Opinion

Lecil Hander v. San Jacinto Junior College, Etc.

  • 519 F.2d 273
  • 1975 U.S. App. LEXIS 12774
Court
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Filed
Sep 12, 1975
Status
Published
Author
Brown
On the bench
Brown, Gewin, Thornberry
Cited by
105 cases

Modified on other grounds by Lecil Hander v. San Jacinto Junior College, Etc., 522 F.2d 204 (1975)

holding that a community college was not an arm of the state when the college had power to issue revenue bounds and levy taxes, the electorate selected the board of trustees and the state appropriated money to the college’s supplemented local funds

How later courts described this case

  • holding that a community college was not an arm of the state when the college had power to issue revenue bounds and levy taxes, the electorate selected the board of trustees and the state appropriated money to the college’s supplemented local funds
  • finding no Eleventh Amendment immunity where Texas junior college’s board of trustees was locally elected and had the power "to issue revenue bonds and to levy ... taxes,” and where state appropriations only supplemented local funding
  • holding under Lansdale that junior college could not fire faculty member for refusing to shave beard
  • declining to grant sovereign immunity because the junior college districts in the city were “primarily local institutions, created by local authority and supported largely by local revenues”

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge

(concurring):

I concur fully in Judge Gewin’s fine opinion and in the result. I write only to record with a sense of relief and common sense that the Federal Courts are now out of the hair business as Mr. Justice Black long ago said we should be. For high school students the problem is ordinarily not subject to judicial review. And now to Lansdale which prescribed a hands off — more accurately, a clippers-razor off — policy for college students we have added their teachers and college administrators.

The only thing left is such a claim from kindergarten through the primary grades. But I apprehend little from this quarter since by now the public, with growing thousands of entirely responsible adult members of the community wearing all sorts of hair and face trims, *282 has come to its senses and does not see in such variations the seeds of violence and revolution.

Now we can return to the vital matters which overwhelm the Federal Judiciary.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

A word about cookies

We need a few to keep you signed in and the library working. The rest help us see which pages people use and where they get stuck. They stay off unless you say yes.