# Lecil Hander v. San Jacinto Junior College, Etc.

> Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · September 12, 1975 · 519 F.2d 273

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9461922

## Case

- **Full name:** Lecil HANDER, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. SAN JACINTO JUNIOR COLLEGE Et Al., Etc., Defendants-Appellants
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
- **Decided:** September 12, 1975
- **Citations:** 519 F.2d 273; 1975 U.S. App. LEXIS 12774
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brown
- **Judges:** Brown, Gewin, Thornberry
- **Cited by:** 105 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Modified on other grounds by Lecil Hander v. San Jacinto Junior College, Etc., 522 F.2d 204 (1975).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9461922

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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”
- finding no immunity because state junior college could issue revenue bonds and levy annual ad valorem taxes

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9461922. Public record. Not legal advice.