Jones v. La. Bd. of Supervisors of Univ. of La. Sys.

• Decision Date: 09 December 2015
• Docket Number: No. 14–31255.,14–31255.
• Citation: 809 F.3d 231
• Parties: Robert C. JONES, III, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. LOUISIANA BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA SYSTEMS; State of Louisiana; Lisa Abney; Randall Webb ; Robert Crew ; Carl Jones; Marcus Jones; Jerry Pierce; Darlene Williams, Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

809 F.3d 231

Robert C. JONES, III, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.LOUISIANA BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA SYSTEMS; State of Louisiana; Lisa Abney; Randall Webb ; Robert Crew ; Carl Jones; Marcus Jones; Jerry Pierce; Darlene Williams, Defendants–Appellees.

No. 14–31255.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Dec. 9, 2015.

Nelson Welch Cameron (argued), Shreveport, LA, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Linda Law Clark, Esq. (argued), DeCuir, Clark & Adams, L.L.P., Baton Rouge, LA, for Defendants–Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before STEWART, Chief Judge, and JONES and GRAVES, Circuit Judges.

CARL E. STEWART, Chief Judge:

Plaintiff Robert C. Jones III ("Jones") was a tenured economics professor at Northwestern State University ("NSU"), a division of the University of Louisiana System ("ULS"). Beginning around 2008, the Louisiana legislature enacted heavy budget cuts that seriously impacted the state's public universities. In 2010, NSU administrators tasked with reducing the university's budget eliminated the "economics concentration" at NSU and terminated Jones's tenure. He subsequently brought this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit against the State of Louisiana, the ULS Board of Supervisors, NSU President Randall Webb ("Webb"), and NSU Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Lisa Abney ("Abney") (collectively, "Defendants"). Jones alleged that Defendants violated his procedural and substantive due process rights, as well as the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution.¹ The district court granted summary judgement to all Defendants. We AFFIRM.

I. BACKGROUND

Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Jones, NSU hired him in 1994 as an instructor to teach in the College of Business. In 2000, Jones was promoted to associate professor in the College of Business and granted tenure. During his time at NSU, Jones primarily taught basic micro- and macro-economics courses, but he sporadically taught a variety of finance courses as well.

ULS bylaws state that tenure "shall be granted and held only within an academic discipline that is offered at the institution and assures renewed appointments only within that discipline." The official documents that Jones contends vested him with tenure do not reference the discipline in which he was tenured. The bylaws also state that "[t]enure assures the faculty member that employment in the academic discipline at the institution will be renewed annually until the faculty member resigns, retires, or is terminated for cause or financial exigency." The term "cause" is defined to include "conduct seriously prejudicial to the college or university system" as well as financial exigency. A catchall clause follows: "The foregoing enumeration of cause shall not be deemed exclusive. However, action to discharge, terminate, or demote shall not be arbitrary or capricious, nor shall it infringe upon academic freedom."

Beginning around 2008, NSU faced deep budget cuts that required university administrators to begin reducing expenditures by consolidating colleges and schools, discontinuing academic programs, and terminating employees. Budget documents from June 2010 indicated that NSU's state appropriations were trending downward rapidly, from about $49 million in FY 2008, to a projected $41 million in FY 2010 and a projected $31 million in FY 2011.² In the summer of 2009, Provost Abney began to hold meetings with the Program Review Committee, a group composed of representatives from NSU's colleges and faculty senate. The committee was charged with selecting programs for discontinuance, employing criteria outlined in a ULS policy memorandum. That memorandum dictated certain rights due to tenured faculty terminated because of the discontinuation of their program: (1) "every reasonable effort" would be made to find them a "suitable position ... within the university" and (2) non-tenured faculty members would be "considered for termination" before those with tenure, absent a "compelling academic reason to do otherwise."

Between 2009 and 2010, the committee suggested the elimination of certain programs. The committee's final proposed list did not include the economics concentration. Recognizing that the list was insufficient to address the depth of the budget reduction, Abney consulted with a wide variety of ULS and NSU officials, including college deans and legal counsel, to find other areas to cut. In June 2010, Abney began a discussion with the College of Business dean about the economics concentration because, according to her affidavit, "it had a high cost," and "had graduated few students in past years."

