Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07210/USCOURTS-caDC-14-07210-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 18, 2015 Decided August 12, 2016

No. 14-7210

JAMES A. THOMPSON, JR.,

APPELLANT

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:97-cv-01015)

S. Micah Salb argued the cause for appellant. With him 

on the briefs was Dennis Chong.

Mary L. Wilson, Senior Assistant Attorney General, 

Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, 

argued the cause for appellee District of Columbia. With her 

on the brief were Karl A. Racine, Attorney General, Todd S. 

Kim, Solicitor General, and Loren L. AliKhan, Deputy 

Solicitor General.

Before: GRIFFITH, SRINIVASAN, and MILLETT, Circuit 

Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: In 1996, the District of 

Columbia Lottery and Charitable Games Control Board

terminated James Thompson, Jr.’s employment by assigning 

him to a position that had been marked for elimination only 

the day before. Thompson filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 

alleging in part that his termination violated his Fifth 

Amendment right to due process. In the almost twenty years 

since, the district court has dismissed Thompson’s complaint 

three times, and we have reversed two of those dismissals. 

Before us now is the district court’s most recent dismissal of 

Thompson’s complaint, as well as its denial of his motion for 

summary judgment. We reverse the district court again and 

remand for the district court to enter partial summary 

judgment for Thompson. Only two issues will then remain to 

be resolved on the merits: whether the District can be held 

liable under section 1983 for the violation of Thompson’s due 

process rights and, if it can, a determination of the damages.

I

James A. Thompson, Jr. is an experienced auditor and 

security systems expert. He served as the Chief of the 

Financial Division of the Metropolitan Police for several 

years before joining the Lottery and Charitable Games 

Control Board (Lottery) as an auditor in 1985. Once at the 

Lottery, he was promoted twice before becoming Security 

Systems Administrator in 1996. In this position, Thompson 

spearheaded efforts to identify threats to the integrity of the 

Lottery’s operations.

Thompson’s tenure soured, however, when several audits 

he supervised unearthed what he thought was unethical, if not 

illegal, behavior. For example, in a February 1996 audit, 

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Thompson found that equipment purchased by the Lottery 

from a subcontractor for almost $7 million had been placed on 

a depreciation schedule that gave the equipment “no monetary 

value” just five years later. J.A. 149-53. In his report, 

Thompson explained that Lottery officials had certified the 

computer equipment as worthless and returned it to the same 

subcontractor for “disposal” as part of a new purchase 

agreement. Id. The audit report described this as “an 

excessively costly business decision,” in part because the 

equipment likely had at least some monetary value due to 

recent upgrades. Id. at 150-51. Thompson concluded, as a 

result, that the “business arrangement [was] unethical at the 

best; and may be interpreted as a misappropriation of 

government assets, at worst.” Id. at 157. This conclusion, 

Thompson further noted, was consistent with news reports of 

misappropriation and fraudulent procurement activities at the 

Lottery.

1 Id.

Throughout the summer of 1996, Thompson brought the 

troubling conduct he had uncovered to the attention of his 

supervisor, the Lottery’s Executive Director, Frederick King.

But King refused to investigate the misconduct. Instead, King 

put an end to Thompson’s employment. On August 22, 1996, 

in the midst of a District budget crisis, King designated a 

Security Officer position for elimination through a reduction

 1 Thompson’s reports and the newspaper articles were not the 

only indications that the Lottery’s contracting practices were highly 

irregular. A later external investigation by the District’s Financial 

Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority confirmed 

that “the contracting practices of the Lottery . . . raise[d] serious 

questions of propriety and conflict of interest.” J.A. 165. The issues 

the Authority found were serious enough that the Lottery was 

required to revise one of its “major contracts.” Id.

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in force.2 The next day, King reassigned Thompson from his 

job as Security Systems Administrator to the doomed 

position. 

