Dennis v. S & S Consolidated Rural High School Dist.

• Decision Date: 31 July 1978
• Docket Number: No. 76-3803,76-3803
• Citation: 577 F.2d 338
• Parties: John M. DENNIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. S & S CONSOLIDATED RURAL HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 338

577 F.2d 338

John M. DENNIS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. S & S CONSOLIDATED RURAL HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT et al.,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 76-3803.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 31, 1978.

C. Larry Cain, Professional Corp., Jack G. Kennedy, Sherman, Tex., for defendants-appellants.

David M. Stagner, Denison, Tex., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Before GODBOLD, SIMPSON and MORGAN, Circuit Judges.

SIMPSON, Circuit Judge:

The critical issue raised by this appeal is whether a non-tenured public school teacher with no property interest in the renewal of his teaching contract is entitled to Fourteenth Amendment due process when the school board subjects him to a badge of infamy in the course of refusing to renew his contract. We hold that he is.

I. THE FACTS

Appellee John M. Dennis was hired by the Board of Trustees of the Sadler & Southmayd Consolidated Rural High School District (S & S) as a science teacher and high school principal for the 1968-1969 school year. Each year thereafter, through the 1972-1973 school year, S & S voted to renew Dennis' contract. At the regular school board meeting in February, 1974, however, S & S voted not to renew the one year contract under which Dennis was employed. Although Dennis was given no advance notice of the Board's February action or the reasons for it, he had previously been involved in several disputes with S & S concerning student discipline. In response to Dennis' request, the S & S Board of Trustees met publicly in March, 1974, to discuss the non-renewal of Dennis' contract. Prior to this meeting, Dennis was not given a list of the charges against him, the reasons for his non-renewal, or the names of persons who had made charges against him. At the meeting, the only reason for non-renewal given by the Board as a body was that the action was in "the best interest of the school". However, individual board members stated that they voted not to renew Dennis' contract, in part, because Dennis "neglected his duties" and "was too inefficient to continue in his position". Two members asserted that Dennis had "a drinking problem". Dennis denied all of the allegations, and later demanded a hearing before the Board in the hopes of clearing his name. The Board granted Dennis a hearing, which was held in public on June 3, 1974, and at which substantially the same allegations were made against Dennis as at the March meeting. The district court found as its Finding of Fact No. 25 that

At the June meeting, (Dennis) was represented by an attorney, who was unable to obtain from the Board, in advance of the meeting, (1) the cause of (Dennis') termination in sufficient detail to fairly enable him to show any error that might have existed or (2) the names and nature of the testimony of witnesses against (Dennis). Further, he was not accorded a meaningful opportunity to be heard in (Dennis') defense, since the Board restricted (Dennis') presentation to about fifteen to twenty minutes, in circumstances of almost complete confusion.

In September, 1974, Dennis obtained employment at the Dillingham Middle School in Sherman, Texas, a school district adjacent to S & S.

On January 22, 1975, Dennis filed suit against S & S under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the manner in which S & S decided not to renew his contract deprived him of liberty and property without due process, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. After a non-jury trial, the district court held that Dennis had no property interest in continued employment with S & S, and that he suffered no deprivation of liberty in his non-renewal prior to the public airing of charges at the March, 1974, meeting, but that the allegations of a drinking problem made at the March and June meetings subjected him to a "badge of infamy" which violated his liberty interests and entitled him to due process. The court ordered "an administrative hearing before the Board of Trustees that will afford (Dennis) the procedural rights set out in Ferguson v. Thomas ", 430 F.2d 852 (5th Cir. 1970), and further ordered that until such a hearing is held, Dennis would remain on the payroll of S & S and receive wages reduced by the amount of his interim earnings derived from employment at Dillingham Middle School.

In this appeal, S & S contends that the district court erred in holding that the actions of the school board violated any protected liberty interest. Significantly, S & S has not argued that either the March or the June, 1974, hearings afforded Dennis procedural due process, assuming the existence of a protected liberty interest. Neither party challenges the district court's holding that Dennis had no property interest in continued employment with S & S.

