Grams v. Melrose-Mindoro Joint School District No. 1

The question is whether a teacher’s lack of legal authority to teach courses she had been teaching and was assigned to teach was a valid ground for discharge, notwithstanding that the employing school board was aware of her credentials before and after hiring her.

Phyllis Grams, the plaintiff-appellant, taught school for the defendant-respondent school district and a predecessor district for eight years beginning in the Fall of 1964.1 In June, 1972 the school board discharged her on the ground she was not legally authorized to teach the courses which she had been teaching and to which she was…