Opinion ID: 503061
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Alleged Liberty Interest

Text: 19 The district court held that the Department's March 8, 1983 letter gave Mrs. Robinson a [constitutionally] protected interest and expectation that suspension of her visitation privileges would be limited to one year. 619 F.Supp. at 350. We find that determination incorrect. The March 8, 1983 Whitfield-Freeman letter, we do not doubt, led the Robinsons to expect that Mrs. Robinson's suspension would last only one year. Director Palmer's subsequent February 29 and April 9, 1984 letters to the Robinsons just as surely disappointed those expectations. But expectation of a benefit is not enough to generate a liberty interest protected by the Constitution. See, e.g., Connecticut Bd. of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. 458, 465, 101 S.Ct. 2460, 2464, 69 L.Ed.2d 158 (1981) (felon's expectation that his sentence will be commuted is simply a unilateral hope); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 228, 96 S.Ct. 2532, 2540, 49 L.Ed.2d 451 (1976) (felon's expectation that he will remain at a particular prison too insubstantial to invoke due process protections). Nor does every disappointment or grievous loss visited upon a person by the State ... suffic[e] to invoke the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause. Meachum, 427 U.S. at 224, 96 S.Ct. at 2538. 20 Jago v. Van Curen, 454 U.S. 14, 102 S.Ct. 31, 70 L.Ed.2d 13 (1981) seems to us so closely in point as to control the Robinsons' liberty interest claim. In that case, a prisoner challenged the Ohio Adult Parole Authority's rescission, without a hearing, of its decision, conveyed to the prisoner by written notice, to grant him early release. Distinguishing precedent concerned with property interests, the Supreme Court held that the mutually explicit understanding generated by the Parole Authority's early release notice created no protected liberty interest entitling the prisoner to a hearing before rescission of the early release decision. 21 The March 8, 1983 Department letter on which the Robinsons rely, like the early release determination in Jago, may indeed have created a mutually explicit understanding. But if the official early release decision in Jago created no liberty interest, we do not think it rational to accord heavier weight to the advice Mrs. Robinson initially received. See also Connecticut Bd. of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U.S. at 465, 101 S.Ct. at 2464 (rejecting argument that Pardon Board's past course of conduct had given rise to an unspoken understanding between Board and inmates capable of generating constitutional protection under the liberty interest rubric). 22 As the Supreme Court has cautioned us, protected interests in the prison setting are necessarily limited: 23 We would severely restrict the necessary flexibility of prison administrators and parole authorities were we to hold that any one of their myriad decisions with respect to individual inmates may ... give rise to protected liberty interests which could not thereafter be impaired without a constitutionally mandated hearing under the Due Process Clause. 24 Jago, 454 U.S. at 19, 102 S.Ct. at 35. Mindful of that admonition, we reverse the district court's determination that the March 8, 1983 Whitfield-Freeman letter created a liberty interest in the restoration of Mrs. Robinson's visiting privileges after the one-year suspension. 4 We also reverse the award of nominal damages tied to that determination.