U.S. Supreme CourtLoving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)Loving v. VirginiaNo. 395Argued April 10, 1967Decided June 12, 1967388 U.S. 1APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIASyllabusVirginia's statutory scheme to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications held to violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp.388 U. S. 4-12.206 Va. 924, 147 S.E.2d 78, reversed.Page 388 U. S. 2MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. [Footnote 1] For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit CourtPage 388 U. S. 3of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 199, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia anti-miscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court.The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation statutes and, afterPage 388 U. S. 4modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. [Footnote 2] The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966, 385 U.S. 986.The two statutes under which appellants were convicted and sentenced are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriages. The Lovings were convicted of violating 258 of the Virginia Code:"Leaving State to evade law.-- If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage."Section 259, which defines the penalty for miscegenation, provides:"Punishment for marriage.-- If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years."Other central provisions in the Virginia statutory scheme are 20-57, which automatically voids all marriages between "a white person and a colored person" without any judicial proceeding, [Footnote 3] and 20-54 and 1-14 which,Page 388 U. S. 5respectively, define "white persons" and "colored persons and Indians" for purposes of the statutory prohibitions. [Footnote 4] The Lovings have never disputed in the course of this litigation that Mrs. Loving is a "colored person" or that Mr. Loving is a "white person" within the meanings given those terms by the Virginia statutes.Page 388 U. S. 6Virginia is now one of 16 States which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications. [Footnote 5] Penalties for miscegenation arose as an incident to slavery, and have been common in Virginia since the colonial period. [Footnote 6] The present statutory scheme dates from the adoption of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, passed during the period of extreme nativism which followed the end of the First World War. The central features of this Act, and current Virginia law, are the absolute prohibition of a "white person" marrying other than another "white person," [Footnote 7] a prohibition against issuing marriage licenses until the issuing official is satisfied thatPage 388 U. S. 7the applicants' statements as to their race are correct, [Footnote 8] certificates of "racial composition" to be kept by both local and state registrars, [Footnote 9] and the carrying forward of earlier prohibitions against racial intermarriage. [Footnote 10]IIn upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1965 decision inNaim v. Naim,197 Va. 80, 87 S.E.2d 749, as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. InNaim,the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy.Id.at 90, 87 S.E.2d at 756. The court also reasoned that marriage has traditionally been subject to state regulation without federal intervention, and, consequently, the regulation of marriage should be left to exclusive state control by the Tenth Amendment.While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State's police power,Maynard v. Hill,125 U. S. 190(1888), the State does not contend in its argument before this Court that its powers to regulate marriage are unlimited notwithstanding the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor could it do so in light ofMeyer v. Nebraska,262 U. S. 390(1923), andSkinner v. Oklahoma,316 U. S. 535(1942). Instead, the State argues that the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as illuminated by the statements of the Framers, is only that state penal laws containing an interracial elementPage 388 U. S. 8as part of the definition of the offense must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race. The second argument advanced by the State assumes the validity of its equal application theory. The argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of constitutionality would thus become whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages. On this question, the State argues, the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt and, consequently, this Court should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages.Because we reject the notion that the mere "equal application" of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's proscription of all invidious racial discriminations, we do not accept the State's contention that these statutes should be upheld if there is any possible basis for concluding that they serve a rational purpose. The mere fact of equal application does not mean that our analysis of these statutes should follow the approach we have taken in cases involving no racial discrimination where the Equal Protection Clause has been arrayed against a statute discriminating between the kinds of advertising which may be displayed on trucks in New York City,Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York,336 U. S. 106(1949), or an exemption in Ohio'sad valoremtax for merchandise owned by a nonresident in a storage warehouse,Allied Stores of Ohio,Page 388 U. S. 9Inc. v. Bowers,358 U. S. 522(1959). In these cases, involving distinctions not drawn according to race, the Court has merely asked whether there is any rational foundation for the discriminations, and has deferred to the wisdom of the state legislatures. In the case at bar, however, we deal with statutes containing racial classifications, and the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race.The State argues that statements in the Thirty-ninth Congress about the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment indicate that the Framers did not intend the Amendment to make unconstitutional state miscegenation laws. Many of the statements alluded to by the State concern the debates over the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which President Johnson vetoed, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, enacted over his veto. While these statements have some relevance to the intention of Congress in submitting the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be understood that they pertained to the passage of specific statutes, and not to the broader, organic purpose of a constitutional amendment. As for the various statements directly concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, we have said in connection with a related problem that, although these historical sources "cast some light" they are not sufficient to resolve the problem;"[a]t best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States.' Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments, and wished them to have the most limited effect."Brown v. Board of Education,347 U. S. 483,347 U. S. 489(1954).See alsoStrauderPage 388 U. S. 10v. West Virginia,100 U. S. 303,100 U. S. 310(1880). We have rejected the proposition that the debates in the Thirty-ninth Congress or in the state legislatures which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment supported the theory advanced by the State, that the requirement of equal protection of the laws is satisfied by penal laws defining offenses based on racial classifications so long as white and Negro participants in the offense were similarly punished.McLaughlin v. Florida,379 U. S. 184(1964).The State finds support for its "equal application" theory in the decision of the Court inPace v. Alabama,106 U. S. 583(1883). In that case, the Court upheld a conviction under an Alabama statute forbidding adultery or fornication between a white person and a Negro which imposed a greater penalty than that of a statute proscribing similar conduct by members of the same race. The Court reasoned that the statute could not be said to discriminate against Negroes because the punishment for each participant in the offense was the same. However, as recently as the 1964 Term, in rejecting the reasoning of that case, we stated "Pacerepresents a limited view of the Equal Protection Clause which has not withstood analysis in the subsequent decisions of this Court."McLaughlin v. Florida, supra,at379 U. S. 188. As we there demonstrated, the Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.Slaughter-House Cases,16 Wall. 36,83 U. S. 71(1873);Strauder v. West Virginia,100 U. S. 303,100 U. S. 307-308 (1880);Ex parte Virginia,100 U. S. 339,100 U. S. 334-335 (1880);Shelley v. Kraemer,334 U. S. 1(1948);Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority,365 U. S. 715(1961).Page 388 U. S. 11There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."Hirabayashi v. United States,320 U. S. 81,320 U. S. 100(1943). At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny,"Korematsu v. United States,323 U. S. 214,323 U. S. 216(1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they"cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense."McLaughlin v. Florida, supra,at379 U. S. 198(STEWART, J., joined by DOUGLAS, J., concurring).There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. [Footnote 11] We have consistently deniedPage 388 U. S. 12the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.IIThese statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.Skinner v. Oklahoma,316 U. S. 535,316 U. S. 541(1942).See also Maynard v. Hill,125 U. S. 190(1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.These convictions must be reversed.It is so ordered.Page 388 U. S. 13[Footnote 1]Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."[Footnote 2]206 Va. 924, 147 S.E.2d 78 (1966).[Footnote 3]Section 257 of the Virginia Code provides:"Marriages void without decree.-- All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process."Va.Code Ann. 20-57 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 4]Section 20-54 of the Virginia Code provides:"Intermarriage prohibited; meaning of term 'white persons.'