## Facts

- New Hampshire enacted a public-sector collective-bargaining statute granting bargaining rights to state employees generally and to nonacademic employees in the state university system.
- The statute expressly excluded academic employees (faculty) in the state university system from those bargaining rights.
- The University of New Hampshire AAUP chapter sought recognition from the State Personnel Commission as the exclusive bargaining representative for UNH faculty.
- State officials, including the Commission chair, refused recognition because faculty were excluded from the statute.
- The AAUP chapter sued in federal court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging violations of the First Amendment (association and expression) and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

## Issues

1. Whether excluding state-university faculty from a statutory collective-bargaining regime violates the First Amendment rights of faculty and their representative organization.
2. Whether treating nonacademic university employees as eligible for statutory bargaining rights while excluding faculty violates the Equal Protection Clause.

## Decision

- The court entered judgment for the defendants and dismissed the complaint.
- The court held the exclusion did not violate the First Amendment because the statute did not prohibit organizing or advocacy; it only withheld a state-created bargaining framework.
- The court held the exclusion did not violate equal protection, applying rational-basis review and concluding the legislature could treat faculty differently from nonacademic employees.

## Legal Principles

- The First Amendment protects public employees’ rights to associate and speak, but it does not require a state to create or extend a statutory system of exclusive recognition and mandatory collective bargaining.
- Withholding a statutory benefit (formal collective-bargaining machinery) is not a First Amendment violation absent direct suppression or punishment of protected association or expression.
- Occupational classifications in public-employment statutes generally receive rational-basis review unless they target a suspect class or burden a fundamental right.
- A state may exclude faculty from a bargaining statute if the classification is rationally related to legitimate governmental interests, including concerns tied to university governance, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy.

## Conclusion

The court upheld New Hampshire’s decision to deny statutory collective-bargaining rights to state-university faculty while granting such rights to other public employees, concluding the exclusion neither infringed First Amendment associational freedoms nor denied equal protection under rational-basis review.


Univ. of N.H. Chapter of Am. Ass'n of Univ. Professors v. Haselton, 397 F. Supp. 107 (D.N.H. 1975)