Directions:(Part A) Case Law Summary Chart and (Part B) Case Brief
All students will create a chart and include all of the cases listed in Attachment # 2 to complete this assignment. (See Attachment # 2) Final product is a completed chart with all case summaries and the case brief of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (Brown I)
Part A: Example of Chart to be created and completed with all cases (see Attachment #1)
Name of Court Case Legal Topic Provide a brief summary of the case
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education
Collective Bargaining Landmark case for teacher unions as it said: teachers may be forced to join a union, pay dues but their dues may not be used for union political activities
Part B: EXAMPLE FORMAT FOR TYPING YOUR CASE BRIEF
Citation: Perry Education Association v. Perry Local Education Association, 460 U.S. 37 (1983)
(Please note that the name of a court case is always in italics!)
Argued: October 13, 1982.
Date Decided: February 23, 1983
Vote:5-4: Preferential access to a school mail system does not violate the First Amendment and the differential access afforded rival unions does not constitute impermissible content discrimination. (To find a vote in a case: go to http://www.oyez.org and click on Supreme Court Cases and then click on your case. You want to find the picture of the Supreme Court Justices for that case and click on each one. It will give their name and their vote!)
Facts of Case: A union was elected as the exclusive bargaining agent for the teachers of a school district. Per its collective bargaining agreement with the school board, only the representative union would have access to the interschool mail system and teacher mail folders. A rival union, contending the preferential-access system violated the First Amendment and the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, brought suit. The district court entered a judgment for the defendants. The court of appeals reversed, holding that the school district’s preferential-access policy violated both the First Amendment and the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Legal Principles at Issue:Whether the denial of equal access to an internal mail system within a school district to representative and rival unions violated the First Amendment and the equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
Legal Basis for Decision:The Court adopted a three-part framework to evaluate different types of government-owned property. In traditional public forums, “places which by long tradition or by government fiat have been devoted to assembly and debate,” the rights of a state to limit expressive activity are more closely scrutinized. In such forums, the government may not prohibit all communicative activity and may enforce content-based restrictions only to the extent that such regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and that it is narrowly drawn to achieve that end. A second category of property is the limited public forum, public property, which the state has opened for use by the public for expressive activity. Although a state is not bound to retain the open character of the property indefinitely, as long as it does so it is bound by the same standards as apply to traditional public forum. Public property that is not by tradition or designation a public forum is designated as a nonpublic forum. The state may reserve the forum for its intended purposes as long as the regulation on speech is reasonable and not an effort to suppress expression because public officials oppose the speaker’s view. The Court determined that the school mail facilities at issue were a nonpublic forum. The Court based its decision on the fact that the school mail system was not open to the public and permission had to be obtained from the school principal. The record indicated that permission had been granted only to a few outside organizations, such as the YMCA, Cub Scouts, and other civic and church organizations. Citing Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 838 (1976), the court stated that this type of selective access does not transform government property into a public forum.
Quotable: “The existence of a right of access to public property and the standard by which limitations upon such a right must be evaluated differ depending on the character of the property at issue.”
Writing for: Justice White delivered the opinion of the court in which Burger, C.J.; Blackmun, Rehnquist, and O’Connor, J.J., joined the Majority:
Writing dissenting opinion(s):Justice Brennan filed a dissenting opinion in which Marshall, Powell and Stevens, J.J., joined.