-- It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this chapter, the term 'white person' shall apply only to such person as has no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this chapter."Va.Code Ann. 20-54 (1960 Repl. Vol.).The exception for persons with less than one-sixteenth "of the blood of the American Indian" is apparently accounted for, in the words of a tract issued by the Registrar of the State Bureau of Vital Statistics, by "the desire of all to recognize as an integral and honored part of the white race the descendants of John Rolfe and Pocathontas. . . ." Plecker, The New Family and Race Improvement, 17 Va.Health Bull., Extra No. 12, at 25-26 (New Family Series No. 5, 1925), cited in Wadlington, TheLovingCase: Virginia's Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective, 52 Va.L.Rev. 1189, 1202, n. 93 (1966).Section 1-14 of the Virginia Code provides:"Colored persons and Indians defined.-- Every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person, and every person not a colored person having one fourth or more of American Indian blood shall be deemed an American Indian; except that members of Indian tribes existing in this Commonwealth having one fourth or more of Indian blood and less than one sixteenth of Negro blood shall be deemed tribal Indians."Va.Code Ann. 1-14 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 5]After the initiation of this litigation, Maryland repealed its prohibitions against interracial marriage, Md.Laws 1967, c. 6, leaving Virginia and 15 other States with statutes outlawing interracial marriage: Alabama, Ala.Const., Art. 4, 102, Ala.Code, Tit. 14, 360 (1958); Arkansas, Ark.Stat.Ann. 55-104 (1947); Delaware, Del.Code Ann., Tit. 13, 101 (1953); Florida, Fla.Const., Art. 16, 24, Fla.Stat. 741.11 (1965); Georgia, Ga.Code Ann. 53-106 (1961); Kentucky, Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. 402.020 (Supp. 1966); Louisiana, La.Rev.Stat. 14:79 (1950); Mississippi, Miss.Const., Art. 14, 263, Miss.Code Ann. 459 (1956); Missouri, Mo.Rev.Stat. 451.020 (Supp. 1966); North Carolina, N.C.Const., Art. XIV, 8, N.C.Gen.Stat. 14-181 (1953); Oklahoma, Okla.Stat., Tit. 43, 12 (Supp. 1965); South Carolina, S.C.Const., Art. 3, 33, S.C.Code Ann. 20-7 (1962); Tennessee, Tenn.Const., Art. 11, 14, Tenn.Code Ann. 36-402 (1955); Texas, Tex.Pen.Code, Art. 492 (1952); West Virginia, W.Va.Code Ann. 4697 (1961).Over the past 15 years, 14 States have repealed laws outlawing interracial marriages: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.The first state court to recognize that miscegenation statutes violate the Equal Protection Clause was the Supreme Court of California.Perez v. Sharp,32 Cal.2d 711, 198 P.2d 17 (1948).[Footnote 6]For a historical discussion of Virginia's miscegenation statutes,seeWadlington,supra,n4.[Footnote 7]Va.Code Ann. 20-54 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 8]Va.Code Ann. 20-53 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 9]Va.Code Ann. 20-50 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 10]Va.Code Ann. 254 (1960 Repl. Vol.).[Footnote 11]Appellants point out that the State's concern in these statutes, as expressed in the words of the 1924 Act's title, "An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity," extends only to the integrity of the white race. While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference. Appellants contend that this distinction renders Virginia's miscegenation statutes arbitrary and unreasonable even assuming the constitutional validity of an official purpose to preserve "racial integrity." We need not reach this contention, because we find the racial classifications in these statutes repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, even assuming an even-handed state purpose to protect the "integrity" of all races.MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring.I have previously expressed the belief that "it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor."McLaughlin v. Florida,379 U. S. 184,379 U. S. 198(concurring opinion). Because I adhere to that belief, I concur in the judgment of the Court.Disclaimer:Official Supreme Court case law is only found in the print version of the United States Reports. Justia case law is provided for general informational purposes only, and may not reflect current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. We make no warranties or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained on this site or information linked to from this site. Please check official sources.

G.R. No. 85279 July 28, 1989SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM EMPLOYEES ASSOCIATION (SSSEA), DIONISION T. BAYLON, RAMON MODESTO, JUANITO MADURA, REUBEN ZAMORA, VIRGILIO DE ALDAY, SERGIO ARANETA, PLACIDO AGUSTIN, VIRGILIO MAGPAYO,petitioner,vs.THE COURT OF APPEALS, SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM (SSS), HON. CEZAR C. PERALEJO, RTC, BRANCH 98, QUEZON CITY,respondents.Vicente T. Ocampo & Associates for petitioners.CORTES,J:Primarily, the issue raised in this petition is whether or not the Regional Trial Court can enjoin the Social Security System Employees Association (SSSEA) from striking and order the striking employees to return to work. Collaterally, it is whether or not employees of the Social Security System (SSS) have the right to strike.The antecedents are as follows:On June 11, 1987, the SSS filed with the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City a complaint for damages with a prayer for a writ of preliminary injunction against petitioners, alleging that on June 9, 1987, the officers and members of SSSEA staged an illegal strike and baricaded the entrances to the SSS Building, preventing non-striking employees from reporting for work and SSS members from transacting business with the SSS; that the strike was reported to the Public Sector Labor - Management Council, which ordered the strikers to return to work; that the strikers refused to return to work; and that the SSS suffered damages as a result of the strike. The complaint prayed that a writ of preliminary injunction be issued to enjoin the strike and that the strikers be ordered to return to work; that the defendants (petitioners herein) be ordered to pay damages; and that the strike be declared illegal.It appears that the SSSEA went on strike after the SSS failed to act on the union's demands, which included: implementation of the provisions of the old SSS-SSSEA collective bargaining agreement (CBA) on check-off of union dues; payment of accrued overtime pay, night differential pay and holiday pay; conversion of temporary or contractual employees with six (6) months or more of service into regular and permanent employees and their entitlement to the same salaries, allowances and benefits given to other regular employees of the SSS; and payment of the children's allowance of P30.00, and after the SSS deducted certain amounts from the salaries of the employees and allegedly committed acts of discrimination and unfair labor practices [Rollo, pp. 21-241].The courta quo, on June 11, 1987, issued a temporary restraining order pending resolution of the application for a writ of preliminary injunction [Rollo, p. 71.] In the meantime, petitioners filed a motion to dismiss alleging the trial court's lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter [Rollo, pp. 72-82.] To this motion, the SSS filed an opposition, reiterating its prayer for the issuance of a writ of injunction [Rollo, pp. 209-222]. On July 22,1987, in a four-page order, the court a quo denied the motion to dismiss and converted the restraining order into an injunction upon posting of a bond, after finding that the strike was illegal [Rollo, pp. 83- 86]. As petitioners' motion for the reconsideration of the aforesaid order was also denied on August 14, 1988 [Rollo, p. 94], petitioners filed a petition forcertiorariand prohibition with preliminary injunction before this Court. Their petition was docketed as G.R. No. 79577. In a resolution dated October 21, 1987, the Court, through the Third Division, resolved to refer the case to the Court of Appeals. Petitioners filed a motion for reconsideration thereof, but during its pendency the Court of Appeals on March 9,1988 promulgated its decision on the referred case [Rollo, pp. 130-137]. Petitioners moved to recall the Court of Appeals' decision. In the meantime, the Court on June 29,1988 denied the motion for reconsideration in G.R. No. 97577 for being moot and academic. Petitioners' motion to recall the decision of the Court of Appeals was also denied in view of this Court's denial of the motion for reconsideration [Rollo, pp. 141- 143]. Hence, the instant petition to review the decision of the Court of Appeals [Rollo, pp. 12-37].Upon motion of the SSS on February 6,1989, the Court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the petitioners from staging another strike or from pursuing the notice of strike they filed with the Department of Labor and Employment on January 25, 1989 and to maintain thestatus quo[Rollo, pp. 151-152].The Court, taking the comment as answer, and noting the reply and supplemental reply filed by petitioners, considered the issues joined and the case submitted for decision.The position of the petitioners is that the Regional Trial Court had no jurisdiction to hear the case initiated by the SSS and to issue the restraining order and the writ of preliminary injunction, as jurisdiction lay with the Department of Labor and Employment or the National Labor Relations Commission, since the case involves a labor dispute.On the other hand, the SSS advances the contrary view, on the ground that the employees of the SSS are covered by civil service laws and rules and regulations, not the Labor Code, therefore they do not have the right to strike. Since neither the DOLE nor the NLRC has jurisdiction over the dispute, the Regional Trial Court may enjoin the employees from striking.In dismissing the petition for certiorari and prohibition with preliminary injunction filed by petitioners, the Court of Appeals held that since the employees of the SSS, are government employees, they are