Morison v. The Willingboro Bd. of Education.
Plaintiff appealed the trial court's order upholding defendant's efforts to terminate plaintiff's teaching license. Plaintiff was charged by the school district with conduct unbecoming. The district sought to terminate plaintiff's employment and brought tenure charges before an arbitrator. Although the arbitrator found that plaintiff had engaged in unbecoming conduct, she imposed a lesser sanction of a one-year suspension.
Although neither party appealed the arbitrator's decision, defendant chose to pursue the revocation of plaintiff's teaching license based upon the same unbecoming conduct. Plaintiff filed suit to challenge defendant's efforts to revoke his teaching license, arguing that defendants, despite not being parties to the tenure arbitration, had no authority to pursue revocation of his license after the arbitrator suspended plaintiff's employment for one year. Plaintiff argued that defendant was precluded from pursuing revocation of his license under a theory of "industrial double jeopardy," and thus the revocation proceedings violated his civil and constitutional rights.
The trial court rejected plaintiff's arguments, ruling that state regulators were not precluded by the arbitration decision from seeking to suspend or revoke plaintiff's teaching license.