holding that policies regulating the uniforms and conduct of police officers are entitled to great deference, and should not be set aside unless individual officers “can demonstrate that there is no rational connection between the regulation, based as it is on the county’s method of organizing its police force, and the promotion of safety of persons and property”
How later courts described this case
- holding that policies regulating the uniforms and conduct of police officers are entitled to great deference, and should not be set aside unless individual officers “can demonstrate that there is no rational connection between the regulation, based as it is on the county’s method of organizing its police force, and the promotion of safety of persons and property”
- holding that deference is owed to police department grooming regulations under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause based on such organizations' "overall need for discipline, esprit de corps, and uniformity"
- noting that the personal-grooming regulations of police officers had a rational basis of ensuring a uniformity of appearance so that the officers are 23 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO “readily recognizable to the members of the public” or fostering esprit de corps within the force through similarity of appearance
- balancing police officer's liberty interest in personal appearance against police department's need to regulate the hair length of its officers, after suggesting that state employees may be subject to more restrictive regulations where their less fundamental rights are at stake
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by Crain v. Board of Police Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police Department of St. Louis, 920 F.2d 1402 (1990)
Unlike the court in Pienta, however, we do not read Kelley as applicable only to challenges based on general liberty interests, and we decline to follow the approach taken in Pienta.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Powell,
concurring.
I concur in the opinion of the Court and write to make clear that, contrary to the concern expressed in the dissent, I find no negative implication in the opinion with respect to a liberty interest within the Fourteenth Amendment as to matters of personal appearance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 541-543 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting). When the State has an interest in regulating one’s personal appearance, as it certainly does in this case, there must be a weighing of the degree of infringement of the individual’s liberty interest against the need for the regulation. This process of analysis justifies the application of a reasonable regulation to a uniformed police force that would be an impermissible intrusion upon liberty in a different context.