Certiorari is dismissed where it appears, upon examination of
the merits on oral argument in light of an intervening state
statute and the intervening decision in
Runyon v. McCrary,
427 U. S. 160,
that the grant of certiorari was improvident.
Certiorari dismissed. Reported below: 511 F.2d 744.
PER CURIAM.
Certiorari was granted to consider the question presented:
whether, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, a
Mississippi public school board may terminate the employment of
teachers sending their children not to public schools, but to a
private racially segregated school. However, since the grant of
certiorari,
Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.
S. 160 (1976), held that 42 U.S.C. § 1981 prohibits
private, commercially operated, nonsectarian schools from denying
admission to prospective students because they are Negroes.
Moreover, a Mississippi statute, Miss.Code Ann. § 37-9-59 (Supp.
1976), enacted in 1974 after the school board action here
complained of, prohibits school boards
"from denying employment or reemployment to any person . . . for
the single reason that any eligible child of such person
Page 429 U. S. 166
does not attend the school system in which such [person] is
employed."
Though § 37-9-59 was cited in the record at the time of granting
the writ, examination of the merits on oral argument in light of
Runyon v. McCrary and § 379-59 satisfies us that the grant
was improvident. Accordingly, the writ of certiorari is dismissed
as improvidently granted.
Cf. Rice v. Sioux City Cemetery,
349 U. S. 70
(1955).
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, concurring in the result.
I join in the Court's disposition of this case. In doing so, I
emphasize that our decision to dismiss the writ of certiorari as
improvidently granted intimates no view on the question of when, if
ever, public school teachers -- or any comparable public employees
-- may be required, as a condition of their employment, to enroll
their children in any particular school or refrain from sending
them to a school which they, as parents, in their sole discretion,
consider desirable. Few familial decisions are as immune from
governmental interference as parents' choice of a school for their
children, so long as the school chosen otherwise meets the
educational standards imposed by the State.
See Pierce v.
Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510
(1925);
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.
S. 390 (1923);
Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.
S. 205 (1972).
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