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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 15, 2004 Decided January 4, 2005

Reissued February 22, 2005

No. 03-5303

MARTHA HUTCHINSON,

APPELLANT

v.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY AND

PORTER J. GOSS, DIRECTOR, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

AGENCY,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 99cv03118)

Roy W. Krieger argued the cause and filed the briefs for

appellant.

Charles W. Scarborough, Attorney, U.S. Department of

Justice, argued the cause for appellees. On the brief were Peter

D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth L. Wainstein,

U.S. Attorney, and Mark B. Stern and Catherine Y. Hancock,

Attorneys.

USCA Case #03-5303 Document #868856 Filed: 01/04/2005 Page 1 of 8
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Before: GINSBURG, Chief Judge, and TATEL and ROBERTS,

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: The Central Intelligence Agency

fired appellant Martha Hutchinson following three years of poor

performance ratings. Convinced she didn’t get a fair shake,

Hutchinson seeks relief on two grounds: under the Privacy Act,

5 U.S.C. § 552a(g)(1)(C), based on an alleged omission from her

file during an internal appeal; and under the Fifth Amendment

for alleged due process violations. Finding no error in the

district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of

defendants, we affirm.

I.

In 1988, having received a B.A. in geography with

distinction from George Mason University, appellant Martha

Hutchinson became an imagery analyst at the CIA’s National

Photographic Interpretation Center. In CIA-speak, Hutchinson’s

job was to prepare “baselines” of “targeting components” or

“TCOMs.” In plain English, she analyzed satellite photos of

intelligence-worthy locations, identifying typical features in

order to detect changes over time. After she corrected a

deficient baseline for a key location, Hutchinson alleges, she

suffered from a practice she says is “known colloquially as

‘flipping TCOMs.’” (Appellant’s Br. at 12.) Again, to translate,

her supervisors moved her rapidly from one assignment to

another, seeking—she claims—to mar her performance.

On her next annual performance review, Hutchinson

received a lackluster three out of seven. She earned the same

score the following year, and the year after that her rating sank

to two, indicating “marginal” performance. After she received

a second two on a special review just three months later, the

Special Activities Staff of the CIA’s Office of Personnel

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Security informed her that a “Personnel Evaluation Board”

would convene nine days later “to discuss your performance and

suitability for continued employment.”

An SAS officer explained to Hutchinson that although she

could not appear before the board in person, she could submit

written comments and materials. Hutchinson did so, but the

board nonetheless reached a “consensus” decision to terminate

her for poor performance. Given a choice either to resign and

accept a thirty-day contract or to appeal the PEB decision to the

CIA’s Executive Director Nora Slatkin—known as the

“EXDIR”—Hutchinson chose the latter course. When Slatkin

affirmed the PEB, Hutchinson appealed to the Director of

Central Intelligence (“DCI”), and he, too, affirmed.

Alleging emotional and economic harm due to her firing,

Hutchinson sued the CIA and several officials. Although

Hutchinson asserted various theories of relief, and sought to add

further claims and parties in an amended complaint, the district

court, responding to defense motions, whittled the suit down to

two counts: a Privacy Act claim against the CIA and a due

process claim against George Tenet, then the DCI, in his official

capacity. See Hutchinson v. Tenet, No. 99-3118 (D.D.C. Mar.

20, 2002); Hutchinson v. Tenet, No. 99-3118 (D.D.C. Jan. 28,

2003). Following limited discovery, the district court granted

summary judgment for the defendants on both claims. See

Hutchinson v. Tenet, No. 99-3118 (D.D.C. Aug. 28, 2003).

Hutchinson now appeals the summary judgment ruling.

Our review is de novo. See, e.g., Maydak v. United States, 363

F.3d 512, 515 (D.C. Cir. 2004).

II.

Hutchinson’s Privacy Act claim relates to an alleged

omission from the file reviewed by EXDIR Slatkin. In an Equal

Employment Opportunity proceeding unrelated to this case,

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Hutchinson submitted an affidavit alleging that the correction of

an analytic “remark” she prepared—one justification for her

second rating of two—contradicted previous guidance

Hutchinson had received and was “rife with referent errors.”