not allowed to strike, and may be enjoined by the Regional Trial Court, which had jurisdiction over the SSS' complaint for damages, from continuing with their strike.Thus, the sequential questions to be resolved by the Court in deciding whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Regional Trial Court did not act without or in excess of jurisdiction when it took cognizance of the case and enjoined the strike are as follows:1. Do the employees of the SSS have the right to strike?2. Does the Regional Trial Court have jurisdiction to hear the case initiated by the SSS and to enjoin the strikers from continuing with the strike and to order them to return to work?These shall be discussed and resolvedseriatimIThe 1987 Constitution, in the Article on Social Justice and Human Rights, provides that the State "shall guarantee the rights of all workers to self-organization, collective bargaining and negotiations, and peaceful concerted activities, including the right to strike in accordance with law" [Art. XIII, Sec. 31].By itself, this provision would seem to recognize the right of all workers and employees, including those in the public sector, to strike. But the Constitution itself fails to expressly confirm this impression, for in the Sub-Article on the Civil Service Commission, it provides, after defining the scope of the civil service as "all branches, subdivisions, instrumentalities, and agencies of the Government, including government-owned or controlled corporations with original charters," that "[t]he right to self-organization shall not be denied to government employees" [Art. IX(B), Sec. 2(l) and (50)]. Parenthetically, the Bill of Rights also provides that "[tlhe right of the people, including those employed in the public and private sectors, to form unions, associations, or societies for purposes not contrary to law shall not abridged" [Art. III, Sec. 8]. Thus, while there is no question that the Constitution recognizes the right of government employees to organize, it is silent as to whether such recognition also includes the right to strike.Resort to the intent of the framers of the organic law becomes helpful in understanding the meaning of these provisions. A reading of the proceedings of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution would show that in recognizing the right of government employees to organize, the commissioners intended to limit the right to the formation of unions or associations only, without including the right to strike.Thus, Commissioner Eulogio R. Lerum, one of the sponsors of the provision that "[tlhe right to self-organization shall not be denied to government employees" [Art. IX(B), Sec. 2(5)], in answer to the apprehensions expressed by Commissioner Ambrosio B. Padilla, Vice-President of the Commission, explained:MR. LERUM. I think what I will try to say will not take that long. When we proposed this amendment providing for self-organization of government employees, it does not mean that because they have the right to organize, they also have the right to strike. That is a different matter. We are only talking about organizing, uniting as a union. With regard to the right to strike, everyone will remember that in the Bill of Rights, there is a provision that the right to form associations or societies whose purpose is not contrary to law shall not be abridged. Now then, if the purpose of the state is to prohibit the strikes coming from employees exercising government functions, that could be done because the moment that is prohibited, then the union which will go on strike will be an illegal union. And that provision is carried in Republic Act 875. In Republic Act 875, workers, including those from the government-owned and controlled, are allowed to organize but they are prohibited from striking. So, the fear of our honorable Vice- President is unfounded. It does not mean that because we approve this resolution, it carries with it the right to strike. That is a different matter. As a matter of fact, that subject is now being discussed in the Committee on Social Justice because we are trying to find a solution to this problem. We know that this problem exist; that the moment we allow anybody in the government to strike, then what will happen if the members of the Armed Forces will go on strike? What will happen to those people trying to protect us? So that is a matter of discussion in the Committee on Social Justice. But, I repeat, the right to form an organization does not carry with it the right to strike. [Record of the Constitutional Commission, vol. 1, p. 569].It will be recalled that the Industrial Peace Act (R.A. No. 875), which was repealed by the Labor Code (P.D. 442) in 1974, expressly banned strikes by employees in the Government, including instrumentalities exercising governmental functions, but excluding entities entrusted with proprietary functions:.Sec. 11.Prohibition Against Strikes in the Government. The terms and conditions of employment in the Government, including any political subdivision or instrumentality thereof, are governed by law and it is declared to be the policy of this Act that employees therein shall not strike for the purpose of securing changes or modification in their terms and conditions of employment. Such employees may belong to any labor organization which does not impose the obligation to strike or to join in strike:Provided, however, That this section shall apply only to employees employed in governmental functions and not those employed in proprietary functions of the Government including but not limited to governmental corporations.No similar provision is found in the Labor Code, although at one time it recognized the right of employees of government corporations established under the Corporation Code to organize and bargain collectively and those in the civil service to "form organizations for purposes not contrary to law" [Art. 244, before its amendment by B.P. Blg. 70 in 1980], in the same breath it provided that "[t]he terms and conditions of employment of all government employees, including employees of government owned and controlled corporations, shall be governed by the Civil Service Law, rules and regulations" [now Art. 276]. Understandably, the Labor Code is silent as to whether or not government employees may strike, for such are excluded from its coverage [Ibid]. But then the Civil Service Decree [P.D. No. 807], is equally silent on the matter.On June 1, 1987, to implement the constitutional guarantee of the right of government employees to organize, the President issued E.O. No. 180 which provides guidelines for the exercise of the right to organize of government employees. In Section 14 thereof, it is provided that "[t]he Civil Service law and rules governing concerted activities and strikes in the government service shall be observed, subject to any legislation that may be enacted by Congress." The President was apparently referring to Memorandum Circular No. 6, s. 1987 of the Civil Service Commission under date April 21, 1987 which, "prior to the enactment by Congress of applicable laws concerning strike by government employees ... enjoins under pain of administrative sanctions, all government officers and employees from staging strikes, demonstrations, mass leaves, walk-outs and other forms of mass action which will result in temporary stoppage or disruption of public service." The air was thus cleared of the confusion. At present, in the absence of any legislation allowing government employees to strike, recognizing their right to do so, or regulating the exercise of the right, they are prohibited from striking, by express provision of Memorandum Circular No. 6 and as implied in E.O. No. 180. [At this juncture, it must be stated that the validity of Memorandum Circular No. 6 is not at issue].But are employees of the SSS covered by the prohibition against strikes?The Court is of the considered view that they are. Considering that under the 1987 Constitution "[t]he civil service embraces all branches, subdivisions, instrumentalities, and agencies of the Government, including government-owned or controlled corporations with original charters" [Art. IX(B), Sec. .2(l) see also Sec. 1 of E.O. No. 180 where the employees in the civil service are denominated as "government employees"] and that the SSS is one such government-controlled corporation with an original charter, having been created under R.A. No. 1161, its employees are part of the civil service [NASECO v. NLRC, G.R. Nos. 69870 & 70295, November 24,1988] and are covered by the Civil Service Commission's memorandum prohibiting strikes. This being the case, the strike staged by the employees of the SSS was illegal.The statement of the Court inAlliance of Government Workers v. Minister of Labor and Employment[G.R. No. 60403, August 3, 1:983, 124 SCRA 11 is relevant as it furnishes the rationale for distinguishing between workers in the private sector and government employees with regard to the right to strike:The general rule in the past and up to the present is that 'the terms and conditions of employment in the Government, including any political subdivision or instrumentality thereof are governed by law" (Section 11, the Industrial Peace Act, R.A. No. 875, as amended and Article 277, the Labor Code, P.D. No. 442, as amended).Since the terms and conditions of government employment are fixed by law, government workers cannot use the same weapons employed by workers in the private sector to secure concessions from their employers.The principle behind labor unionism in private industry is that industrial peace cannot be secured through compulsion by law. Relations between private employers and their employees rest on an essentially voluntary basis. Subject to the minimum requirements of wage laws and other labor and welfare legislation, the terms and conditions of employment in the unionized private sector are settled through the process of collective bargaining. In government employment, however, it is the legislature and, where properly given delegated power, the administrative heads of government which fix the terms and conditions of employment. And this is effected through statutes or administrative circulars, rules, and regulations, not