At the time of Jones's hiring at NSU, the university offered an economics minor degree; in 2006, however, that minor was discontinued and replaced by the economics concentration. NSU records indicate that although three professors were teaching economics courses, only three students had apparently ever signed up for the economics concentration. However, the basic macro- and micro-economics courses were and continue to be prerequisites for degrees in business administration. NSU projected savings of $145,061 by eliminating the economics concentration, due entirely to the removal of the three faculty members, two of whom were tenured, including Jones. Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Jones, all of the economics courses that he once taught continue to be taught, though by non-tenured faculty; the courses are also now housed in the social science college instead of the business college.

On June 16, 2010, NSU President Webb wrote to the President of the ULS that nine degree programs, five concentrations (including the economics concentration), and 12 minors should be discontinued. The ULS Board of Supervisors subsequently ratified Webb's plan. On June 17, Abney wrote to the three economics faculty to invite them to President Webb's office the following day "for an appointment to discuss the Economics concentration." The meeting, which Jones attended, was approximately 20 minutes long. The parties agree that there was a discussion about the elimination of the economics concentration, but Jones disputes that he understood this to signify that his tenure, too, would be terminated.

Jones's tenure was formally terminated by a letter drafted by Abney on July 22, 2010. In the letter, Abney wrote that the "ULS Board approved the discontinuance of the concentration in which you currently teach." The letter stated that a review of Jones's credentials demonstrated that there was "either not a position to which you can be moved in another department, or your credentials prevent you from being relocated to another position outside your original discipline." (NSU had a general policy to only credential faculty if they had graduate degrees in the relevant discipline, or at least 18 graduate hours in that discipline, based on guidelines promulgated by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.) Jones's tenure, the letter continued, would last through July 31, 2011. He was offered—and subsequently accepted—a position as an "instructor" for a salary of $35,000, about half of what he had been making before.

Jones appealed to a committee comprising seven faculty members, including one faculty member from the College of Business. Jones drafted a seven-page letter to the committee outlining substantially the same arguments that he made to the district court and in this appeal. He did not appear before the committee and was not represented by counsel.³ On November 5, 2010, the committee unanimously rejected Jones's appeal.

Jones subsequently brought this suit in the district court on July 22, 2011, seeking reinstatement and damages. The district court determined that sovereign immunity insulated the State of Louisiana and the ULS Board of Supervisors from liability, and that qualified immunity applied to the claims against Webb and Abney in their individual capacities because the decision was objectively reasonable in light of NSU's severe budget crisis.⁴ The district court concluded that only "the barest procedural protections of notice and an opportunity to be heard" are applicable in the context of a tenure termination following a program-elimination decision. Reciting the extensive internal review of the decision to eliminate the economics concentration and Jones's lack of credentials outside of economics, the district court concluded that "NSU provided Jones with at least the Constitutionally-required minimum process of notice and an opportunity to be heard. In fact, the evidence in the record suggests he was afforded more than that." Finally, the district court stated that its due process analysis foreclosed Jones's Contracts Clause claim and other claims not relevant in this appeal. Consequently, the district court granted Defendants' motion for summary judgment, denied Jones's motion for partial summary judgment, and dismissed the suit with prejudice.

Jones timely appealed, raising both procedural and substantive due process claims and a violation of the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Jones primarily argues, relying on Texas Faculty Association v. University of Texas at Dallas, 946 F.2d 379 (5th Cir.1991), that he was entitled to a hearing on his individual termination before President Webb, the ultimate decision-maker.⁵ He also contends that his firing was arbitrary and capricious. Defendants rely heavily on the budgetary problems faced by NSU and vacillate between arguing that Jones was not even entitled to a hearing and contending that the requisite process was provided.

II. Standard of Review

Appellate review of a district court's grant of summary judgment is de novo. Am. Family Life Assurance Co. of Columbus v. Biles, 714 F.3d 887, 895 (5th Cir.2013). Summary judgment is proper "if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law."...