Ramsey v. Board of Educ. of Whitley County, Ky.

• Decision Date: 25 April 1988
• Docket Number: No. 87-5283,87-5283
• Citation: 844 F.2d 1268
• Parties: 46 Ed. Law Rep. 533 Barbara RAMSEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF WHITLEY COUNTY, KENTUCKY; and Ernie Siler, in his Official Capacity as Superintendent of Whitley County School System, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 1268

844 F.2d 1268

46 Ed. Law Rep. 533

Barbara RAMSEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF WHITLEY COUNTY, KENTUCKY; and Ernie Siler, in his Official Capacity as Superintendent of Whitley County School System Defendants-Appellees.

No. 87-5283.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 10, 1987.

Decided April 25, 1988.

Arthur L. Brooks (argued), Brooks, Coffman and Fitzpatrick, Lexington, Ky., for plaintiff-appellant.

Margaret A. Miller (argued), Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, Lexington, Ky., William H. McCAnn, for defendants-appellees.

Before NELSON and BOGGS, Circuit Judges, and EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge.

BOGGS, Circuit Judge.

Barbara Ramsey, a teacher in the Whitley County, Kentucky, school system sued the Whitley County School Board and the Superintendent of the Whitley County school system (collectively referred to as the Board) under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, claiming she was deprived of property without due process of law when the Board reduced the number of her accumulated sick leave days from 142 to 29 and consequently reduced her compensation for sick leave days when she retired. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Board after concluding that Ramsey's claim did not involve a deprivation of property actionable under section 1983 but instead was merely a commonlaw claim for breach of her employment contract and, consequently, actionable under state and not federal law.

We agree with the district court's conclusion that a state breach of contract action exists to remedy any deprivation of property Ramsey may have suffered. Accordingly there are no genuine issues as to material facts that would support an action under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Thus, we affirm the decision granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants.

I

Ramsey was eligible for retirement at the end of the 1985-86 school year after teaching in the Whitley County school system for thirty years. In 1981, the Kentucky Legislature authorized local school boards to compensate retiring teachers for their accumulated unused sick leave days if the Board desired. See Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 161.155(7) (Baldwin 1986).

Kentucky allows teachers ten days of compensated sick leave per year. Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 161.155(2) (Baldwin 1986). In 1956, when Ramsey began her employment with the school system, section 161.155 allowed a Kentucky teacher to carry forward only twenty days of unused sick leave unless the local school board authorized a greater number. In 1970, section 161.155 was amended, allowing sixty accumulated sick leave days, unless the local school board authorized a greater number. In 1974, section 161.155 was amended again, allowing a teacher to carry forward an unlimited number of sick leave days Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. Sec. 161.155(3) (Baldwin 1986).

On April 11, 1985, the Board officially adopted the following policy and recorded it in its minutes:

The Board of Education of Whitley County has not formally adopted the policy permitting the accumulation of unused sick leave days for each certified employee in the system in excess of the accumulation permitted by statute of the Commonwealth and no action of the said Board is recorded in the minutes maintained by the Board which provides for any accumulation in addition to the statutory amount. Therefore, following the statutory limitations, the maximum accumulation for purposes of the payments to be made under KRS 161.155(5) and the policy adopted by this Whitley County Board of Education shall be as follows:

(a) Prior to June 18, 1970, any certified employee could have accumulated a maximum of twenty (20) days.

(b) Prior to June 21, 1974, any certified employee could have accumulated a maximum of sixty (60) days (including the twenty (20) that could have been accumulated prior to June 18, 1970).

(c) Accumulated unused sick leave days thereafter at the rate of not more than ten (10) per year for a maximum total of eleven years or one hundred ten (110) days makes the maximum available at the close of the 1984-85 school year to be a total of one hundred seventy (170) (including the sixty (60) that could have been accumulated prior to June 21, 1974).

(d) Unused sick leave days will continue to accumulate at the rate of ten (10) per year in accordance with the present statutes of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and subject to change in accordance with any statutory changes.

(e) The Whitley County Board of Education, acting by and through its appropriate employees, will verify the exact number of unused sick leave days available to each certified employee at the end of the 1984-85 school year in accordance with this policy and the Kentucky statute which it follows.

Each teacher will be notified of the exact number of such accumulated sick leave days as of the end of the current school year which shall be the basis for payment of any benefits under this policy for the current school year and thereafter.

Before adopting this policy in 1985, the Board had not officially authorized accumulation of any sick leave days beyond the minimum required by the statute. However, Whitley County school officials routinely recorded an employee's total number of unused sick leave days accumulated over the course of employment on the employee's sick leave cards. The cards were used by school officials to monitor the number of sick leave days acquired and used by each employee for every year of employment. The officials added the unused sick leave days at the end of each year onto the previous year's accumulation. The resulting numbers were often in excess of the statutory maximums applicable prior to 1974. ¹

In accordance with this procedure, school officials recorded the total number of Ramsey's accumulated sick leave days on her sick leave cards for the years she was employed in the school system. By the end of the 1983-84 school year, Ramsey's cards indicated that she had 142 unused sick leave days. On June 27, 1985, the Board notified Ramsey that the number of her accumulated days had been reduced to 29 as a result of the Board's adoption of its official sick leave policy on April 11, 1985.

Ramsey filed suit against the Board in federal court claiming that the Board's unilateral elimination of the 113 sick leave days she had accumulated over the course of her employment deprived her of property without due process of law. She also claimed the Board's action violated the Kentucky Constitution and was a breach of her employment contract. Ramsey sought a court order that the Board restore her 113 days and pay the costs and attorney fees she incurred as a result of her lawsuit.

After some discovery, both parties filed motions for summary judgment. The district court assumed Ramsey was correct in her contention that the Board implicitly had allowed her accumulated sick leave days to become part of her employment contract by recording total accumulated sick leave days in excess of the statutory maximums on her sick leave cards. Nonetheless, the court concluded that Ramsey's claim only amounted to a simple breach of contract action based on a term of her employment contract and therefore, was not a deprivation of property actionable under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. Accordingly, the court granted the Board's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case.

II

Summary judgment is appropriate if, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion, there are no issues of material fact in dispute and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law "because the nonmoving party has failed to make a sufficient showing on an essential element of her case...." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2553, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986).

One essential element of an action under section 1983 is the existence of a constitutionally protected liberty or property interest. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 creates a federal cause of action for the deprivation of liberty and property interests protected by the United States Constitution or laws. See San Bernardino Physicians' Services Medical Group, Inc. v. County of San Bernardino, 825 F.2d 1404, 1407 (9th Cir.1987); accord Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2705, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). Thus, Ramsey must show she had a property interest in her accumulated sick leave days before she can establish that she was deprived of her interest without due process of law.

As the Supreme Court has explained, property interests "are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law--rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits." Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709. ² In a companion case to Roth, Perry v. Sinderman, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), the Court supplemented this basic definition by acknowledging that constitutionally protected property interests can be created by either explicit or implied contractual terms stating, "[e]xplicit contractual provisions may be supplemented by other agreements implied from 'the promisor's words and conduct in light of the surrounding circumstances.' " Perry, 408 U.S. at 602, 92 S.Ct. at 2700 (quoting 3 A.Corbin on Contracts Sec. 562). ³

Accordingly, the fact that Ramsey's claim to her accumulated sick leave days is not based on her written employment contract with the Board is not dispositive of the issue of whether she has a constitutionally protected property interest in those days. Construing the facts in the light most favorable to Ramsey, as we must do in this appeal of summary judgment against her, we hold that Ky.Rev.Stat.Ann. 161.155, as well as the recording of Ramsey's accumulated sick leave days on her sick leave cards by Whitley County school officials, could have created a legitimate claim of...