through collective bargaining agreements. [At p. 13; Emphasis supplied].Apropos is the observation of the Acting Commissioner of Civil Service, in his position paper submitted to the 1971 Constitutional Convention, and quoted with approval by the Court inAlliance, to wit:It is the stand, therefore, of this Commission that by reason of the nature of the public employer and the peculiar character of the public service, it must necessarily regard the right to strike given to unions in private industry as not applying to public employees and civil service employees. It has been stated that the Government, in contrast to the private employer, protects the interest of all people in the public service, and that accordingly, such conflicting interests as are present in private labor relations could not exist in the relations between government and those whom they employ. [At pp. 16-17; also quoted in National Housing Corporation v. Juco, G.R. No. 64313, January 17,1985,134 SCRA 172,178-179].E.O. No. 180, which provides guidelines for the exercise of the right to organize of government employees, while clinging to the same philosophy, has, however, relaxed the rule to allow negotiation where the terms and conditions of employment involved are not among those fixed by law. Thus:.SECTION 13. Terms and conditions of employment or improvements thereof, except those that are fixed by law, may be the subject of negotiations between duly recognized employees' organizations and appropriate government authorities.The same executive order has also provided for the general mechanism for the settlement of labor disputes in the public sector to wit:.SECTION 16. The Civil Service and labor laws and procedures, whenever applicable, shall be followed in the resolution of complaints, grievances and cases involving government employees. In case any dispute remains unresolved after exhausting all the available remedies under existing laws and procedures, the parties may jointly refer the dispute to the [Public Sector Labor- Management] Council for appropriate action.Government employees may, therefore, through their unions or associations, either petition the Congress for the betterment of the terms and conditions of employment which are within the ambit of legislation or negotiate with the appropriate government agencies for the improvement of those which are not fixed by law. If there be any unresolved grievances, the dispute may be referred to the Public Sector Labor - Management Council for appropriate action. But employees in the civil service may not resort to strikes, walk-outs and other temporary work stoppages, like workers in the private sector, to pressure the Govemment to accede to their demands. As now provided under Sec. 4, Rule III of the Rules and Regulations to Govern the Exercise of the Right of Government- Employees to Self- Organization, which took effect after the instant dispute arose, "[t]he terms and conditions of employment in the government, including any political subdivision or instrumentality thereof and government- owned and controlled corporations with original charters are governed by law and employees therein shall not strike for the purpose of securing changes thereof."IIThe strike staged by the employees of the SSS belonging to petitioner union being prohibited by law, an injunction may be issued to restrain it.It is futile for the petitioners to assert that the subject labor dispute falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRC and, hence, the Regional Trial Court had no jurisdiction to issue a writ of injunction enjoining the continuance of the strike. The Labor Code itself provides that terms and conditions of employment of government employees shall be governed by the Civil Service Law, rules and regulations [Art. 276]. More importantly, E.O. No. 180 vests the Public Sector Labor - Management Council with jurisdiction over unresolved labor disputes involving government employees [Sec. 16]. Clearly, the NLRC has no jurisdiction over the dispute.This being the case, the Regional Trial Court was not precluded, in the exercise of its general jurisdiction under B.P. Blg. 129, as amended, from assuming jurisdiction over the SSS's complaint for damages and issuing the injunctive writ prayed for therein. Unlike the NLRC, the Public Sector Labor - Management Council has not been granted by law authority to issue writs of injunction in labor disputes within its jurisdiction. Thus, since it is the Council, and not the NLRC, that has jurisdiction over the instant labor dispute, resort to the general courts of law for the issuance of a writ of injunction to enjoin the strike is appropriate.Neither could the courta quobe accused of imprudence or overzealousness, for in fact it had proceeded with caution. Thus, after issuing a writ of injunction enjoining the continuance of the strike to prevent any further disruption of public service, the respondent judge, in the same order, admonished the parties to refer the unresolved controversies emanating from their employer- employee relationship to the Public Sector Labor - Management Council for appropriate action [Rollo, p. 86].IIIIn their "Petition/Application for Preliminary and Mandatory Injunction," and reiterated in their reply and supplemental reply, petitioners allege that the SSS unlawfully withheld bonuses and benefits due the individual petitioners and they pray that the Court issue a writ of preliminary prohibitive and mandatory injunction to restrain the SSS and its agents from withholding payment thereof and to compel the SSS to pay them. In their supplemental reply, petitioners annexed an order of the Civil Service Commission, dated May 5, 1989, which ruled that the officers of the SSSEA who are not preventively suspended and who are reporting for work pending the resolution of the administrative cases against them are entitled to their salaries, year-end bonuses and other fringe benefits and affirmed the previous order of the Merit Systems Promotion Board.The matter being extraneous to the issues elevated to this Court, it is Our view that petitioners' remedy is not to petition this Court to issue an injunction, but to cause the execution of the aforesaid order, if it has already become final.WHEREFORE, no reversible error having been committed by the Court of Appeals, the instant petition for review is hereby DENIED and the decision of the appellate court dated March 9, 1988 in CA-G.R. SP No. 13192 is AFFIRMED. Petitioners' "Petition/Application for Preliminary and Mandatory Injunction" dated December 13,1988 is DENIED.SO ORDERED.Fernan, C.J., Gutierrez, Jr., Feliciano and Bidin, JJ., concur.

G.R. No. 95445 August 6, 1991MANILA PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS ASSOCIATION, FIDEL FABABIER MERLIN ANONUEVO, MINDA GALANG and other teacher-members so numerous similarly situated,petitioners-appellants,vs.THE HON. PERFECTO LAGUIO JR., in his capacity as Presiding Judge of the Regional Trial Court of Manila, Branch 18, HON. ISIDRO CARIO, in his capacity as Secretary of Education, Culture and Sports and the HON. ERLINDA LOLARGA in her capacity as Manila City Schools Superintendent,respondents-appellees.G.R No. 95590 August 6, 1991ALLIANCE OF CONCERNED TEACHERS (ACT), ENRIQUE D. TORRES, RODRIGO G. NATIVIDAD, FRANCISCO A. NERECINA, EVA V. FERIA, LUCIA R. CARRASCO, LEO R. RAMBOYONG, ZENEIDA PEREZ, MARIA ACEJO AND OTHER SIMILARLY SITUATED PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS TOO NUMEROUS TO BE IMPLEADED,petitioners,vs.HON. ISIDRO CARIO in his capacity as Secretary of Education, Culture and Sports and HON. GUILLERMO CARAGUE, in his capacity as Secretary of Budget and Management,respondents.Free Legal Assistance Group, Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood Integrity & Nationalism and Union of Lawyers and Advocates for petitioners in G.R. No. 95590.Gregorio Fabros for petitioners in G.R. No. 95445.NARVASA,J.:pThe series of events that touched off these cases started with the so-called "mass action" undertaken by some 800 public school teachers, among them members of the petitioning associations in both cases, on September 17, 1990 to "dramatize and highlight"1the teachers' plight resulting from the alleged failure of the public authorities to act upon grievances that had time and again been brought to the latter's attention.The petition in G.R. No. 95590 alleges in great detail the character and origins of those grievances as perceived by the petitioners, and the attempts to negotiate their correction;2these are more briefly, but quite adequately and with no sacrifice of relevant content, set forth in the petition in G.R. No. 954451, portions of which are quoted hereunder without necessarily affirming their objective truth or correctness:3. Together with other teachers embracing the Teachers and Employees Consultative Council (TECC) and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, the petitioners, in accordance with their Constitution and By-Laws, resolved to engage in mass concerted actions, after peaceful dialogues with the heads of the Department of the Budget and Management, Senate and House of Representatives in public hearings as well as after exhausting all administrative remedies, to press for, among other things, the immediate payment of due chalk, clothing allowances, 13th month pay for 1989 arising from the implementation of the Salary Standardization Law, the recall of DECS Order 39 s. 1990 directing the oversizing of classes and overloading of teachers pursuant to the cost-cutting measures of the government, the hiring of 47,000 new teachers to ease the overload of existing teachers, the return of the additional 1% real property taxes collected by local government units to education purposes to be administered by the Local School Boards, and consequent recall of DBM Circulars Nos. 904 and 9011 and local budget circular No. 47 consistent with RA 5447 and the new Constitution mandating that education shall enjoy the highest budgetary priority in the national budget, and other equally important demands; The dialogues and conferences initiated by the petitioners and other teacher organizations were as early as March 14, 1989, March 14, 1990, April 23, 1990, May 