Mr. Justice REED, with whom Mr. Justice BURTON and Mr. Justice MINTON join, dissenting.
In reliance upon the Due Process Clause of our Constitution, the Court strikes deep into the authority of New York to protect its local governmental institutions from influences of officials whose conduct does not meet the declared state standards for employment. This New York City Charter, § 903, adopted in 1936 to take effect in 1938, was designed to eliminate from public employment individuals who refused to answer legally authorized inquiries as to the 'official conduct of any officer or employee of the city * * * on the ground that his answer would tend to incriminate him'. Its provisions, as applicable to Professor Slochower and others, have been upheld by the Court of Appeals of New York under multipronged state grounds of attack in the instances where he and other city teachers of New York have sought to bar their removal from their positions.
The sole reliance of the Court for reversal of the New York Court of Appeals is that § 903, as here applied, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The Court of Appeals amended its remittitur to show that it held federal due process was not violated. 307 N.Y. 806, 121 N.E.2d 629. In view of the conclusions of the Court of Appeals we need deal only with that problem. The Court of Appeals has exclusive power to determine the reach of its own statute.
The Court finds it a denial of due process to discharge an employee merely because he relied upon the Fifth Amendment plea of self-incrimination to avoid answering questions which he would be otherwise required to answer. We assert the contrary-the city does have reasonable ground to require its employees either to give evidence regarding facts of official conduct within their knowledge or to give up the positions they hold. Petitioners never contended that error or inadvertence led them to refuse to answer. Their contention is set out in the margin below. Discharges under § 903 do not depend upon any conclusion as to the guilt of the employee of some crime that might be disclosed by his testimony or as to his guilt of perjury, if really there was no prosecution to fear. We disagree with the Court's assumption that § 903 as a practical matter takes the questions asked as confessed. Cities, like other employers, may reasonably conclude that a refusal to furnish appropriate information is enough to justify discharge. Legally authorized bodies have a right to demand that citizens furnish facts pertinent to official inquiries. The duty to respond may be refused for personal protection against prosecution only, but such avoidance of public duty to furnish information can properly be considered to stamp the employee as a person unfit to hold certain official positions. Such a conclusion is reinforced when the claimant for protection has the role of instructor to youth. The fact that the witness has a right to plead the privilege against self-incrimination protects him against prosecution but not against the loss of his job.
The Court may intend merely to hold that since the facts of Slochower's alleged Communist affiliations prior to 1941 were known to the Board before the federal claim, and since the inquiries of the Committee were asked for a purpose unrelated to his college functions, therefore it was a denial of due process to vacate his office. If so, its conclusion is likewise, we think, erroneous. We agree that this case is not like Garner v. Board of Public Works of City of Los Angeles, 341 U.S. 716, 71 S.Ct. 909, 95 L.Ed. 1317, an attempt to elicit information about professional qualifications. But § 903 is directed at the propriety of employing a man who refuses to give needed information to appropriate public bodies.
Consideration of the meaning of 'due process' under the Fourteenth Amendment supports our position that § 903 of the City Charter does not violate that concept. For this Court to hold that state action in the field of its unchallenged powers violates the due process of the Federal Constitution requires far more than mere disagreement with the legal conclusions of state courts. To require, as the Court does, that New York stay its hand in discharging a teacher whom the city deems unworthy to occupy a chair in its Brooklyn College, demands that this Court say, if it follows our prior cases, that the action of the Board in declaring Professor Slochower's position vacant was inconsistent with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. A denial of due process is 'a practice repugnant to the conscience of mankind.' Surely no such situation exists here.