Knight v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York

Knight v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on January 22, 1968, issued a per curiam (unsigned) order affirming without explanation a lower court’s ruling that had upheld as constitutional a New York state law requiring all instructors at public schools and at tax-exempt private schools to sign a loyalty oath. Unlike other cases in which the Supreme Court had invalidated loyalty oaths because they were not sufficiently clear in forbidding individuals from engaging in particular activities—e.g., Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967)—the court upheld the oath in Knight, finding that it was not too vague. This case therefore stands for the proposition that state laws may require faculty members in colleges and universities, as well as in K–12 schools, to sign affirmative loyalty oaths in support of the national and state constitutions in the fulfillment of their professional obligations, as long as the oaths neither place restrictions on political or philosophical expressions nor are impermissibly vague. The issue in Knight, which was whether the state law calling for the loyalty oath violated the constitutional rights of faculty members, remains of significance to this day.

In effect since 1934, a New York state law required faculty members in public schools and tax-exempt private schools, including colleges and universities, to sign an oath indicating that individuals would support the federal and state constitutions in the faithful execution of their professional duties. In October 1966, state officials realized that faculty members at Adelphi University, a nonprofit tax-exempt university in New York, had not signed the oath. When the administrators at Adelphi asked the faculty members to sign and return the oath, 27 of them declined to do so. Instead, the faculty members brought an action contesting the constitutional legitimacy of the state law. Specifically, the faculty members claimed that the law violated their rights under the First, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

In initiating their claims, the faculty members filed a motion for a provisional injunction known as an injunction pendente lite, which requested a temporary legal hold on the loyalty oath requirement until the litigation was resolved. Pursuant to a hearing regarding the motion, a three-judge panel in a federal district court in New York conducted a hearing to determine whether requiring the faculty members to sign the loyalty oath violated their constitutional rights.

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The faculty raised three main arguments in their motion. First, the faculty members claimed that obligating them to take an oath as to the performance of their professional duties violated their constitutional rights. In support of this position, the faculty relied on the Supreme Court’s analysis in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), in which the parents of students challenged a state requirement that their children were required to salute and pledge their allegiance to the American flag. In Barnette, the Supreme Court held that the students’ expulsion and the school’s threat of criminal juvenile penalties for failing to salute the flag and pledge allegiance were violations of the students’ First Amendment rights.

According to the faculty members at Adelphi, the requirement of the loyalty oath was similar to the saluting and pledging of allegiance to the flag. The three-judge panel disagreed on the grounds that the pledge in Barnette was far more elaborate than the oath that the faculty members were challenging. The judges noted that Barnette involved a challenge to the religious freedom of the children in Barnette, because they were Jehovah’s Witnesses whose religious beliefs prohibited expressions of reverence to images such as a flag. In Knight, the district court pointed out that because the oath neither compelled individuals to act against their religious beliefs nor threatened the faculty members with criminal sanctions as in Barnette, its precedent was inapplicable.

Second, the faculty argued that the statute was unconstitutionally vague, which was precisely the reason why the Supreme Court had struck down earlier loyalty oaths. The district court disagreed with this argument, too. Here the faculty members relied on cases that invalidated negative loyalty oaths because the oaths required individuals to refrain from acts and associational memberships and because the individuals were subject to criminal penalties if they disobeyed. In those cases, the court observed that the laws were not precise enough to enable ordinary persons to decide what acts and associational memberships they had to avoid. Consequently, the court noted, the earlier laws had been struck down for vagueness. By contrast, the court held that Knight presented a loyalty oath that required only affirmative support for the national and state constitutions in the fulfillment of faculty members’ professional obligations. Insofar as the language in the disputed statute was clear and reasonable, the court ruled that the law was not unconstitutionally vague.

Third, the faculty asserted a public policy argument that educators needed a work environment that was free from outside interferences. In response, the court was of the opinion that because the loyalty oath did not restrict the political or philosophical expressions of the faculty members, it did not interfere with their work.

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In sum, taking the three arguments that the faculty presented, the court denied their motion for an injunction. Dissatisfied with the outcome, the faculty members sought further review. On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed the judgment of the three-judge panel in a brief one-sentence order that simply stated, “The motion to affirm is granted and the judgment is affirmed.”