28, 1990, June 5, 1990, September 3, 1990 and September 14, 1990 with the Civil Service Commission, the Senate and House of Representatives, Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Education, Culture and Sports, but all these did not result in the granting of the demands of the petitioners, leaving them with no other recourse but to take direct mass action such as the one they engaged in three weeks ago.4. On September 14, 1990, the petitioners and other teachers in other cities and municipalities in Metro Manila, staged a protest rally at the DECS premises without disrupting classes as a last call for the government to negotiate the granting of demands. No response was made by the respondent Secretary of Education, despite the demonstration, so the petitioners began the ongoing protest mass actions on September, 17,1990. ...3September 17, 1990 fell on a Monday, which was also a regular school day. There is no question that the some 800 teachers who joined the mass action did not conduct their classes on that day; instead, as alleged in the petition in G.R. No. 95590,4they converged at the Liwasang Bonifacio in the morning whence they proceeded to the National Office of the Department of Education, Culture and Sport (DECS) for a whole-day assembly. At about 1:00 o'clock p.m., three representatives of the group were allowed to see the respondent Secretary of Education who "brushed aside their grievances," warned them that they would lose their jobs for going on illegal and unauthorized mass leave. Upon leaving said respondent's presence, they were handed an order directing all participants in the mass action to return to work in 24 hours or face dismissal, and a memorandum directing the DECS officials concerned to initiate dismissal proceedings against those who did not comply and to hire their replacements.5Those directives notwithstanding, the mass actions continued into the week, with more teachers joining in the days that followed. In its issue of September 19, 1990, the newspaper Manila Standard reported that the day previous, the respondent Secretary of Education had relieved 292 teachers who did not return to their classes. The next day, however, another daily, Newsday, reported that the Secretary had revoked its dismissal order and instead placed 56 of the 292 teachers under preventive suspension, despite which the protesters' numbers had swelled to 4,000.6On the record, what did happen was that, based on reports submitted by the principals of the various public schools in Metro Manila, the respondent Secretary of Education had filedmotu proprioadministrative complaints against the teachers who had taken part in the mass actions and defied the return-to-work order on assorted charges like grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, gross violation of the Civil Service Law, absence without official leave, etc., and placed them under 90-day preventive suspension. The respondents were served copies of the charge sheets and given five (5) days to submit answer or explanation. Later, on October 8, 1990, the respondent Secretary constituted an investigating committee of four (4) to determine and take the appropriate course of action on the formal charges and designated the special prosecutors on detail with the DECS to handle their prosecution during the formal hearings.7On October 11, 1990, the respondent Secretary of Education rendered the first of his now questioned decisions on the administrative complaints. In Case No. DECS 90-002, he found twenty (20) respondent teachers guilty of the charges preferred against them and dismissed them from office, effective immediately.8In the other investigations that followed and as of December 3, 1990, 658 teachers were dismissed, 40 were suspended for one (1) year, 33 for nine (9) months, and 122 for six (6) months; 398 were exonerated.9Earlier, on September 19, 1990, the petitioners in G.R. No. 95445 had filed with the Regional Trial Court of Manila Branch 18, a petition10for prohibition, declaratory relief and preliminary mandatory injunction to restrain the implementation of the return-to-work order of September 17, 1990 and the suspension or dismissal of any teacher pursuant thereto and to declare said order null and void. Issuanceex-parteof a temporary restraining order was sought, but seeing no compelling reason therefor, the Regional Trial Court instead set the application for preliminary injunction for hearing, and heard the same, on September 24, 1990. Thereafter and following the submission of memorandums by the parties, said Court rendered judgment declaring the assailed return-to-work order valid and binding, and dismissing the petition for lack of merit.11Review of said judgment is sought in G. R. No. 95445.G.R. No. 95590 is a parallel original proceeding for prohibition, mandamus and certiorari grounded on the same state of facts and instituted for substantially the same purposei.e.,the invalidation of the return-to-work order of the respondent Secretary of Education and all orders of suspension and/or dismissal thereafter issued by said respondent against the teachers who had taken part in the mass actions of September 17, 1990 and the days that followed.Both cases were ordered consolidated by Resolution issued on October 25, 1990,12and separate comments were filed by the Solicitor General on behalf of the public respondents, in G.R. No. 95445 on October 31, 1990, and in G.R. No. 95590 on December 5, 1990.13On November 20, 1990 the parties were heard in oral argument on the petitioners' united pleas for a temporary restraining order/mandatory injunction to restore thestatus quo anteand enjoin the public respondents from continuing with the issuance of suspension orders and proceeding with the administrative cases against the teachers involved in the mass actions.Said pleas were denied by the Court in its Resolution of December 18, 1990,14and a motion for reconsideration filed by the petitioners in G.R. No. 95590 was likewise denied.In two separate but identically-worded motions filed on their behalf by Atty. Froilan M. Bacungan,15the following persons, to wit: Florita D. Guazon, Elisea G. Lazo, Gonzala G. Sioson, Esperanza Valero, Nenita Pangilinan, Ramon David, Aurora Bosi, Encarnita David, Socorro Sentin, Crispulo Santos, Rodriguez Bagana, Rodolfo D. Bacsal, Ruben Bersamina, Rodolfo Arroyo, Irene Gadil, Rebecca Roldan, Rosita Samson, Priscilla Avendia, Arturo Cabuhat, Rosalinda Caoili, Angelina Corpuz, Purisima Lena, Elsie Somera, Dedaica Jusay, Teresita Partoza, Gloria Salvador, Catherine San Agustin, Nestor Aguirre, Lorenzo Real, Celia Ronquillo, Vicente Carranza, Jessie Villanueva, Yolanda Alura, Clara Alvarez, Danilo Llamas, Ladera Panita Myrna, Sena, Zenaida Ligon, Daisy S. Conti, Danilo Caballes, Susan Maragat, Roberto Manlangit and Elizabeth T. Aguirre, seek leave to withdraw as parties in G.R. No. 95590. These movants claim that they are such parties although not individually so named in the petition in said case, being among those referred to in its title as "other similarly situated public school teachers too numerous to be impleaded," who had been administratively charged, then preventively suspended and/or dismissed in the wake of the mass actions of September 1990. They assert that since this Court is not a trier of facts, they have opted to appeal the questioned decisions or actuations of the respondent Secretary of Education to the Civil Service Commission where they believe they will have "... all the opportunity to introduce evidence on how (Secretary) Cario violated their constitutional rights to due process of law ... security of tenure and ... peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances ...."An opposition to the first motion was filed16which, briefly, contended that, as this Court had already found that the petitioners had gone on an unlawful strike and that public respondent Cario's acts wereprima facielawful, the motion was either an attempt at forum-shopping or meant to avoid the "inevitable outcome" of issues already pending final determination by the Court.The Court's Resolution of December 18, 1990,supra, denying the petitioners' plea for restoration of thestatus quo anteand to restrain/enjoin further suspensions of, and the initiation or continuation of, administrative proceedings against the teachers involved, is based on the following postulates:(1) the undenied indeed, the pleaded and admitted fact that about 800 teachers, among them the individual petitioners and other unnamed but "similarly situated" members of the petitioning associations in both cases, unauthorizedly absented themselves from their classes on a regular schoolday, September 17, 1990, in order to participate in a "mass action" to dramatize their grievances concerning, in the main, the alleged failure of the public authorities, either to implement at all or to implement in a just and correct manner, certain laws and measures intended to benefit them materially;(2) the fact, too, that in the days that followed, more mass actions for the same purpose were undertaken, notwithstanding a return-to-work order issued by the respondent Secretary of Education; more teachers joined the so-called "peaceful assemblies" on September 18, 1990 and the number rising to 4,000 on September 19, 1990;17(3) that from the pleaded and admitted facts, these "mass actions" were to all intents and purposes a strike; they constituted a concerted and unauthorized stoppage of, or absence from, work which it was the teachers' duty to perform, undertaken for essentially economic reasons;(4) that this court had already definitively ruled that employees in the public (civil) service, unlike those in the private sector, do not have the right to strike, although guaranteed the right to self-organization, to petition Congress for the betterment of employment terms and conditions and to negotiate with appropriate government agencies for the improvement of such working conditions as are not fixed by law;18(5) that upon the foregoing premises, it wasprima facielawful and within his statutory authority for the respondent Secretary of Education to take the actions complained of, to wit: issue a return-to-work order, prefer administrative charges