The Lottery gave Thompson no notice of this 

reassignment and offered him no hearing to challenge the 

action. In fact, the personnel form signed by King to 

effectuate the reassignment represented only that the action 

fixed “a classification error.” Regardless of what it was 

called, this fix left Thompson without a job because several 

days later, King called Thompson into his office to inform 

him that his position had been eliminated in a reduction in

force. King gave Thompson a personnel form explaining that 

he would be removed from service in 30 days and that he had 

a right to appeal that separation to the District’s Office of 

Employee Appeals. But the form made no mention of 

Thompson’s prior reassignment to the position that had been 

marked for elimination. As a result, it did not inform 

Thompson of any right he might have had to challenge that 

employment action. That same day, King also placed 

Thompson on paid leave for several weeks. While Thompson 

was eventually allowed to return to work in a temporary 

position, that position expired in January 1997, again leaving 

Thompson without a job. Soon after, the Lottery hired a new 

security manager. 

Later that same year, the Lottery Control Board removed 

King from office after an FBI investigation into the Lottery’s 

 2 A reduction in force is a “reduction in personnel caused by a 

lack of funding or the discontinuance or curtailment of a 

department, program or function of an agency” that has no 

“punitive or corrective” role. See Davis v. Univ. of D.C., 603 A.2d 

849, 852 n.8 (D.C. 1992). See generally William E. Slack & Mark 

G. Weisshaar, Note, Reduction in Force: A Guide for the 

Uninitiated, 44 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 642 (1976). 

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operations. The Board found that King had “expos[ed] the 

agency to liability” through his questionable “personnel and 

other actions.” J.A. 163. In particular, the Board identified 

King’s “dismantl[ing] the security division, [and thus] putting 

the agency at risk,” as a justification for his removal. Id.

On May 12, 1997, Thompson filed this action under 42 

U.S.C. § 1983, claiming, as relevant here, that he was denied 

his Fifth Amendment right to due process prior to his 

termination at the Lottery. See U.S. CONST. amend. V. After a 

motions practice that lasted seven years, the district court 

concluded that Thompson had failed to state a claim. We

reversed the district court in Thompson v. District of 

Columbia, 428 F.3d 283 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (“Thompson I”), 

holding that Thompson stated a claim when he alleged that he 

was transferred without due process to a position that was 

immediately eliminated in a reduction in force. Id. at 288.

On remand, the district court dismissed the case once 

again, this time concluding that because Thompson had no 

protected property interest in his position, he was unable to 

establish an essential element of a due process claim. 

Thompson v. District of Columbia, 478 F. Supp. 2d 5, 9-10

(D.D.C. 2007); see UDC Chairs Chapter, Am. Ass’n of Univ. 

Professors v. Bd. of Trs. of the Univ. of D.C., 56 F.3d 1469, 

1471 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (explaining that the two prongs of a 

due process claim are whether the employee was deprived of 

a protected interest, and if so, whether he received the process 

he was due). We reversed the district court in Thompson v. 

District of Columbia, 530 F.3d 914 (D.C. Cir. 2008) 

(“Thompson II”), holding that Thompson had a protected 

property interest in his position because he was a career civil 

servant under District of Columbia law and that he could not 

be removed from that position without due process. Id. at 

918-20. We also held that transferring Thompson to a 

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canceled position was a constructive removal from service 

that deprived him of his protected interest in his job. Id. at 

919. 

For nearly five years after this second remand, the district 

court presided over another lengthy pretrial process. On 

March 1, 2013, Thompson filed a motion for summary 

judgment, in which he argued that there were no factual issues 

left to be resolved after nearly sixteen years of discovery, and 

that the undisputed facts demonstrated that he was entitled to 

judgment as a matter of law. Almost a year later, the district 

court denied that motion without explanation in a minute 

order. Thompson then tried a new tack. He filed a motion to 

set a trial date or, in the alternative, to reassign the case to a 

judge who had docket space for an immediate trial. In his 

motion, Thompson pointed out that his case had stalled well 

past the four years that it takes an average litigant in our 

district courts to complete a trial and notified the court that he 

was of increasingly poor health and advanced age. 

