## Facts

- A Wisconsin public school board and the teachers’ union reached an impasse while negotiating a new collective-bargaining agreement in early 1974.
- The teachers went on strike, despite state law prohibiting public school teacher strikes at the time.
- The superintendent repeatedly directed the teachers to return to work and warned that the work stoppage was unlawful.
- When the teachers did not return, the school board held disciplinary proceedings; the teachers, through counsel, sought group treatment and argued the board could not be impartial because it had participated in the labor dispute.
- After the proceedings, the board voted to terminate the striking teachers under its statutory authority to employ and dismiss district teachers.
- The teachers sued, claiming the board’s combined role in bargaining and discipline denied due process because the board was not an impartial decisionmaker.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause required that the decision to dismiss teachers for an unlawful strike be made or reviewed by a decisionmaker other than the school board that participated in the underlying labor dispute.
2. Whether the school board’s prior involvement in negotiations and institutional responsibility for district policy created a constitutionally intolerable risk of bias in the dismissal proceedings.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the state supreme court and remanded.
- The Court held that due process did not guarantee the teachers a dismissal decision, or a merits review, by a body other than the school board.
- The Court found no record support for a disqualifying personal or official stake by board members in the dismissal outcome.
- The Court concluded that prior participation in collective bargaining and familiarity with the dispute, acquired through statutory duties, did not by itself disqualify the board.
- The Court rejected the requirement of a de novo judicial hearing on all issues as a constitutional matter in these circumstances.

## Legal Principles

- Due process requires a fair tribunal, but an administrative decisionmaker is not automatically disqualified merely because it previously participated in related stages of a dispute as part of its statutory role.
- “Mere familiarity with the facts” gained through performance of official duties does not, without more, establish unconstitutional bias.
- A constitutionally unacceptable risk of bias generally requires a particularized showing of a personal stake, animus, or other disqualifying interest beyond the decisionmaker’s institutional role.
- Where state law vests a politically accountable body with authority to employ and dismiss public employees, due process does not necessarily require transferring that decision to a separate tribunal solely because the dispute arose from contentious labor negotiations.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require a neutral decisionmaker separate from the school board to decide or re-decide the dismissal of teachers who admittedly engaged in an unlawful strike, absent a specific showing that the board members were biased or had a disqualifying stake in the outcome.


Hortonville Joint Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Hortonville Educ. Ass’n, 426 U.S. 482 (1976)