Berg v. Berger

• Decision Date: 27 November 1978
• Docket Number: No. 77-1556,77-1556
• Citation: 58 L.Ed.2d 667,439 U.S. 992,99 S.Ct. 594
• Parties: Dorothy BERG et al. v. Ida BERGER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

439 U.S. 992

99 S.Ct. 594

58 L.Ed.2d 667

Dorothy BERG et al.

v Ida BERGER

No. 77-1556

Supreme Court of the United States

November 27, 1978

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

Mr. Justice POWELL, with whom Mr. Justice REHNQUIST joins, dissenting.

Respondent, a nontenured public school teacher, was dismissed from her job in May 1975, following months of disagreement and dissension with her supervisors. The situation came to a head about six weeks before her dismissal. An informal conference was arranged and respondent, accompanied by her counsel, met with several school administrators to discuss her performance as a teacher. Although the meeting lasted for some time, it was confined primarily to an extensive cross-examination by respondent's counsel of the school administrators. The meeting was terminated inconclusively because respondent's counsel insisted upon a "specific written statement of charges" as a precondition of his client's full participation in the meeting and "never allowed her to speak." ^*

After conferring among themselves, the administrators, petitioners here, decided that the problems arising from respondent's conduct were sufficiently severe to merit an immediate recommendation of dismissal to the Board of Education. Their report to the Board referred to over 90 memos respondent had written to her principals during the past year about urgent problems with her students, emergencies which upon investigation were determined to be nonexistent or exaggerated; over 60 telephone calls to principals and parents, the majority of which were threatening and harassing; and five incidents in which she had called the police into her classroom without cause and in violation of school policy. The report mentioned one incident where respondent had impersonated a parent and threatened other parents with a lawsuit. Following petitioners' recommendation, the Board discharged respondent for insubordination and conduct unbecoming a teacher.

Respondent filed an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, accusing petitioners of having engaged in a malicious conspiracy to violate her rights under, inter alia, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court granted summary judgment for petitioners, ruling that "there is no genuine issue of fact to be submitted to the trier of fact" and concluding that petitioners "are entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." On appeal, the Seventh Circuit reversed. It perceived that the case turned on whether respondent had been deprived of a property or liberty interest without due process of law, and it found disputed issues of fact on this question. Respondent might be able to prove either that she had a property right to serve out the balance of her contract term or that the public dissemination of the charges against her created a stigma that infringed a protected liberty interest. Judge Pell dissented.

I would grant the petition for certiorari and summarily reverse. Even if respondent were able to prove the existence of a constitutionally protected property or liberty interest, it seems clear that the procedural requirements of the Due Process Clause were met on the facts of this case. Judge Pell appears to have been correct in observing,

"It needs no reading between the lines of the record presented to us to discern that the [petitioners], exercising their functions of operating the school system, terminated a non-tenured teacher who was seriously detrimental to the proper accomplishment of the educational aims of the school."

With respect to the procedures followed here, Judge Pell noted,

"[T]his non-tenured teacher received the due process to which she was entitled by virtue of her status. She was given a meeting with school authorities who were willing to discuss with her and her attorney the difficulties which she was causing in the school where she was purporting to teach. The attorney's tactics on that occasion subverted the effort."

Our decisions in Board of Curators v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78, 98 S.Ct. 948, 55 L.Ed.2d 124 (1978); Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 95 S.Ct. 729, 42 L.Ed.2d 725 (1975); and ...