The district court responded by holding a pretrial 

conference where the court directed the parties to file 

additional pleadings on what damages a jury could award 

Thompson. After considering the parties’ responses, and with 

no motion to dismiss before it, the district court entered a

minute order dismissing Thompson’s action for the third time. 

The written order that followed explained that Thompson 

could not recover compensatory damages for his termination 

unless he could show that he would not have been terminated 

had he been given due process. Thompson v. District of 

Columbia, No. 97–1015 (D.D.C. Feb. 18, 2015). In the 

district court’s view, Thompson had made no such showing.

Id. Thompson appealed. 

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We treat this most recent dismissal as a grant of summary 

judgment to the District, because the district court went 

beyond the pleadings. See id. (reasoning that Thompson “has 

offered no such evidence” to support his damages claim);

Yates v. District of Columbia, 324 F.3d 724, 725 (D.C. Cir. 

2003) (per curiam). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1291 to review the district court’s decision, as well as its 

earlier denial of Thompson’s motion for summary judgment.

Our review is de novo. Wilburn v. Robinson, 480 F.3d 

1140, 1148 (D.C. Cir. 2007). We view the evidence in the 

light most favorable to the party opposing summary 

judgment, draw all reasonable inferences in that party’s favor, 

and avoid weighing the evidence or making credibility 

determinations. Lathram v. Snow, 336 F.3d 1085, 1088 (D.C. 

Cir. 2003) (citing Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., 530 

U.S. 133, 150 (2000)). Summary judgment is appropriate only 

if “there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the 

movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” FED. R.

CIV. P. 56(a). There is a genuine issue of material fact “if the 

evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict 

for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 

477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). 

Because Thompson seeks to hold the District liable under 

section 1983, he must show not only that his right to due 

process was abridged, but that a policy or custom of the 

District caused the violation. See Warren v. District of 

Columbia, 353 F.3d 36, 38 (D.C. Cir. 2004). We conclude 

that Thompson has shown that his due process rights were 

violated and that this violation caused his alleged damages. 

Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment to the District and, in part, its denial of Thompson’s 

motion for summary judgment. But we remand to the district 

court to address whether the District can be held liable under 

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section 1983 for this violation and, if it can, for a 

determination of the amount of damages to which Thompson 

is entitled. 

II

We engage in a “familiar two-part inquiry” to determine 

whether Thompson’s due process rights were violated. See 

UDC Chairs Chapter, 56 F.3d at 1471 (quoting Logan v. 

Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 428 (1982)). We must 

determine whether Thompson was deprived of a protected 

interest, and, if so, whether he received the process to which 

he was entitled. Id. In Thompson II, we already decided 

Thompson was deprived of a protected property interest in his 

Security Systems Administrator position when he was 

transferred to the Security Officer position. 530 F.3d at 

918-20. Typically, we would then need only to ask whether 

Thompson received the process he was due. Because the 

District does not contest that Thompson received no notice of 

the reassignment that effectively ended his full-time 

employment work at the Lottery, our inquiry should be at an 

end. But the District resists this result on two separate 

grounds, neither of which has merit.

The District urges us to revisit our conclusion in 

Thompson II that Thompson was deprived of his property 

interest at the time of his assignment to the Security Officer 

position. Id. Our conclusion from Thompson II is not binding, 

the District contends, because there we were asked to review 

the dismissal of a complaint and had to accept as true 

Thompson’s allegations. But now that our review is at 

summary judgment, the District argues that a reasonable juror 

could question whether the Lottery’s employment action was 

a “transfer” and instead conclude that the Lottery merely 

“reclassified” Thompson. The District relies on a single 

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personnel form issued on the date Thompson was reassigned, 

which summarily states that the change corrected a 

classification error. Correcting this error, the District argues, 

is not a “transfer” that triggers any process.

