ROLAND N. PATTERSON, APPELLANT,
v.
NORMAN P. RAMSEY ET AL., APPELLEES

4th Cir. | 1977-03-31
No. 76-1655
Before CRAVEN and WIDENER, Circuit Judges, and WILLIAMS, District Judge.
552 F.2d 117 United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (1977) Positive Treatment
Cited by 14 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

A discharged superintendent without tenure has no property interest in his job, and thus no federal constitutional claim regarding termination or stigmatization without a full hearing.


Facts & Procedural History

A discharged school superintendent, who lacked tenure, sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment after his termination.…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM:

PER CURIAM:

This is a frivolous appeal by a discharged school superintendent from the dismissal of his complaint brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and directly under the Fourteenth Amendment. Since Dr. Patterson had no tenure and therefore no property interest in his job, cf. Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U.S. 134, 151-52, 94 S.Ct. 1633, 40 L.Ed.2d 15 (1974),1 the only question we need consider is whether, assuming stigmatization, there was notice and a sufficient hearing to afford Dr. Patterson an “opportunity to clear his name.” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 573 & n. 12, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). For where there is “no Fourteenth Amendment property interest in continued employment, the adequacy or even the existence of reasons for failing to rehire him presents no federal constitutional question.” Codd v. Velger,-U.S.-, 97 S.Ct. 882, 884, 51 L.Ed.2d 92 (decided February 22, 1977). Consequently, therefore, “the hearing required where a non-tenured employee has been stigmatized in the course of a decision to terminate his employment is solely ‘to provide the person an opportunity to clear his name.’ ” Id. (emphasis added).

We hold that Dr. Patterson was given sufficient notice of his deficiencies and afforded amply sufficient opportunity to protect his “liberty” interest. Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, 416 U.S. at 572-75, 92 S.Ct. 2701. Indeed, it seems to us Dr. Patterson was accorded far more process than was constitutionally due.2

The victim here is not the fired superintendent. It is the uncompensated public-interest-motivated school board member subjected to hours and hours, days and days, lost weekend after weekend, of interminable administrative hearings.

For the reasons stated by the district judge in his 32-page memorandum of decision, the judgment below will be

AFFIRMED.

. Article VII of the Baltimore City Charter empowers the Board of School Commissioners “to appoint and remove at pleasure, following a hearing if requested, a Superintendent of Public Instruction.” (Emphasis added.)

. Incredibly, the school board sat through six days of hearings recorded in 700 pages of transcript merely to “evaluate” the superintendent’s services. But that was only the beginning. Before it was over, the proceedings covered 13 more days and consumed 60 more hours recorded in 2,500 pages of transcript, ending finally with this exhausting weekend schedule:

Friday, July 11 -5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.

Saturday, July 12 -9:30 a.m.-l:00 p.m.

2:15 p.m.-6:00 p.m.

Sunday, July 13 -9:30 a.m.-l:00 p.m.

Even so, the superintendent objected to being curtailed and his counsel estimated he would require perhaps two more weeks, or as much as 60 more hours.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Previewing 3 of 7 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw