North Cent. Texas College v. Ledbetter, Case No. 4:04-CV-133.
| Decision Date | 30 March 2006 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 4:04-CV-133. |
| Citation | 566 F.Supp.2d 547 |
| Parties | NORTH CENTRAL TEXAS COLLEGE, Plaintiff, v. Pat LEDBETTER, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Texas |
Charles Joseph Crawford, James Timothy Brightman, Abernathy Roeder Boyd & Joplin, McKinney, TX, Anita Marie Alessandra, William O. Ashcraft, Ashcraft Law Firm, Dallas, TX, for North Central Texas College.
Emily Allison Cash, Frank Warren Hill, Hill Gilstrap, Arlington, TX, for Pat Ledbetter.
Before the court are Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment, filed June 6, 2005, Dkt. # 19, and Plaintiffs Objections to Defendant's Summary Judgment Evidence, filed July 11, 2005, Dkt #39. For the reasons stated below, Plaintiffs Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART and Plaintiffs Objections to Defendant's Summary Judgment Evidence is DENIED.
Defendant Pat Ledbetter (Ledbetter) was a professor at Plaintiff North Central Texas College (College) from 1973 to 2004. Because the College did not have a formal tenure system, Ledbetter was employed under a series of one-year contracts, which were renewed successively by the College for thirty years. During the 2003-2004 academic year, controversy arose between Ledbetter and the College's administration and Board of Regents (Board) concerning her and her husband's public opposition to the College President, Ronnie Glasscock's, proposition to build a $6 million performing arts center. Both Ledbetter and her husband, as well as other people in the community, openly opposed the measure, as they felt it would increase the tuition for students at the College while concomitantly providing them with few benefits. The controversy escalated when Ledbetter's husband successfully led a campaign to replace three of the six members of the Board which, under its new composition, bought out the remainder of Glasscock's contract.
In the midst of this controversy however, Glasscock decided not to renew Ledbetter's employment contract for the 2004-2005 academic year and submitted a recommendation to the Board to this effect. In a letter expressing his reasons to Ledbetter, Glasscock stated that it was his opinion that she had "failed to demonstrate the professional ethics and conduct expected of a faculty member at this [College]." Pl.'s Ex. A at Ex. 1. While Ledbetter appealed Glasscock's decision to the Board, her appeal was denied when the Board chose instead to follow Glasscock's recommendation of nonrenewal. The Board based its decision upon Glasscock's assertions that Ledbetter had violated a student's privacy rights by disclosing his grade to another student, disclosed rumors that were damaging to Glasscock, and facilitated a fellow faculty member's absence from a mandatory faculty meeting. Pl.'s Ex. D at 9-22.
After Ledbetter informed the College that she intended to initiate a lawsuit against it for violations of her constitutional right to due process, the College filed the present suit seeking' the alternate declaration that Ledbetter "was not denied any due process rights to which she was entitled, if any, under the [Fourteenth Amendment]." Pl.'s Compl. at 4; Pl.'s Mot. for Summ. J. at 9. Ledbetter thereafter made good on her word and filed a counter-complaint against the College. See Def.'s Counter-Compl. In doing so, Ledbetter asserted causes of action against the College for violation of substantive and procedural due process, negligence, defamation, and breach of contract. Id. In the motion now under consideration, the College has requested this court to grant summary judgment in its favor and against Ledbetter's claims. For the reasons provided below however, the court believes that, while the gravamen of Ledbetter's case—her claims for substantive and procedural due process—must remain, her residual claims fail to present genuine issues of material fact as required by Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Since the Supreme Court's decisions in Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972) and Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), it is settled law that the non-renewal of a nontenured professor's contract does not invoke the protection of procedural due process unless the professor shows that she had a property interest in the benefit of continued employment. See, e.g., White v. S. Park Indep. Sch. Dist, 693 F.2d 1163, 1166 (5th Cir.1982); Hillis v. Stephen F. Austin State Univ., 665 F.2d 547, 552 (5th Cir.1982); Bradford v. Tarrant County Junior Coll. Dist., 492 F.2d 133, 135 (5th Cir.1974). To have a property interest in such benefit, the professor must have more than an abstract need, desire, or unilateral expectation of it. Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701. She must instead have a "legitimate claim of entitlement" to it deriving from a state or federal statute, municipal ordinance or charter, an express or implied contract, or a contract implied from policies and practices of a particular institution. Id.; see also Cox v. City of Jackson, 343 F.Supp.2d 546, 571 (S.D.Miss.2004).