But the argument that Thompson was “reclassified” 

rather than “transferred” rests on a distinction without a 

difference. The bottom line of our holding in Thompson II 

was that Thompson, as a career civil servant, was stripped of 

his property interest when he was placed in a position that had 

previously been marked for elimination. We will not revisit 

that legal conclusion now. See Crocker v. Piedmont Aviation, 

Inc., 49 F.3d 735, 739 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (“When there are 

multiple appeals taken in the course of a single piece of 

litigation, law-of-the-case doctrine holds that decisions 

rendered on the first appeal should not be revisited on later 

trips to the appellate court.”). Whether Thompson was 

“transferred” or “reclassified” into this position, he was 

effectively terminated at that time because the Security 

Officer position had already been slated for elimination. For 

our purposes, it is the substance of a constructive termination, 

and not the semantics of a “transfer” or “reclassification,” that 

matters in determining whether Thompson was deprived of 

his protected property interest in his job. 

We likewise reject the District’s argument that Thompson 

received all of the process that he was due. In support, the 

District points to the notice that Thompson received of his 

right to challenge the elimination of his new position in the 

reduction in force. But, as we explained in Thompson II, 

Thompson was constructively terminated at the time of his 

transfer, not when this new position was eliminated. He thus 

had a right to notice of that transfer and a hearing to challenge 

his transfer before it was made. See Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. 

Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 542 (1985) (explaining that 

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constitutional due process requires a hearing “prior to the 

discharge of an employee who has a constitutionally protected 

property interest in his employment” (emphasis added)); 

Thompson II, 530 F.3d at 919 (“District of Columbia and 

Circuit law . . . recognize[] a Career Service employee’s right 

to due process at the time of the allegedly pretextual action.”

(emphasis added)). The District does not contend that 

Thompson received any such notice or opportunity to contest 

the transfer. And, although the Supreme Court has indicated 

that a hearing may be postponed in “extraordinary situations

where some valid governmental interest is at stake,” Bd. of 

Regents of State Colls. v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 570 n.7 (1972)

(citation omitted), the District does not argue that any such 

circumstances existed in this case. At a minimum then, 

Thompson’s pre-deprivation right to due process was violated

when the District assigned him to a position scheduled for 

imminent elimination without notice or a hearing. 

Moreover, Thompson testified that he was never notified 

of his right to contest the transfer. The District never presents 

any evidence in rebuttal by showing, for example, that he was 

in fact notified of this right at a meaningful time after the 

constructive termination. See Propert v. District of Columbia, 

948 F.2d 1327, 1331-32 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (“The essence of 

due process is the requirement that a person in jeopardy of 

serious loss [be given] notice of the case against him and 

opportunity to meet it . . . at a meaningful time and in a 

meaningful manner.” (citations omitted)). The hearing the 

District offered Thompson to challenge the elimination of the 

Security Officer position did not give him a meaningful 

opportunity to contest the prior constructive termination

because Thompson was never notified that he could challenge 

that action. As a result, we conclude that Thompson’s right to 

due process was violated. 

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III

The District is correct that Thompson cannot recover 

compensatory damages arising from a termination that would 

have occurred even had he been given due process. See Carey 

v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 263 (1978); see also Montgomery v. 

City of Ardmore, 365 F.3d 926, 937 (10th Cir. 2004). But the 

district court erred when it granted summary judgment to the 

District on the ground that Thompson failed to show that, had 

he been given due process, he would have kept his job. Once 

a plaintiff establishes that he was terminated without due 

process and demonstrates damages arising from that 

termination, the defendant is responsible for those damages 

unless the defendant shows they would have occurred 

regardless. See, e.g., Brewer v. Chauvin, 938 F.2d 860, 

864-65 (8th Cir. 1991) (en banc). Because Thompson met his 

burden under this framework and the District failed to meet its 

burden, Thompson is entitled to recover any compensatory 

damages that he can show resulted from his termination.