Because the CIA maintains separate records for PEB and EEO

proceedings, the PEB never considered this affidavit.

Hutchinson, however, could submit the affidavit to the EXDIR,

and she alleges she did so—but thinks the document may never

have arrived.

Pointing to correspondence indicating that EXDIR Slatkin

had received no “additional information for me to review on

your behalf” save a memorandum “stat[ing] that you do want to

appeal the PEB decision,” Hutchinson maintains that “the record

is at best ambiguous” as to whether Slatkin actually considered

the affidavit. (Appellant’s Br. at 23.) Hutchinson makes this

claim even though the CIA’s file now includes that document

and even though when she wrote back that she had sent

correspondence “[o]n five (5) separate occasions,” Slatkin

responded, “I can understand your anxiety, and I want to

reassure you that the information you sent to me did arrive.”

According to Hutchinson, the alleged omission of the affidavit

breached the CIA’s duty to “maintain all records which are used

by the agency in making any determination about any individual

with such accuracy, relevance, timeliness, and completeness as

is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual in the

determination,” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(5), entitling her to relief

under the Privacy Act, id. § 552a(g)(1)(C).

We agree with the district court that Hutchinson’s Privacy

Act claim founders on at least two grounds. First, the record

fails to support the claim’s factual premise, namely, the absence

of the affidavit from the EXDIR’s file. Although we must draw

reasonable inferences in favor of Hutchinson, the non-moving

party at summary judgment, see, e.g., Beckett v. Air Line Pilots

Ass’n, 59 F.3d 1276, 1279 (D.C. Cir. 1995), we think it

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unreasonable to suppose, absent evidence to the contrary, that

EXDIR Slatkin did not mean what she said when she wrote,

“[T]he information you sent to me did arrive.” Citing an OPS

date stamp on the letter advising Slatkin of the prior mailings,

Hutchinson asserts that the OPS “was intercepting and perhaps

filtering all of Appellant’s efforts to communicate with the

EXDIR.” (Appellant’s Br. at 24.) Yet because the letter bearing

the stamp clearly made it to the EXDIR—after all, Slatkin

responded to it—the stamp suggests no such thing. Nor does

Slatkin’s failure to list the documents she received cast doubt on

whether the affidavit arrived: Hutchinson’s letter referred

specifically to the mailing that included the affidavit, making it

illogical to suppose that the EXDIR would have responded as

she did—“I want to reassure you that the information you sent

to me did arrive”—had she not received that document. In

short, Hutchinson’s claim rests on speculation, and as the district

court concluded, “Plaintiff’s speculation does not create a

genuine issue of material fact as to whether the account of the

false correction was properly maintained in her personnel

records.”

Shifting focus, Hutchinson argues in her reply brief that

even if EXDIR Slatkin reviewed the documents Hutchinson

sent, the EXDIR likely failed to consider twenty classified pages

from the affidavit. Whereas Hutchinson submitted five

unclassified pages—two of which discuss the correction—her

cover memo to the EXDIR stated, “Pages six through 25 of my

sworn statement are classified evidence, hence I can only refer

you to CIA/OEEO [Office of Equal Employment Opportunity]

to procure these pages.” Though now claiming that these twenty

pages were critical, Hutchinson has forfeited this argument, for

she raised it neither in her opening brief nor, as far as we can

tell, in the district court. See, e.g., United States v. Hylton, 294

F.3d 130, 135-36 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (“For decades, we have

emphasized that an argument not made in the lower tribunal is

deemed forfeited and will not be entertained absent exceptional

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circumstances.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Chedick v.

Nash, 151 F.3d 1077, 1084-85 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (“Because

[plaintiff] made this argument for the first time in her reply

brief, it is forfeited.”).

