# Perry v. Sindermann > Supreme Court of the United States · June 29, 1972 · 408 U.S. 593 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425013 ## Case - **Full name:** PERRY Et Al. v. SINDERMANN - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** June 29, 1972 - **Citations:** 408 U.S. 593; 1 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 33; 92 S. Ct. 2694; 33 L. Ed. 2d 570; 1972 U.S. LEXIS 20 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Burger - **Judges:** Stewart, Burger, White, Blackmun, Rehnquist, Brennan, Douglas, Marshall, Powell - **Cited by:** 4,763 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - **Yellow flag:** Reported overruled on other grounds by Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991) — not on the Supreme Court's list. - Negative treatments: 1 - Distinguished by: 4 - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425013 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - stating that the government may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests — -especially, his interest in freedom of speech. For if the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally protected … - concluding that "respondent’s lack of a contractual or tenure 'right' to re-employment ... is immaterial to his free speech claim. Indeed, twice before, this Court has specifically held that the nonrenewal of a nontenured public school teacher's one-year contract may not be pr… - concluding that "respondent's lack of a contractual or tenure `right' to re-employment... is immaterial to his free speech claim. Indeed, twice before, this Court has specifically held that the non-renewal of a non-tenured public school teacher's one-year contract may not be p… - holding that “[a] person’s interest in a benefit is a ‘property’ interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke a hearing” and finding that a teacher’s wr… - stating “[t]he respondent has alleged that his nonretention was based on his testimony before legislative committees and his other public statements critical of the Regents’ policies. And he has alleged that this public criticism was within the First ... Amendment’s] protectio… ## Opinion text Mr. Chief Justice Burger, concurring. * I concur in the Court’s judgments and opinions in Sindermann and Roth, but there is one central point in both decisions that I would like to underscore since it may have been obscured in the comprehensive discussion of the cases. That point is that the relationship between a state institution and one of its teachers is essentially a matter of state concern and state law. The Court holds today only that a state-employed teacher who has a right to re-employment under state law, arising from either an express or implied contract, has, in turn, a right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to some form of prior administrative or academic hearing on the cause *604 for nonrenewal of his contract. Thus, whether a particular teacher in a particular context has any right to such administrative hearing hinges on a question of state law. The Court's opinion makes this point very sharply: “Property interests ... are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law . . . .” Board of Regents v. Roth, ante, at 577. Because the availability of the Fourteenth Amendment right to a prior administrative hearing turns in each case on a question of state law, the issue of abstention will arise in future cases contesting whether a particular teacher is entitled to a hearing prior to non-renewal of his contract. If relevant state contract law is unclear, a federal court should, in my view, abstain from deciding whether he is constitutionally entitled to a prior hearing, and the teacher should be left to resort to state courts on the questions arising under state law. This opinion applies also to No. 71-162, Board of Regents of State Colleges et al. v. Roth, ante, p. 564. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9425013. Public record. Not legal advice.