In Mount Healthy City School District Board of 

Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977), the Court 

considered a suit for damages based on a claimed violation of 

the First Amendment. Doyle was an untenured teacher 

involved in several incidents of allegedly unprofessional 

behavior. Id. at 281-82. After the school board decided that 

Doyle should not be rehired, id. at 282-83 n.1, Doyle sued, 

claiming the decision violated his First Amendment right to 

free speech. The district court agreed and held that Doyle was 

entitled to backpay and reinstatement. Id. at 283-86. The 

Supreme Court affirmed that a constitutional violation had 

occurred, but concluded that the school board was entitled to 

“attempt[] to prove to a trier of fact that quite apart from such 

conduct Doyle’s record was such that he would not have been 

rehired in any event.” Id. at 286. The Court thus placed the 

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burden on Doyle to show that his conduct was constitutionally 

protected and a substantial factor in the school board’s 

adverse employment decision. Id. at 287. But once that 

burden was met, the school board could escape responsibility 

for the resulting damages by showing that it would have 

declined to rehire Doyle for reasons other than his conduct 

protected by the First Amendment. Id.

The Court reaffirmed this framework a year later in 

Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978). There, schoolchildren 

argued that they had been suspended without due process and 

sought compensatory damages. In reversing the district 

court’s dismissal of the complaints, the Seventh Circuit 

recognized that the defendants could avoid paying 

compensatory damages if they could show, on remand, that 

the children would have been suspended even with a hearing. 

Id. at 260. The Supreme Court agreed, id., and ever since then

has assumed that this framework applies when it considers 

damages for other constitutional torts. See, e.g., Texas v. 

Lesage, 528 U.S. 18, 21 (1999) (per curiam) (describing the 

underlying principle in constitutional tort claims as providing 

that “[t]he government can avoid liability by proving that it 

would have made the same decision without the 

impermissible motive”).

The best reading of Doyle and Carey—as the Third, 

Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits have 

held—is that a plaintiff can recover compensatory damages 

for a defendant’s unconstitutional conduct unless the 

defendant shows that the injury would have occurred 

anyway.

3 This rule is especially well suited to cases like 

 3 See Alexander v. Polk, 750 F.2d 250 (3d Cir. 1984); Wheeler 

v. Mental Health & Mental Retardation Auth. of Harris Cty., Tex., 

752 F.2d 1063 (5th Cir. 1985); Franklin v. Aycock, 795 F.2d 1253 

(6th Cir. 1986); Patkus v. Sangamon-Cass Consortium, 769 F.2d 

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Thompson’s, where the defendant is in the best position to 

prove an alternative, permissible justification for its adverse 

employment action. Accordingly, the district court erred when 

it granted summary judgment to the District on the basis that 

Thompson—the plaintiff—had not shown that he would have 

kept his job even given notice and a hearing. This was the 

District’s burden and no reasonable juror could conclude from 

the record that it was met.

The District protests that a reasonable juror could 

conclude that Thompson would have been terminated for 

cause based on an allegedly adverse performance evaluation 

that he received a month before his termination. But the

District conceded below that the “satisfactory rating” that 

Thompson received was not adverse. See Defs.’ Resp. to Pl.’s 

Statement of Material Facts that Are Not Disputed, No. 

97-cv-01015, J.A. 263 (“[T]he defendants deny that the 

plaintiff received any adverse performance evaluation in July 

3, 1996, and submit that the reason that he received a 

‘satisfactory rating’ is due to the fact that his supervisor only 

evaluated him for three months and did not have sufficient 

time to evaluate Mr. Thompson as a manager.”). The District 

cannot change its position now. In any event, a reasonable 

juror could not conclude that a “satisfactory” rating provided 

cause to fire Thompson. 

In sum, Thompson has done everything required to show 

that the damages arising from his termination were caused by 

the violation of his due process rights. The District has not 

met its burden to show that Thompson would have lost his 

position even if he had received due process and, as a result, 

 

1251 (7th Cir. 1985); Brewer v. Chauvin, 938 F.2d 860 (8th Cir. 

1991) (en banc); McClure v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 16, 228 F.3d 

1205 (10th Cir. 2000). But cf. Miner v. City of Glens Falls, 999 

F.2d 655 (2d Cir. 1993).

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we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment to 

the District and remand for the district court to enter partial 

summary judgment for Thompson as to the violation of his 

due process rights. 