II. THE LIBERTY INTEREST QUESTION

" The requirements of procedural due process apply only to the deprivation of interests encompassed by the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of liberty and property". Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2705, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). Because mere non-renewal of a teacher's contract is not such a blight upon his good name, reputation, honor, or integrity as to constitute a deprivation of liberty, non-tenured teachers " may be discharged for no reason or for any reason not impermissible in itself or as applied". Kaprelian v. Texas Women's University, 509 F.2d 133, 139 (5th Cir. 1975). See also Roth, supra, 408 U.S. at 574 n.13, 92 S.Ct. at 2708 n.13; Lake Michigan College Federation of Teachers v. Lake Michigan Community College, 518 F.2d 1091, 1096-97 (6th Cir. 1975), cert. denied,427 U.S. 904, 96 S.Ct. 3189, 49 L.Ed.2d 1197 (1976); Shirk v. Thomas, 486 F.2d 691, 693 (7th Cir. 1973). Nevertheless, as we explained in Kaprelian :

A liberty interest arises . . . when one is publicly subjected to a badge of infamy, such as being "posted" as a drunkard. (Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 91 S.Ct. 507, 27 L.Ed.2d 515 (1971).) In plaintiff's context, it arises when an employee is able to demonstrate that the State has made a charge "that might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community" or that is of such a nature as to impose "a stigma or other disability that foreclosed his freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities". (Roth, supra, 408 U.S. at 573, 92 S.Ct. at 2707.) Such a showing is the employee's voucher of admission into the arena of due process without it such questions do not arise. Moreover, to raise a liberty interest such charges must be public ones . . . . (I)n (Ferguson v. Thomas, supra,) we recognized a place for the making of private, though damaging, charges against an employee who elects to depart rather than air them. Sims v. Fox, 505 F.2d 857 (5th Cir. 1974) also recognizes, however, that where such public charges are denied and discharge is resisted, they may not be the basis of discharge unless due process has been accorded. 509 F.2d at 137-38 (footnotes omitted).

The district court in the instant case relied on Kaprelian in holding that Dennis had been deprived of liberty without due process when members of the school board, in explaining why his teaching contract had not been renewed, publicly charged that he had a drinking problem. S & S argues that this reliance on Kaprelian was misplaced and that under the recent Supreme Court case, Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976), decided after Kaprelian, Dennis failed to demonstrate any liberty interest. ¹ We disagree. The principles of law announced in Kaprelian stand unaffected by Paul v. Davis and are controlling in this case.

In Paul v. Davis, the Supreme Court held that an individual's charge that the State had defamed him, "standing alone and apart from any other governmental action with respect to him ", did not state a claim for relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment. 424 U.S. at 694, 96 S.Ct. at 1157 (emphasis added). The Court reviewed its earlier due process decisions and found a common thread running through each:

In each of these cases, as a result of the state action complained of, a right or status previously recognized by state law was distinctly altered or extinguished. It was this alteration, officially removing the interest from the recognition and protection previously afforded by the State, which we found sufficient to invoke the procedural guarantees contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But the interest in reputation alone which respondent seeks to vindicate in this action in federal court is quite different from the "liberty" or "property" recognized in those decisions. 424 U.S. at 711, 96 S.Ct. at 1165.

Based on its concern that due process not be invoked to protect "reputation alone", we have construed Paul v. Davis as establishing a "stigma-plus" test: "To establish a liberty interest sufficient to implicate fourteenth amendment safeguards, the individual must be not only stigmatized but also stigmatized in connection with a denial of a right or status previously recognized under state law". Moore v. Otero, 557 F.2d 435, 437 (5th Cir. 1977). We see in this test no conflict with the rule stated in Kaprelian : "Nor is it doubtful that (a non-tenured teacher) who is subjected to defacing public charges in or as a result of the discharge process is entitled to a due-process hearing at which he can make a fair fight to clear his name". 509 F.2d at 139 (emphasis added).

Essentially, S & S argues that because Dennis had no property interest in the renewal of his contract, i. e., that his right to continued employment is not recognized under Texas law, he failed to satisfy the "plus" of the "stigma-plus" test. However, the Court in Paul v. Davis anticipated the situation present in the instant case and unambiguously indicated that defamation in the course of declining to rehire a non-tenured employee would satisfy the "stigma-plus" te...