Goss v. Lopez
419 U.S. 565 (1975)
by
Stephanie Thomas

Facts of the Case

Nine high school students from the Columbus, Ohio, Public School System (CPSS) claimed to have been suspended from school for up to ten days without a hearing before or after the suspension. They claimed to have been deprived due process under the Fourteenth Amendment because they were deprived of their right to an education without any sort of hearing, and asked to prevent this from happening in the future and to have their records cleared.

These suspensions occurred after several incidents of violence and protest at various schools in the school system. One student was demonstrating during a class and refused to leave, while another attacked a police officer attempting to remove the first student. Four other students were suspended for similar reasons. Another student was suspended after a lunchroom incident that involved property damage, but the student claimed to only be an innocent bystander. There was no recorded evidence proving otherwise. Another student was arrested at a demonstration at a school other than her own but released without being charged. No record explained the decision making process for her suspension.  No testimony or records were present for the ninth student.
           
The United States district court decided that the students were denied due process of law because there were no hearings before or soon after the suspensions. It ruled that the Ohio Code §3316.66 and related regulations were unconstitutional in allowing suspensions to take place in that manner and that the students’ records were to be cleared. The school administrators were to create regulations that made a fair suspension policy that involved notice to the student and parents within 24 hours of the decision to suspend a student, and to provide an informal hearing that explained the basis for suspension and allowed the student to explain their side of the story. No legal counsel had to be permitted. The school administrators appealed this decision.

Decision of the Court

            The Supreme Court upheld the District Court’s decision on January 22, 1975 through Justice White’s Opinion of the Court and found that the students’ right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment was denied based on liberty and property interests and that since there was no hearing for any of the students before or after the suspension that they were invalid and the statute permitting them was unconstitutional.

Basis for the Decision

            The Court cited Board of Regents v. Roth 408 U.S. 564, 577, (1972) to show that the Fourteenth Amendment does not allow for the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and that property interests are often “not created by the Constitution” but rather by state regulations or statutes.  Therefore the Court found that the students had a property interest to an education as well as a liberty interest in the protection of their reputations against damaging unjust records. A suspension record could easily cause problems in obtaining jobs or admittance to schools.  A ten-day suspension is not insignificant enough to allow for a hearing to be denied. Students must be given some kind of hearing, even an informal one minutes after the incident, but still some type of opportunity to first be told what the accusation is and its basis and then be able to explain their side of the story. This procedure is appropriate for suspensions not exceeding ten days. Longer ones could require different procedures, as could certain exceptions to a short suspension. The Constitutional basis was the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.