IV

The District asserts that, even if Thompson was denied 

due process, Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 

U.S. 658 (1978), shields the city from liability for his 

termination. In Monell, the Supreme Court established that a 

municipality is liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for 

constitutional violations caused by its policies or customs. Id.

at 690-91. But “a municipality cannot be held liable solely

because it employs a tortfeasor—or, in other words, a 

municipality cannot be held liable under § 1983 on a 

respondeat superior theory.” Id. at 691. The injury must 

instead be inflicted by municipal “lawmakers or by those 

whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official 

policy.” Id. at 694. The Supreme Court has held that a single 

action can represent municipal policy where the acting official 

has final policymaking authority over the “particular area, 

or . . . particular issue.” McMillian v. Monroe Cty., 520 U.S. 

781, 785 (1997); City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 

123 (1988) (plurality opinion). Here, that means the District is 

liable for Thompson’s termination if King was a final 

policymaker for Lottery personnel decisions at the time of the 

reduction in force that cost Thompson his job. But the district 

court did not reach this issue and we cannot decide it on the 

inadequate record before us. As a result, we must remand this 

issue to the district court for further development.

Determining whether an official is a final policymaker 

for section 1983 purposes is no simple task. See Auriemma v. 

Rice, 957 F.2d 397, 400 (7th Cir. 1992) (describing the 

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decisions of the circuits on this issue as “so varying that there 

is little point in canvassing them”). While the Supreme Court 

has resolved that the question is a legal one for the court to 

decide based on state or local law, Jett v. Dallas Indep. Sch. 

Dist., 491 U.S. 701, 737 (1989), the Court has not settled on a 

precise test for determining what type of authority under local 

law makes an official a “final policymaker.” Its prior plurality 

opinions have emphasized that to hold a municipality liable 

for an official’s one-time action, the official must have final 

policymaking authority in the particular area, and the 

challenged action must have been taken pursuant to that 

authority. See Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 123 (plurality opinion); 

Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 482-83 (1986) 

(plurality opinion).

In analyzing whether the official had policymaking 

authority in the area at issue, a plurality of the Court has 

identified two guiding inquiries. First, if the official’s 

decisions were constrained by policies enacted by others, then 

“those policies, rather than the subordinate’s departures from 

them, are the act of the municipality.” Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 

127 (plurality opinion). And second, if the official’s decisions

were reviewable by the city’s “authorized policymakers,” then 

the official is not the final policymaker. Id. A plurality in 

Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati offered the following 

hypothetical to explain that an official is not a “final 

policymaker” merely because he has the authority to make 

discretionary decisions:

[T]he County Sheriff may have discretion to hire and fire 

employees without also being the county official 

responsible for establishing county employment policy. If 

this were the case, the Sheriff’s decisions respecting 

employment would not give rise to municipal liability, 

although similar decisions with respect to law 

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enforcement practices, over which the Sheriff is the 

official policymaker, would give rise to municipal 

liability. Instead, if county employment policy was set by 

the Board of County Commissioners, only that body’s 

decisions would provide a basis for county liability. This 

would be true even if the Board left the Sheriff discretion 

to hire and fire employees and the Sheriff exercised that 

discretion in an unconstitutional manner; the decision to 

act unlawfully would not be a decision of the Board. 

However, if the Board delegated its power to establish 

final employment policy to the Sheriff, the Sheriff’s 

decisions would represent county policy and could give 

rise to municipal liability.

475 U.S. at 483 n.12 (plurality opinion). 

Here, the District contends that King was not a final 

policymaker for the District’s personnel decisions. According 

to the District, King possessed the same authority as the 

hypothetical Sheriff—i.e., even though King, as the Executive 

Director of the Lottery, had discretion to hire and fire 

individual employees, the Lottery Board maintained final 

authority over both King and his personnel decisions. In 

support, the District points to a provision of the city code that 

gave the Board authority to direct and supervise King’s 

employment of others at the Lottery. See D.C. CODE 

§ 3-1303(d)(3) (2001) (“The Executive Director shall, subject 

to the direction and supervision of the Board . . . [e]mploy 

other assistants and employees in accordance with the District 

of Columbia Government Comprehensive Merit Personnel 

Act of 1978.”); see also id. § 2-2503 (1981) (same). 4

 4 It appears that the 1992 and 1998 supplements to the D.C. 

Code, where cited in this section, contain the same language that 

was in effect at the time of Thompson’s termination. However, we 

were unable to locate an authoritative copy of the 1996 Supplement 

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According to the District, this provision cabined King’s 

