Opinion ID: 804143
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Loss of a De Facto License

Text: The plus in this case also cannot be the loss of Mead's de facto license to serve as the administrator of an assisted living facility. Some circuits have observed that, when a government body controls entry into a profession through means 2 We are not swayed by Mead's citation to Wroblewski v. City of Washburn, in which the Seventh Circuit suggested that the loss of private employment could be the plus in a stigma plus case, see 965 F.2d 452, 456 (7th Cir. 1992), because Pendleton is clearly to the contrary. Of course, a plaintiff who has been discharged from a non-government job as a result of government action still may assert unreasonable government interference with private employment, even if he or she is foreclosed from proceeding under a stigma plus theory. -13- short of the issuance of a formal license, a de facto licensing scheme may exist. For example, in Philips v. Vandygriff, the Fifth Circuit held that such a scheme existed in Texas because, by industry custom, individual savings and loan associations would not hire managerial employees without the approval of the Commissioner of the Texas Savings and Loan Department. See 711 F.2d 1217, 1222 (5th Cir. 1983); see also Bannum, Inc. v. Town of Ashland, 922 F.2d 197, 201 (4th Cir. 1990) ([The government's] power to withhold its approval . . . is equivalent to a power to withhold a business opportunity and amounts to a de facto licensing power). If we were to follow these circuits, there might be some force to Mead's argument that a de facto license is a government benefice. In turn, the revocation of a de facto license, like the loss of a government job, might be a valid plus insofar as it effects a change in the injured person's status or rights under substantive state or federal law. Silva, 130 F.3d at 32. That is essentially the conclusion reached by the Sixth Circuit in Mertik v. Blalock, albeit without reference to the de facto license terminology preferred by Mead. See 983 F.2d 1353, 1363 (6th Cir. 1993) (holding that the plus could be based on city's revocation of instructor's permission to use public ice skating rink for private lessons). We need not decide whether to follow these circuits, however, because the complaint in this case does not allege that -14- any de facto license was ever taken from Mead by DHHS. Mead's appellate briefing asserts that she lost her status as a DHHS approved administrator of a licensed assisted living facility and that [t]his status is the functional equivalent of a license because . . . Mead cannot be an administrator of a licensed assisted residential care facility without this status. That assertion, though, is belied by the allegations in the complaint. The complaint alleges only that DHHS barred Mead from working as the administrator of Goldeneye, not that DHHS excluded Mead from other assisted living facilities. Indeed, the complaint makes clear that DHHS permitted Mead to remain in her position as the administrator of IA's fourteen other facilities, which is inconsistent with the notion advanced in Mead's briefing that DHHS revoked any de facto license. As we have already explained, IA deprived Mead of her position as an administrator of licensed assisted living facilities, not DHHS.