Goss v. Lopez case brief

Goss v. Lopez case brief summary
419 U.S. 565 (1975)

CASE SYNOPSIS

Defendant school officials appealed from the judgment of a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio granting declaratory and injunctive relief upon ruling that they violated the procedural due process rights of plaintiff students under U.S. Constitutional Amendment XIV by suspending them for alleged wrongdoing without notice or an opportunity to be heard, pursuant to Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3313.66 (1972).

CASE FACTS
Ohio law provided for a free education and compulsory school attendance of youngsters. Although § 3313.66 gave certain procedural rights to those students facing expulsion, no such procedures were provided for students facing suspensions of up to 10 days in cases of misconduct. After each of them were suspended without a prior hearing, plaintiff students brought a class action seeking injunctive and declaratory relief. The district court determined that the statutory scheme violated the students' procedural due process rights and defendant school officials appealed directly to the Supreme Court.


DISCUSSION

• In affirming, the Court ruled that the students had protected liberty interests in a public education that could not be taken away by suspension without the minimal procedural safeguards of notice and an opportunity to be heard, flexibly applied to the given situation. 
• Students did not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door and the Fourteenth Amendment forbid such arbitrary deprivations of liberty as unilateral suspensions of up to 10 days without notice and hearing. 
• Rudimentary due process was required to ensure fairness in disciplinary truth-seeking determinations.

CONCLUSION
The judgment of the district court was affirmed.