power to make personnel decisions by subjecting his 

decisions to oversight from the Board. Further, the District 

urges that the provision constrained King’s discretion by 

requiring him to comply with the Comprehensive Merit 

Personnel Act (CMPA), which required that a career civil 

servant receive notice and a hearing before termination. The 

District argues that it cannot be subject to liability for King’s 

deviation from that official municipal policy, because, in the 

Supreme Court’s terms, the official “polic[y], rather than the 

subordinate’s departures from [it], [is] the act of the 

municipality.” Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 127 (plurality opinion).

If our analysis were constrained to a single provision in 

the city code, the District’s argument would be more 

persuasive than it is. Looking at this provision in tandem with 

other parts of the code, we conclude there is significant reason 

to believe that King was a final policymaker with regard to 

the types of Lottery personnel decisions that led to 

Thompson’s constructive termination. We have already 

recognized that King had “absolute discretion ‘to identify 

positions for abolishment’” for the purposes of the reduction

in force at the time of Thompson’s constructive termination. 

See Thompson I, 428 F.3d at 287 (citing D.C. CODE

§ 1-625.5(a) (1996 Supp.)). The D.C. Code further provided 

that King would “make a final determination that a position 

within the [Lottery] is to be abolished.” D.C. CODE

§ 1-625.5(b) (1998 Supp.) (repealed) (emphasis added); see 

also Budget Support Temporary Act of 1995, D.C. Law 

11-78, tit. IV(b). 

 

to the D.C. Code. On remand, the parties should provide and cite to 

the law in effect in 1996, at the time of Thompson’s termination.

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Moreover, the record is replete with evidence that King 

exercised his authority over personnel matters without any 

control by other District officials. See Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 

145 (Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment) (noting that 

under section 1983, “the law is concerned not with the 

niceties of legislative draftsmanship but with the realities of 

municipal decisionmaking, and any assessment of a 

municipality’s actual power structure is necessarily a . . . 

practical one”); see also Jett, 491 U.S. at 737 (The court 

determines who is a final policymaker by “[r]eviewing the 

relevant legal materials, including state and local positive law, 

as well as custom or usage having the force of law.” (citation 

omitted)). King admitted, for example, that he alone drew up 

the list of positions to be terminated, moved employees 

around to avoid adverse repercussions from the reduction in

force, and decided on the number and types of employees 

who should be eliminated. Indeed, King testified that no one 

supervised his decisions about personnel actions, and no 

evidence suggests otherwise. J.A. 90-92. Read together, the 

D.C. Code and King’s testimony indicate that King’s 

decisions were not in fact “review[ed]” by the “authorized 

policymakers” that the District argues constrained King. 

Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 127 (plurality opinion); see also Ware 

v. Jackson Cty., 150 F.3d 873, 882 (8th Cir. 1998) (“[T]he 

existence of written policies of a defendant are of no moment 

in the face of evidence that such policies are neither followed 

nor enforced.”); cf. Daskalea v. District of Columbia, 227 

F.3d 433, 442 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (holding a “‘paper’ policy 

cannot insulate a municipality from liability where there is 

evidence . . . that the municipality was deliberately indifferent 

to the policy’s violation”).

Nor is it clear that other policies restricted King’s ability 

to terminate Thompson, such that those policies, “rather than 

the subordinate’s departures from them,” were the act of the 

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municipality. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 127 (plurality opinion). 

As Executive Director of the Lottery, King was the designated 

“personnel authority” for all Lottery employees except 

himself and the Deputy Director. See D.C. CODE 

§ 1-604.6(b)(14) (1992 Supp.). This meant that King was at 

least empowered to implement “rules and regulations” 

governing Lottery personnel matters. See id. § 1-604.6. In

fact, the code presumed that he would also issue rules, 

regulations, and standards pursuant to this authority. Id.