against, and place under preventive suspension, those who failed to comply with said order, and dismiss from the service those who failed to answer or controvert the charges;19The Court has not since been presented with any consideration of law or established fact that would impair the validity of these postulates or preclude continued reliance thereon for the purpose of resolving the present petitions on their merits.The underlying issue here is due process; not whether the petitioners have a right to strike, which it is clear they do not, however justifiable their reasons, nor whether or not there was in fact such a strike, it being equally evident from the pleadings that there was, and there being no dispute about this. What therefore, is brought before the Court is the question of whether or not any rights of the petitioners under the due process clause of the Constitution as it applies to administrative proceedings were violated in the initiation, conduct, or disposition of the investigations complained of.Indeed, what the petitioners in G.R. No. 95590 proclaim about denial of due process being their "paramount complaint" ... "central to their prayer for interlocutory relief'20could as well be said of the merits of their main cause as of their plea for a restraining order pendente lite or a preliminary injunction.There are, however, insuperable obstacles to the Court's taking up that issue and resolving it in these cases. Said issue is not ripe for adjudication by this Court in the exercise of its review jurisdiction; and this, for the obvious reason that it is one of fact. The petitions and subsequent pleadings of the petitioners allege facts and circumstances which, it is claimed, show denial of due process, citing as supposedly "representative samples"21among others: (a) that teachers were dismissed on the sole basis of unsworn reports of their principals and without evidence of their alleged failure to obey the return-to-work order; (b) that the charge sheets failed to specify the particular charges or offenses allegedly committed; (c) that some teachers were not furnished sworn complaints, and others were suspended without any formal charges; (d) that teachers who attempted to return within a reasonable time after notice of the return-to-work order were not accepted back; and similar allegations.These are however denied and disputed by the public respondents, who set forth their own version, initially in their separate Comments in both cases and, later and in greater detail, in their Consolidated Memorandum of December 3, 1990,supra, from which the following passages are quoted:(6) Petitioners in G.R. No. 95545 and G.R. No. 95590admit engaging in a strike(referred by semantic interplay as "concerted activity" or "mass action")directed against public respondent Cariobeginning September 17, 1990, MPSTA Petition, pp. 3, 9; ACT Petition, pp. 1516).To avoid the disruption of classes, public respondent Cario, also on September 17, 1990, issued a 'return to work order' reminding striking workers thatin law, they cannot engage in strike and warning them that dismissal proceedings will be instituted against them if they do not return to work with 24 hours from their walkout(MPSTA Petition, p. 4; ACT Petition, p. 15) and a memorandum to DECS officials instructing them to notify the striking teachers to return to work within 24 hours from their walkout and to initiate dismissal proceedings against those who defy the return to work order as well as to hire temporary replacements, MPSTA Petition, p. 4; ACT Petition, pp. 15-16).The striking teachers who did not heed the return-to-work order were administratively charged and preventively suspended for ninety days for grave misconduct, gross neglect of duty, insubordination, refusal to perform official duty, absence without leave beginning September 17, 1990 and other violations of Civil Service Law, rules and regulations.All of striking teachers were served with the suspension orders and the change sheets notifying them of the charges and giving them five (5) days from receipt of the charge sheets within which to file their respective answers.With the filing of the administrative complaints and the receipt of the answers of some of the teachers involved, public respondent Carino on October 8, 1990 issued a Memorandum forming an Investigation Committee composed of Atty, Reno Capinpin of DECS Administrative Services as Chairman Dr. Alberto Mendoza, representing the Division Supervisors, Atty. Evangeline de Castro, representing the City Superintendent of Schools of Manila, and Atty. Isaias Meleto representing the National PPSTA Organization, as members. Copy of the aforesaid Memorandum is hereto attached as Annex "I."The committee was authorized to meet everyday, even as Special Prosecutors from the Department of justice on detail with the DECS were designated to handle the prosecution during the formal hearings. (Ibid.)Petitionersin GR No. 95545' and 'G.R. No. 95590'admit having received the charge sheets and notices of preventive suspensionwherein they were given five days from receipt of the charges within which to file their answers (MPSTA Petition, p. 4-1 ACT Petition, p. 16, Annexes x , to , AA ).xxx xxx xxx...Many striking teachers received their preventive suspension orders and the charge sheets from their respective principals when they visited their schools. Many refused to receive and sign receipt therefor; others tore up the preventive suspension orders and charge sheets in front of their principals.Instead, they took the occasion to belittle and insult the substitute teachers who took over their classrooms temporarily.The striking teachers were given a period of five days to file their Answers in line with Sec. 8, Rule III of Rules on Administrative Disciplinary Cases in CSC Memorandum Circular No. 46, s. 1989. The motion for extension of time to file Answer was denied by DECS Task Force because it was dilatory the alleged reason being that Atty. Fabros is handling 2,000 cases of teachers. The DECS was constrained by Sec. 38(d) of P.D. 807 and Sec. 8 of the Memorandum Circular mentioned which mandate that administrative cases must bedecided within 30 days from the filing of the charges. Another reason was thatmany refused to receive the notice of charges. Also, to delay the resolution of the cases was to their disadvantage.Moreover, another reason proferred was that the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Manila still had to act on the petition before it. However,the Motion was filed AFTER the RTC Manila had already dismissed the Petition.Nevertheless, answers to the administrative complaints started pouring in at the DECS, as prepared personally by the striking teachers or by their lawyers.After initial assessments of the reports coming in from the principals of the schools concerned and the answers of the striking teachers, the DECS Special Task Force prepared on October 9, 1990 and submitted to respondent Secretary Carino the Guidelines and Criteria as to the nature of the evidence to be assessed and the corresponding penalty to be imposed against the striking teachers, which was approved by respondent Secretary Carino on the same day. A copy of the aforesaid Guidelines and Criteria is hereto attached as Annex "2." Thereafter, the DECS Special Task Force proceeded with its task of investigating the cases against the striking teachers.Those whorefused to signthe DECS return-to-work order, the preventive suspension orders and the charge sheets,some even tearing up the documentspresented to them by their principals were considered by the DECS Special Task Force as having waived their right to be heard; their cases had to be resolved on the basis of the records. Nevertheless, the DECS Special Task Force summoned the principals concerned, who then testified under oath confirming their reports on the absences of the striking teachers. Some clarificatory questions were asked of them on the manner of the service of the DECS orders and the situation obtaining in their schools.For those who answered the charge sheets, the DECS Special Task Force set the administrative cases for hearing.Many of the striking teachers refused to appear at the hearings but preferred to submit their case on the basis of their answers.With regard to those who attended the hearings, each of the absent or striking teachers was investigated and asked questions under oath on their answers and the reasons for their absences and/or joining the teachers' strike. Some teachers reiterated their answers to the charge sheets, either giving justifiable reasons for their absences on the days mentioned or maintaining their stubborn stand that they have all the right to absent themselves from classes in the exercise of their constitutional right to join mass action to demand from the government what are supposedly due them. Still the DECS Special Task Force was not satisfied with their written answers and explanation during the hearings. The principals of the striking teachers were summoned and they confirmed under oath their reports of absences and/or on teachers joining the strike.After having conducted fully their investigations, the DECS Special Task Force submitted in series their investigation reports and recommendation for each category of striking teachers to respondent Secretary Carino. The investigation reports, together with their supporting documents, submitted by the DECS Special Task Force indicated clearly the manner and conduct of the administrative hearings, the nature and weight of the evidence adduced, and the correspondingly penalty or exoneration recommended.On the bases of the investigation reports and recommendations of the DECS Special Task Force, and after evaluating the reports and its documents attached, respondent Secretary Carino promulgated the decisions either for exoneration, suspension or dismissal. Copies of the DECS decisions of exoneration, suspension or dismissal were forwarded to the principals of the striking teachers concerned. Those exonerated were allowed to resume their duties and received their back salaries. Some of the teachers either suspended or dismissed have already received the copies of the decisions, either personally