Opinion ID: 2708757
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of the Post-Termination Hearing

Text: After Carmody was fired, he notified the university that he would appeal. He received a document summarizing the hearing procedures, and his attorney Kirchner responded with a letter objecting to a number of perceived deficiencies. The objections relevant to this appeal were that the procedures did not provide for access to examine the university’s email system, or for a court reporter or other means of recording the hearing, or for subpoenas to witnesses. The university refused Carmody’s requests to alter these aspects of the hearing procedures. The hearing officer’s report, attached as an exhibit to Carmody’s complaint, shows that Carmody’s lawyer was permitted to cross-examine the university’s witnesses extensively. The university rested its case in mid-December 2010, and the hearing was to resume at the end of January 2011 for Carmody to present his evidence. Scheduling conflicts between attorney Kirchner and counsel for the university delayed resumption, which was rescheduled for May 2011. On April 17, however, Kirchner died. Carmody was left unrepresented. Carmody then asked to see the hearing officer’s notes, which he felt would help him find a new attorney. The hearing officer denied that request, but he granted Carmody’s request for a few months to replace No. 13-2302 17 Kirchner. Although the university sought a specific deadline, the hearing officer explained that he would not “set firm time limits on Mr. Carmody’s efforts to secure new representation.” At the end of June 2011, Carmody sent the hearing officer an email declining to participate in further proceedings. He said the hearing officer should conclude the post-termination hearing with the university’s counsel. The hearing was not resumed, and instead the university submitted a written summary of its position. The hearing officer issued his findings in July 2011. He concluded that the university had not shown that Carmody himself breached the computer system to obtain the emails in Group Exhibit A. (The university’s evidence showed that the emails were all accessed from Deborah Thurston’s computer, and no direct evidence showed that Carmody was the person who accessed them.) But the hearing officer found that the other two charges—Carmody used the emails for non-university purposes without permission and failed to report a security breach—were supported “clearly and convincingly.” Based on his findings, the officer recommended that university officials consider whether Carmody would have been fired on those grounds alone, without assuming that Carmody himself had breached the system’s privacy. The university informed Carmody the following month that the two “clearly supported” charges were “sufficiently egregious to warrant immediate dismissal.” Following the rejection of his posttermination appeal, Carmody filed this federal lawsuit. In his complaint, Carmody alleges that one or more of the issues attorney Kirchner identified when he objected to the 18 No. 13-2302 hearing procedures constituted a denial of due process. He focuses on his inability to record the hearing, to inspect the university’s email system, and to subpoena witnesses. He also points to the hearing officer’s refusal to supply him with the officer’s notes and the officer’s refusal to exclude witnesses from the hearing while other witnesses were testifying. The district court explained that, under Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 334–35 (1976), Carmody’s right to his employment and the probable value of his desired procedures must be balanced against the cost of the procedures and the university’s interest in terminating problem employees. The court concluded in short that Carmody’s ability to defend himself was not unduly hindered by the hearing’s purported deficiencies, meaning that he had not stated a claim based on a denial of due process. Carmody, 2013 WL 2145878 at –11.
