Central State Univ. v. American Assn. of Univ. Professors, Central State Univ. Chapter, 526 U.S. 124, 5 (1999) (per curiam)

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128

CENTRAL STATE UNIV. v. AMERICAN ASSN. OF UNIV. PROFESSORS, CENTRAL STATE UNIV. CHAPTER

Per Curiam

pect lines . . . cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose." Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 319-321 (1993) (citations omitted); FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U. S. 307, 313-314 (1993); Nordlinger v. Hahn, 505 U. S. 1, 11 (1992). The legislative classification created by § 3345.45 passes this test. One of the statute's objectives was to increase the time spent by faculty in the classroom; the imposition of a faculty workload policy not subject to collective bargaining was an entirely rational step to accomplish this objective. The legislature could quite reasonably have concluded that the policy animating the law would have been undercut and likely varied if it were subject to collective bargaining. The State, in effect, decided that the attainment of this goal was more important than the system of collective bargaining that had previously included university professors. See Vance v. Bradley, 440 U. S. 93 (1979) (upholding a similar enactment of Congress providing that federal employees covered by the Foreign Service retirement system, but not those covered by the Civil Service retirement system, would be required to retire at age 60).

The fact that the record before the Ohio courts did not show that collective bargaining in the past had lead to the decline in classroom time for faculty does not detract from the rationality of the legislative decision. See Heller, supra, at 320 ("A State . . . has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of a statutory classification"). The legislature wanted a uniform workload policy to be in place by a certain date. It could properly conclude that collective bargaining about that policy in the future would interfere with the attainment of this end. Under our precedent, this is sufficient to sustain the exclusion of university professors from the otherwise general collective-bargaining scheme for public employees.

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