or through mail.xxx xxx xxx22This copious citation is made, not to suggest that the Court finds what is stated therein to be true and the contrary averments of the petitions to be false, but precisely to stress that the facts upon which the question of alleged denial of due process would turn are still in issue, actively controverted, hence not yet established.It is not for the Court, which is not a trier of facts, as the petitioners who would now withdraw correctly put it, to make the crucial determination of what in truth transpired concerning the disputed incidents. Even if that were within its competence, it would be at best a monumental task. At any rate, the petitioners cannot-as it seems they have done lump together into what amounts to a class action hundreds of individual cases, each with its own peculiar set of facts, and expect a ruling that would justly and correctly resolve each and everyone of those cases upon little more than general allegations, frontally disputed as already pointed out, of incidents supposedly "representative" of each case or group of cases.This case illustrates the error of precipitate recourse to the Supreme Court, especially when numerous parties desparately situated as far as the facts are concerned gather under the umbrella of a common plea, and generalization of what should be alleged with particularity becomes unavoidable. The petitioners' obvious remedy was NOT to halt the administrative proceedings but, on the contrary, to take part, assert and vindicate their rights therein, see those proceedings through to judgment and if adjudged guilty, appeal to the Civil Service Commission; or if, pending said proceedings, immediate recourse to judicial authority was believed necessary because the respondent Secretary or those acting under him or on his instructions were acting without or in excess of jurisdiction, or with grave abuse of discretion, to apply, not directly to the Supreme Court, but to the Regional Trial Court, where there would be an opportunity to prove the relevant facts warranting corrective relief.Parties-litigant are duty bound to observe the proper order of recourse through the judicial hierarchy; they by-pass the rungs of the judicial ladder at the peril of their own causes.23This Court is a court oflast resort. Its review jurisdiction is limited to resolving questions of law where there is no dispute of the facts or the facts have already been determined by lower tribunals, except only in criminal actions where capital penalties have been imposed.WHEREFORE, both petitioners are DISMISSED, without prejudice to any appeals, if still timely, that the individual petitioners may take to the Civil Service Commission on the matters complained of. The motions to withdraw,supra, are merely NOTED, this disposition rendering any express ruling thereon unnecessary. No pronouncement as to costs.SO ORDERED.Fernan, C.J. (Chairman), Melencio-Herrera, Gancayco, Bidin, Grio-Aquino, Medialdea, Regalado and Davide, Jr., JJ., concur.Separate OpinionsGUTIERREZ, JR., J.,dissenting:In dissenting from the majority opinion, I draw certain conclusions from the records which I feel should guide any adjudication of the issues in these petitions.My first conclusion refers to the denial of basic rights of an indispensably essential segment of our society the teachers who educate our children.The second refers to the cold hearted punishment which we allow to be inflicted upon our poor school teachers. By skirting the fundamental issue involved, the Court is denying the petitioners fairness, substantive due process, and simple humanity. The so-called investigations which led to the initial dismissals were a farce. Instead of 90 day preventive suspensions, the Department of Education, Culture, and Sports (DECS) immediately imposed punitive dismissals with no semblance of rudimentary due process. All other civil service employees undergoing investigation are reinstated after ninety days. Our teachers have been out of work for more than ten (10) months without income while still undergoing administrative investigation. The suspension is indefinite if not permanent.Patience has its limits. There are times when even the most constant and dedicated public servants must given vent to their feelings and express their grievances at an unfeeling and inept bureaucracy which seems to be incapable of attending to their officials needs. Professional agitators may have infiltrated the teachers and muddled their demands with such outlandish calls as the closure of foreign military bases, a cap on the payments of foreign debts and other issues not pressingly relevant to teachers. But thebasic demandsare legitimate and few.Teachers need a decent living wage, one in keeping with the dignity and worth of their profession. Not only are their salaries unbelievably low but payment is often unreasonably delayed. When the national government gives a little increase, a corresponding amount is reduced from the city share. Teachers have to beg for allowances to be restored. The latest examples are the PERA adjustments. As of July 12, 1991, most employees of the government had received andspenttheir PERA allowances. Our public school teachers were still waiting. whatever the payment signifies salary, bonus, allowance and even retirement or death benefits the last one to receive what all government employees are entitled to, is the public school teacher. It is no small wonder that thousands of school teachers swallow their dignity and accept employment as domestic servants overseas. I am not aware of any government program which seeks to reverse the new definition of "Filipina" as a domestic servant of foreigners whose education is often lower than that of their maids. Neither am I aware of any determined effort to see to it that school teachersalwaysget their salaries, allowances, and benefits on time.I mention the unconcern because it is what forced the petitioners to engage in mass concerted action.We agree that employees in the civil service may not engage in strikes, walk-outs and temporary work stoppages like workers in the private sector. (Social Security System Employees Association v. Court of Appeals, 175 SCRA 686, 698 [1989]). Employment in the Government is governed by law. Government workers cannot use the same weapons employed by workers in the private sector to secure concessions from their employers. The terms and conditions of employment are effected through statutes and administrative rules and regulations, not through collective bargaining agreements. (Alliance of Government Workers, et al. v. Minister of Labor and Employment, 124 SCRA 1, 13 [1983]).The above rulings remain good law.In the first place, if this Court uses the word "strike" to describe what the petitioners staged, it tends to unfairly color and pre-judge their case. "Strike" becomes a pejorative epithet that leads to a certain result not so much because of facts but because of its semantic connotations. The teachers were in the main not asking for terms and conditions greater than those accorded by law. Their basic demand was to be given on time what the law already provides for them. It was only after certain elements penetrated their ranks and in the heat of the peaceful assembly that such demands as closure of military bases and laws increasing salaries formed part of the leaders' statements. The concerted action was more of a peaceful assembly, an exercise of speech by a gathering, not a strike.In the second place, when Government is deaf, when bureaucracy denies to our teachers the timely payment of the pittances provided by law, should any ban still be enforced? And enforced in a peremptory and oppressive manner? Should not the most basic freedom of speech and assembly in these particular cases outweigh all considerations which ban strikes by civil service employees?We agree with Justice Cardozo inPalko v. Connecticut, 302 US 319 [1937] that freedom of speech is the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.We have cited with approbation Justice Brennan's stressing a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials". (New York Times, Co. v. Sullivan, 376 US 254 [1964])Teachers have legitimate and pressing grievances. When Government consistently fails to act on these grievances, the teachers have a right tospeak in an effective manner. For speech to be effective, it must be forceful enough to make the intended recipients listen.I view the issue in these cases as more transcendent than the simple one of whether or not public school teachers may go on strike. To me, the issue is the freedom to effectively speak. When the members of a noble profession are demeaned by low salaries and inattention to their needs, surely their freedom to speakin a manner and at a timeas is most effective far outweighs conventional adherence to orthodox civil service rules on proper conduct and correct behavior.My other point has to do with an anomalous investigation procedure and considering the nature of the offense, what is tantamount to cruel punishment.I gather from the records andthe majority opinionthat the cases of individual teachers are still being investigated and may be the subject of appeals to the Civil Service Commission.If that is so, I cannot understand why the petitioners remain suspended up to the present. They should have been reinstated after 90 days of preventive suspension. It is axiomatic that civil service employees and even elected officials cannot be preventively suspended for more than 90 days (Section 42, P.D. 807; Deloso v. Sandiganbayan, 173 SCRA 409 [1989]; Doromal v. Sandiganbayan, 177 SCRA 354 [1989]).If the suspension is preventive, it has lasted too long. If punitive, it is illegal and violative of due process.There are anywhere from 800 to 2,000 teachers involved perhaps even more, once the unwieldy procedures of DECS can arrive at accurate figures.On October 8, 1990, the Department Secretary constituted an investigating committee of four, repeat, four members to act on the formal charges.Three days later, on October 11, 1990, the DECS found 20 teachers guilty and dismissed them. On December 3, 1990, 658 teachers were dismissed, 40 were suspended for one year, 33 for 9 months, and 122 