The second flaw in Hutchinson’s claim is that the record

fails to show proximate cause—a vital element of a section

552a(g)(1)(C) claim. See Deters v. U.S. Parole Comm’n, 85

F.3d 655, 657 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (listing elements). Asserting that

the correction of her remark caused the off-cycle evaluation,

which, in turn, triggered the PEB proceedings, Hutchinson

argues that “[l]ittle could be more conclusive of probable

cause.” (Appellant’s Br. at 26.) This analysis connects the

wrong dots. To state a Privacy Act claim, Hutchinson must

show not that the correction led to her termination, but rather

that the omission of her affidavit regarding the correction caused

the EXDIR and DCI to affirm where otherwise they might not

have done so.

Hutchinson cannot make that showing because both

decision-makers focused on her overall poor performance, rather

than any one incident. The OPS memo on which EXDIR

Slatkin based her decision, for example, referred to

Hutchinson’s “sustained poor performance despite intensive

counseling, encouragement, mentoring, and detailed Advance

Work Plan (AWP) over a two-to-three year period.” It then

listed five examples—without ever mentioning the correction of

her remark. Even the off-cycle evaluation, to which Hutchinson

attributes her termination, devoted only a few lines to the

correction amid a discussion of performance problems extending

for three single-spaced pages. True enough, the affidavit might

have bolstered Hutchinson’s claim that her supervisors were out

to get her. Yet while neither EXDIR Slatkin nor the DCI

blocked Hutchinson’s firing, both were aware of her account

switches: Hutchinson told the PEB—in a document she does

not dispute was forwarded to Slatkin—that she “was . . .

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averaging a new account every five to six months,” and her

memo to the DCI asserted, “I had an account for any time from

two weeks to one year,” creating “the near continual condition

that all targets were unfamiliar.” If the account changes failed

to explain Hutchinson’s poor performance, as EXDIR Slatkin

and the DCI evidently concluded, then her supervisors’ motives

for “flipping TCOMs” were irrelevant.

Given the powerful evidence of long-term performance

deficiencies and the EXDIR’s and DCI’s rejection of

Hutchinson’s account-switching theory, no reasonable factfinder could conclude, even viewing the record in Hutchinson’s

favor, that the alleged withholding of the EEO affidavit caused

the EXDIR and DCI to uphold her termination. We therefore

agree with the district court that the record provides no basis for

relief under the Privacy Act.

III.

As to her second claim, Hutchinson correctly points out that

a government employee may be deprived of liberty without due

process if the employing agency combines adverse job action

with “official defamation” or “a stigma or other disability that

foreclosed the plaintiff’s freedom to take advantage of other

employment opportunities.” O’Donnell v. Barry, 148 F.3d

1126, 1140 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks and

brackets omitted); see also Bd. of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564,

573 (1972). Alleging that her termination forced her to abandon

her chosen career in geography analysis, and emphasizing that

a summary of the PEB proceedings listed “cognitive skills

deficit, limited insight, and grandiose self view” among “major

topics discussed,” Hutchinson argues that defendants violated

this standard.

As the district court observed, however, the record shows

neither “that the CIA disparaged [Hutchinson] to potential

private sector employers,” nor that she suffered “a stigmatic

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injury, aside from the stigma associated with being fired for

poor performance,” nor even that “the CIA has disclosed or will

disclose to anyone the reasons for the plaintiff’s termination.”

In fact, Hutchinson herself accuses the CIA only of discharging

her for “purported deficient performance and publicizing this

fact.” (Amended Compl. ¶ 47.) As we explained in Harrison v.

Bowen, 815 F.2d 1505, 1518 (D.C. Cir. 1987), unsatisfactoryjob

performance “does not carry with it the sort of opprobrium

sufficient to constitute a deprivation of liberty.” Thus, even

assuming that the characteristics discussed by the PEB factored

in its decision, and even assuming that such attributes could be

stigmatizing if publicized, Hutchinson has failed to establish

injury to any constitutionally protected interests. Absent such

injury, we need not consider whether, as Hutchinson claims, the

notice she received and certain other aspects of her termination

violated procedural due process standards. See O’Donnell, 148

F.3d at 1141-42 (affirming summary judgment where plaintiff

failed to establish injury to a protected interest).

IV.

Because neither of Hutchinson’s claims afford any basis for

relief, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment.

So ordered.

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