§ 1-604.1 (“Further, it is the intent of the Council that the 

rules, regulations, and standards issued by the personnel 

authorities under this chapter should be as flexible and 

responsive as possible and reflect an awareness of innovation 

in the fields of modern personnel management and public 

administration.” (emphasis added)). Moreover, the District 

fails to point to evidence in the city’s laws that might indicate 

that the Board ever exercised any of its authority to constrain 

King’s policymaking by passing its own personnel policies to 

“direct” him. See Vodak v. City of Chicago, 639 F.3d 738, 

747-48 (7th Cir. 2011) (concluding that a subordinate was a 

final policymaker despite a city council having authority that 

it did not use to enact ordinances to constrain the 

subordinate’s authority). 

At the time of Thompson’s termination, King’s personnel 

policies also seem to have been removed from the ordinary 

rules of oversight that the District points to as evidence that 

the Board maintained the ability to direct and supervise 

King’s personnel decisions. See D.C. CODE § 1-625.5(g)

(1998 Supp.) (repealed). In fact, the District seems to have 

expressly exempted King from the ordinary requirements of 

the CMPA in making these decisions. See id. § 1-625.5(a) 

(“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, regulation, or 

collective bargaining agreement either in effect or to be 

negotiated while this legislation is in effect for the fiscal year 

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ending September 30, 1996, each agency head is authorized, 

within the agency head’s discretion, to identify positions for 

abolishment.”); see also id. § 1-625.5(c) (“Notwithstanding 

any rights or procedures established by any other provision of 

this subchapter, any District government employee . . . who 

encumbers a position identified for abolishment shall be 

separated without competition or assignment rights, except as 

provided in this section.”). The Council may thus have

delegated final policymaking authority to King over Lottery 

personnel matters at the time of Thompson’s termination, 

even if other municipal bodies also had policymaking 

authority.

Contrary to the District’s argument, our decision in 

Singletary v. District of Columbia, 766 F.3d 66 (D.C. Cir. 

2014), does not prevent this conclusion. In Singletary, we 

determined that the District could not be held liable under 

Monell for the Board of Parole’s decision to revoke 

Singletary’s parole because the Board was not a final 

policymaker when it came to parole revocation. Id. at 73-74. 

The Mayor had final rulemaking authority for parole 

revocations, which he had delegated to the Board’s 

Chairperson, who had played no role in the decision to revoke 

Singletary’s parole. Id. Even though the Board had final 

authority over the decision, it lacked the requisite 

policymaking authority under District law. Id. at 74. But here, 

District law gives us reason to believe that King might have 

held such final policymaking authority with regard to Lottery 

personnel matters. Accordingly, Singletary does not foreclose 

the conclusion that King may have set the municipal policy 

that was used in Thompson’s termination.

Because neither party has fully briefed the impact of 

these provisions on the Monell analysis, however, we remand 

this issue to the district court for it to consider in the first 

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instance. On remand, Thompson may also present his 

alternative arguments for the District’s liability under 

Monell—e.g., that the District had developed a “policy or 

practice” of unconstitutional terminations at the Lottery.

V

Finally, we address Thompson’s request that we reassign 

the case on remand. Although we are concerned with the 

district court’s treatment of this case on the last remand, 

particularly the decision to sua sponte dismiss the case, the 

court’s actions have not triggered the need for reassignment. 

See United States v. Wolff, 127 F.3d 84, 88 (D.C. Cir. 1997) 

(establishing that impartiality, the appearance of justice, and 

the possibility of waste and duplication are the three factors 

considered for reassignment). We are confident that the 

district court will act expeditiously on remand in this case.

VI

The district court’s order granting summary judgment to 

the District of Columbia is reversed, the district court’s denial 

of Thompson’s summary judgment motion is reversed in part, 

and the case is remanded to the district court for further 

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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