for six months. There were 398 exonerations. I understand there were scores who had to hurriedly look for medical certificates that they were "sick" while hundreds were urged to cringe and grovel with humiliatingmea culpas.Even if the investigating committee or committees were staffed by supermen and superwomen, it is inconceivable that 658 capital sentences of dismissal could be made in so short a time. Any officer who has conducted an honest to goodness administrative investigation cannot but conclude that the procedures which were followed violated the norms of fair play and due process. The decisions were the products of prejudgment based on perfunctory paper investigations. Surely our public school teachers deserve better treatment.If subsequent to the sentences of dismissal, the teachers were properly served with summons, given time to secure the services of competent counsel, allowed to defend themselves and cross-examine witnesses against them, punished on the basis of reasoned decisions stating the facts and the law, and otherwise given their rights to due process, the initial illegal actions should be set aside and the teachers reinstated in the meantime.Considering the circumstances which led the teachers to engage in mass action, the penalty of dismissal is too grave. It is punishment which is cruel.The officers and men of the Armed Forces who started a coup at the Manila Hotel were punished by being made to do a few push-ups. The coup attempt in December, 1989 was almost successful. And yet, only the officers are meted significant punishment. The enlisted men are readily pardoned. I see no reason why similar treatment cannot be given our public school teachers. Their only offense was to speak out in an effective manner against studied neglect.Even if all requirements of due process in administrative investigations are followed and the evidence points unerringly to guilt, a public school teacher should not be meted out a penalty harsher than a few months suspension. In Labor Law, dismissals are imposed only against a handful of leaders who committed acts of violence or instigated illegal strikes. (De Ocampo, Jr. v. NLRC, 186 SCRA 360 [1990]) As earlier stated, the word "strike" under Labor Law should not be used in pejoration to denigrate a peaceful assembly.I repeat that equitable considerations call for compassion. Public school teachers are the most hard-working, uncomplaining, easy to satisfy, and dutiful segment of our public service. They are also the most underpaid professionals with a take home pay of a little over one hundred pesos a day,**which is the income of an unskilled laborer. They deserve justice and compassion.CONSIDERING THE FOREGOING, I vote to GRANT the petition, to set aside the questioned orders of the Secretary of Education, Culture, and Sports, to order reinstatement of the petitioners, and to direct the payments of their salaries and backpay.CRUZ,J.,dissenting:It appears to me from my reading of theponenciaand the several dissents that the petitioners have established aprima faciecase of arbitrariness on the part of the government that would justify direct and immediate action from the Court as an exception to the regular procedure.While I do agree that there are many factual matters to be ascertained and that this task belongs in the first instance to the administrative authorities, I feel that precisely because of the number and proximity of these issues, let alone the hundreds if not thousands of teachers involved, this Court must grant the petitioners at least temporary relief pending the termination of the proceedings below. These proceedings have been dragging on for months and will continue even longer, perhaps for years. In the meantime, the petitioning teachers are out in the cold, without employment or income and with only their hope, grown forlorn, I am afraid, in the justice of this Court.I can understand Justice Narvasa's concern over the disarrangement of the well-ordered system of judicial review and the resultant heavy burden that will be laid on the Court. However, I do not propose that we assume the role of the trier of facts and encumber ourselves with the task of deciding the hundreds of administrative cases being heard (or better heard) below by the DECS or the Civil Service Commission. I am not prepared at this point to say that the Court should simply pronounce the dismissal of the petitioners as arbitrary and to order their reinstatement with back salaries. I would instead join Justice Padilla's suggestion that the teachers be ordered reinstated in the meantime, without prejudice to their investigation in accordance with the prescribed procedure.I am not unaware of the decision of the Court in the SSS case prohibiting members of the Civil Service from engaging in strikes and similar acts. I submit, however that this ruling, assuming it to be correct, is no license for the authorities to treat their employees with disdain and to flatly ignore their legitimate complaints, with the expressed threat that they would be removed if they should be so rash as to insist on their demands. In my view, that is what Secretary Carino has done.Government workers, whatever their category or status, have as much right as any person in the land to voice their protests against what they believe to be a violation of their interests. The fact that they belong to the Civil Service has not deprived them of their freedom of expression, which is guaranteed to every individual in this country, including even the alien. It would be ridiculous to even suggest that by accepting public employment, the members of the Civil Service automatically and impliedly renounce this basic liberty. This freedom can at best be regulated only but never completely withdrawn.When their first feeble complaints were not acted upon, the teachers had a light to speak loudly and more insistently, and to show that their protests did not come from only a disgruntled few but from a considerable number of them. They did this through their mass action in hopes that this way they would be better heard and ultimately heeded. They were not. Instead, they were threatened with dismissal and some were in fact dismissed. In effect, they were told to shut up or face the consequences. I regard the return- to-work order as merely secondary and incidental, for the primary purpose of the DECS authorities was to break up the demonstration and muzzle the demonstrators. unquestionably, these individual teachers could not speak as effectively in their controlled classrooms. What the Secretary sought was to deny the teachers the light to assemble and petition the government for redress of their grievances on the sanctimonious excuse that they were needed by their students.I for one believe that the prohibition of members of the Civil Service from striking which, significantly, is not found in the Constitution requires a careful re-examination. It is so easy, as the present case has demonstrated, to use it as a bludgeon to silence complaint, however legitimate. Complaint is a weapon of the worker, and it is more effective if manifested not by him alone but with his co-owners. Under the present ruling, the workers in the private sector may complain collectively and if necessary declare a strike to enforce their demands, but this recourse is denied the public employees even if their demands are no less valid. In this sense, the freedom of expression of the civil servant is diminished and his right to improve the conditions of his employment is correspondingly reduced, and order because he belongs to the public sector.It is so easy to say that the education of the youth should not be disrupted but we should not forget that the protection of freedom of expression is no less important. Indeed, the quality of education would deteriorate in an atmosphere of repression, when the very teachers who are supposed to provide an example of courage and self-assertiveness to their pupils can speak only in timorous whispers. The classrooms should be an incubator of freedom, not fear.PARAS,J.,concurringI concur. Public school teachers have the right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances but NOT during class hours, for then this would be a strike, which is illegal for them.FELICIANO,J.,dissenting:With regret, I find myself unable to concur in the majority opinion. I would associate myself with the reasoning and conclusions (though not necessarily with all the adjectives and adverbs) of the dissenting opinion of Gutierrez, J. as well as the conclusions reached by Padilla and Sarmiento, JJ., in their respective dissenting opinion.Here I merely wish to underscore the constitutional issue which appears to me to be raised in the instant case by the contraposition of, on the one hand, the prohibition against employees in the public sector going on strikes and, on the other hand, the rights of free speech and of assembly and petition of those same employees. InSocial Security System Employees Association (SSSEA) v. Court of Appeals(175 SCRA 686 [1989]), the Court, through Cortes, J., pointed out that the prohibition against strikes in the public sector is presently founded upon Memorandum Circular No. 6, Series of 1987, of the Civil Service Commission dated 21 April 1987, and indirectly and impliedly, upon Executive Order No. 180 dated 1 June 1987 which provides guidelines for the exercise of the constitutional right of government employees to organize themselves. The prohibition is not, in other words, even statutory in nature but merely administrative or regulatory in character and the Court took explicit note of the absence of legislation either prohibiting or allowing strikes, or even merely regulating the exercise of a right to strike by government employees. The policy embodied in that prohibition is admittedly a legitimate and important one: to prevent or minimize the disruption and paralysis of the operations of government, especially the essential services rendered by it to society at large. At the same time, that the rights of free speech and of peaceful assembly and petition for redress of grievances are at least equally important and critical for the maintenance of a free, open and democratic polity, is no