The requirements of due process are “flexible” and depend on the situation at hand, Mathews, 424 U.S. at 334, but at the same time the rules that apply to a given type of situation “are shaped by the risk of error inherent in the truthfinding process as applied to the generality of cases,” id. at 344. The rules are not shaped by “rare exceptions.” Id. On appeal Carmody again lists additional procedures he believes should have been provided, but he develops no argument that the potential value of these procedures in posttermination hearings, when weighed against their cost, renders them constitutionally required. He cites a few cases involving post-termination hearings in which a more extensive record was produced, e.g., Willer v. Las Vegas Valley Water Dist., No. No. 13-2302 19 98-15686, 1999 WL 274472, at  (9th Cir. Apr. 19, 1999) (posttermination hearing record was over 3700 pages long); English v. Talladega Cnty. Board of Educ., 938 F. Supp. 775, 777 n.2 (N.D. Ala. 1996) (transcript was produced), or unspecified discovery was conducted, e.g., Powers v. Richards, 549 F.3d 505, 509 (7th Cir. 2008) (fired employee “had the opportunity to conduct discovery”). Carmody cites no case, however, holding that any of his desired procedures were constitutionally required, and we have found none. The ability to subpoena witnesses, for example, is not always guaranteed in an administrative hearing. See Amundsen v. Chicago Park Dist., 218 F.3d 712, 717 (7th Cir. 2000). In any event, the specific procedures Carmody requested do not require individual analysis. Carmody’s decision to bow out of the post-termination hearing—a decision he made freely—forecloses his due process claim to the extent it is premised on that hearing. See Swank v. Smart, 999 F.2d 263, 264–65 (7th Cir. 1993) (employee waived right to post-termination hearing by declining it); Farhat v. Jopke, 370 F.3d 580, 596 (6th Cir. 2004) (“[W]here the employee refuses to participate or chooses not to participate in the post-termination proceedings, then the employee has waived his procedural due process claim.”). We are not suggesting that no circumstances could ever justify forgoing a post-termination hearing. (We allowed above for just such a possibility regarding Carmody’s pre-termination hearing: a court order prohibiting meaningful participation.) But the complaint and exhibits show that the university offered Carmody an adversarial post-termination hearing before a neutral hearing officer. He was permitted to have legal counsel 20 No. 13-2302 and to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses. Carmody participated through the close of the university’s case but declined to complete the hearing. His explanation on appeal for bowing out—that he did not want “to participate in his own lynching”—is hyperbole that is completely out of step with his exhibits and allegations. The district court correctly rejected Carmody’s due process claim to the extent it was premised on the post-termination hearing. Carmody also appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to amend his complaint, but he has given us no indication what allegations he would like to add. In general, a district court should freely give leave to amend to cure curable defects, at least where there is no undue delay or undue prejudice to the opposing party, but the court can reasonably expect a party asking for an opportunity to amend to identify how he proposes to cure the defects. E.g., Independent Trust Corp. v. Stewart Information Services Corp., 665 F.3d 930, 943–44 (7th Cir. 2012). We see no reason to disturb the district court’s decision on this point. III. Illinois State Officials and Employees Ethics Act Claim Carmody also claims that his firing violated the provision of the Illinois State Officials and Employees Ethics Act that prohibits retaliation against employees who report illegal activity. See 5 Ill. Comp. Stat. 430/15-10. This claim is based on Carmody’s belief that his firing actually had nothing to do with the emails he found in his newspaper box. He was fired in 2010, he contends, in retaliation for a report he made three years earlier, in May 2007, about improper activity at the university. According to his complaint, he had learned that two No. 13-2302 21 professors were using a popcorn machine on university property as part of “a private consulting deal” of some sort. He reported this so-called “popcorn activity” to Professor Deborah Thurston (of the later Goldberg case), but she took no action, in Carmody’s view because her husband was one of the perpetrators. Carmody’s only reason for believing that his report about the popcorn led to his firing seems to be that the popcorn incident occurred and then later he was fired. If the allegations in a complaint do not “‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,’” the claim cannot survive a motion to dismiss. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009), quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). The district court concluded that Carmody did not state a plausible claim under the Ethics Act because the three years separating the popcorn incident and his firing made his claim implausible. Carmody, 2013 WL 2145878, at –13. We agree with that assessment, at least where Carmody has given us no potential explanation for the long delay between his report and the alleged retaliation. Under these circumstances, three years is “well beyond the time that would allow a reasonable jury to conclude that his termination was causally related” to the report. See Lalvani v. Cook Cnty., Illinois, 269 F.3d 785, 790 (7th Cir. 2001) (concluding that a year and a half between employee’s action and supposed retaliation made claim implausible). Again Carmody seeks leave to amend his complaint, but nothing in his appellate filings identifies new allegations or suggests that an amendment would make his claim plausible. For these reasons, we REVERSE the district court’s judgment dismissing Carmody’s due process claim and REMAND the case for further proceedings limited to whether he was 22 No. 13-2302 denied a constitutionally adequate pre-termination hearing. We AFFIRM the dismissal of Carmody’s claim under 5 Ill. Comp. Stat. 430/15-10.