The operation of these principles is illustrated best by the two Supreme Court cases which established them. The first such case is Roth, 408 U.S. at 578, 92 S.Ct. 2701. In that case, the Supreme Court held that a non-tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh did not have a property interest in the renewal of his one-year employment contract where the University, which had employed him for only one year, did have a formal tenure system which he did not qualify for, and where there was no state statute or university rule or policy that secured his interest in reemployment or created a legitimate claim to it. Id. at 579, 92 S.Ct. 2701. In these circumstances the Court stated, "the [professor] surely had an abstract concern in being rehired, but he did not have a property interest sufficient to require the University authorities to give him a hearing when they declined to renew his contract of employment." Id.
Alternatively, in a companion case to Roth, the Court in Sindermann held that a non-tenured professor at Odessa Junior College in Texas did have a property interest in the renewal of his employment where the college did not have a formal tenure system, the professor had served at the college with distinction for ten years, and where the college's official faculty guide stated that: "The Administration of the College wishes the faculty member to feel that he has permanent tenure as long as his teaching services are satisfactory and as long as he displays a cooperative attitude toward his co-workers and his superiors, and as long as he is happy in his work." 408 U.S. at 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694. In such a case, the Court stated:
A teacher ... who has held his position for a number of years, might be able to show from the circumstances of his service — and from other relevant facts — that he has a legitimate claim of entitlement to job tenure. Just as this Court has found there to be a `common law of a particular industry or of a particular plant' that may supplement a collective-bargaining agreement, [citations omitted], so there may be an `unwritten common law' in a particular university that certain employees shall have the equivalent of tenure. This is particularly likely in a college or university ... that has no explicit tenure system even for senior members of its faculty, but that nonetheless may have created such a system in practice.
Id. at 603, 92 S.Ct. 2694 (emphasis added).
While the present case appears to reside between Roth and Sindermann, the court believes that, based on the record before the court, the situation presented is more like that in Sindermann than in Roth. As an initial matter, like the college in Sindermann and unlike the university in Roth, the College here has no explicit tenure system even for senior members of its faculty. Pl.'s Ex. A-26 () (NCTC Board Policies) (emphasis added). Similarly, like the professor in Sindermann and unlike the professor in Roth, Ledbetter had served at the College with distinction for a significant period of time, indeed three times that served by the professor in Sindermann. Def.'s Ex. 1 at 1. Also as in Sindermann and not in Roth, the court here finds that the College fostered an "unwritten common law" that certain employees shall have the equivalent of tenure. This finding is informed by a statement made by the College that "[termination and non-renewal procedures must contain adequate safeguards for protection of academic freedom" and a statement by Glasscock and the College's Deans that "they believe the evaluation process offers faculty members protection beyond the one-year term." Def.'s Ex. 1 at App. 38; Ex. LLL, App. 194-95 (1999-2000 Institutional Self-Study Report). It is these commonalities with Sindermann then, that have persuaded this court that, at the very least, there is a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether or not Ledbetter had acquired a property interest in having her employment contract renewed for the 2004-2005 academic year.
In making this observation however, the court is not unaware of the Fifth Circuit's reluctance to recognize similar property interests since its seminal decision in Ferguson v. Thomas, 430 F.2d 852 (5th Cir. 1970). See, e.g., White v. S. Park Indep. Sch. Dist., 693 F.2d 1163 (5th Cir.1982) (); Hillis v. Stephen F. Austin State Univ., 665 F.2d 547 (5th Cir.1982) (same); Bradford v. Tarrant County Junior...
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