers have, properly, been in First
Amendment cases, the federal courts are not in the business of reviewing dayto-day administrative judgments. Cf. Bishop v. Wood, (1976), 426 U.S. 341, 96
S.Ct. 2074, 48 L.Ed.2d 684. We need not, however, go as far as the Miller court
did in foreclosing relief even in extreme circumstances. 495 F.2d at 668. Once
even a small, as distinguished from a fundamental, constitutional right is shown
to be involved, an employee might succeed by showing the invasion so
irrational as to demonstrate lack of good faith. The case was not presented on
that basis; neither could we say that the evidence would have warranted such a
finding. Whether the conclusion that plaintiff's dress had a disruptive effect was
correct or not, we could not say it was not "motivated by a legitimate school
concern." Richards v. Thurston, ante, 424 F.2d at 1282.
11
Affirmed. Because of appellees' brief, no costs.
Of the District of Maine, sitting by designation
In their brief, defendants argue the significance of their evidence at length.
After reviewing the record as a whole, including the contradictions and
inconsistencies of defendants' two principal witnesses, we do not see how the
court could have reached any other conclusion
E.g., defendant school principal admitted that he had decided on plaintiff's
termination in December 1970. At that time it could not be known that she
would not meet what he subsequently said were her credit requirements. Nor
did he tell her his interpretation of what they were
There is no claim that the length of plaintiff's skirts was intended as a form of
symbolic expression, and thus protected by the First Amendment. Richards v.
Thurston, ante
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