Girard College Trusteeship
138 A.2d 844, 391 Pa. 434, 1958 Pa. LEXIS 535 (1958)
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Rule of Law:
The judicial act of removing a public trustee and appointing private substitute trustees to administer a private charitable trust according to its racially restrictive terms does not constitute unconstitutional state action in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Facts:
- In 1831, Stephen Girard died, leaving a will that established and endowed Girard College, an institution for 'poor male white orphans.'
- The will appointed the 'Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Philadelphia' (the City of Philadelphia) as the trustee of the charitable trust.
- For many years, the Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, a state-created agency, administered Girard College in accordance with the will's provisions.
- William Ashe Foust and Robert Felder, two poor male Black orphans, applied for admission to Girard College.
- The Board of Directors of City Trusts denied their applications solely on the basis of their race, citing the explicit racial restriction in Girard's will.
Procedural Posture:
- William Ashe Foust and Robert Felder petitioned the Orphans’ Court of Philadelphia County (a trial-level court) to order their admission into Girard College.
- The Orphans' Court dismissed the petitions.
- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (the state's highest court) affirmed the Orphans' Court's decision, with Foust and Felder as appellants.
- The Supreme Court of the United States, on appeal, reversed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, holding that the Board of City Trusts was a state agency whose discriminatory action violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The U.S. Supreme Court remanded the cause for further proceedings.
- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court then vacated the Orphans' Court's original decrees and remanded the case to the Orphans' Court.
- On remand, the Orphans' Court entered new decrees removing the Board of City Trusts as trustee and appointing thirteen private citizens as substitute trustees.
- Foust, Felder, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the City of Philadelphia appealed these new decrees to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
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Issue:
Does a state court's action of removing a public trustee, who is constitutionally barred from enforcing a racial restriction, and appointing private substitute trustees to carry out the discriminatory terms of a private charitable trust violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Opinions:
Majority - Mr. Chief Justice Jones
No. A state court's action of substituting a private trustee for a public one to ensure the enforcement of a private trust's terms does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court's prior ruling only established that the Board of City Trusts, as a state agency, was incapable of constitutionally administering the racial restriction; it did not invalidate the restriction itself or mandate the integration of the private charity. A court's primary duty regarding a charitable trust is to effectuate the testator's intent, and a fundamental principle of trust law is that a trust will not fail for want of a trustee. When a trustee becomes incapable of performing its duties, the proper judicial remedy is to appoint a new, capable trustee. This case is distinguishable from Shelley v. Kraemer, where state courts were asked to enforce a private agreement that would deprive individuals of a constitutionally protected civil right to own property. Here, the applicants have no pre-existing constitutional right to be beneficiaries of Stephen Girard's private charity, and the court's action is merely an administrative one to preserve the trust, not an enforcement of discrimination that impinges upon a public right.
Dissenting - Mr. Justice Musmanno
Yes. The state court's action of substituting trustees is a transparent subterfuge to circumvent the Fourteenth Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court's mandate, and therefore constitutes unconstitutional state action. Girard College is not a private charity but a public institution, inextricably linked to the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania through decades of legislative enactments, municipal ordinances, and direct government management. The Supreme Court's ruling meant the institution itself could no longer discriminate, and the only proper proceeding on remand was to admit Foust and Felder. The Orphans' Court's action of removing the public trustee to perpetuate segregation is a manifest illegality that sacrifices Girard's primary intent—to create a publicly-administered college for poor orphans—in favor of a secondary racial restriction that is a product of a bygone era. No trustee, public or private, can legally administer this public institution in a manner that violates the Constitution.
Analysis:
This decision represents a significant, though ultimately temporary, victory for the proponents of private discrimination, creating a doctrinal loophole in the state action principle of the Fourteenth Amendment. By distinguishing between the court's 'administrative' act of substituting a trustee and the 'enforcement' action prohibited in Shelley v. Kraemer, the court allowed the judiciary to facilitate the continuation of segregation in a quasi-public institution. This holding narrowed the scope of what constitutes prohibitive state action, suggesting that as long as the court is acting to preserve the intent of a private trust, it is not unconstitutionally enforcing discrimination. This reasoning was highly controversial and would later be rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in subsequent litigation involving the same parties (Evans v. Newton), which held that the institution had taken on such a public character that it could not be segregated regardless of who the trustee was.
