Opinion ID: 775784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Stigma-Plus Claim

Text: 13 Vega contends that he was denied a liberty interest without procedural due process, grounding his alleged interest on an allegation that the Defendants stigmatized him by making defamatory statements in the course of terminating his employment. The Supreme Court has made clear that the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard are prerequisites to government action--including employment termination--that places a person's good name, reputation, honor, or integrity at stake. See Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 573 (1972). The charges must be made public by the government employer, Brandt v. Board of Co-op Educational Servs., 820 F.2d 42, 43 (2d Cir. 1987), the employee must allege that the charges are false, id., and the alleged defamatory statements must be made in the course of terminating the defendants, see Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 710 (1976). 11 14 Vega contends that he was stigmatized by both a memo that was placed in his personnel file and by oral statements of some of the Defendants. Whether or not the alleged stigmatizing statements occurred after Vega's termination, as the Defendants contend, or in the course of termination, as he contends, see Saulpaugh v. Monroe Community Hospital, 4 F.3d 134, 144 (2d Cir. 1993) (liberty interest implicated only if defamatory statement made in the course of termination of employment), there was no violation of a federally protected right. 15 As to the memo, it merely reports Vice-President English's meeting with Vega on August 17, 1994, at which English asked Vega if the resident advisor's notes fairly reflected the content of the clustering exercise and Vega replied that they did. There is nothing false in the memo. As to the oral statements, Vega takes some liberties with the record in recounting them. For example, he contends that DeSimone and English informed the entire department that Professor Vega was a pornographer and a sexual harasser. Brief for Appellee at 42. The cited record references to English's deposition reveal that sexual harassing was used only in a question put to English and not adopted in his answer, and that English accurately referred to the words used in the clustering exercise as pornographic, 12 but did not label Vega a pornographer. The only cited remark that appears to be false is Admiral Miller's remark to English that Vega had drawn dirty pictures. Even if a stigmatization claim could arise from a statement that a plaintiff had put dirty pictures on a blackboard when in fact he had placed dirty words there, there is no evidence that Miller's remark was conveyed to anyone other than his fellow administrator, English. See White Plains Towing Corp. v. Patterson, 991 F.2d 1049, 1064 (2d Cir. 1993) (stating that no court had determined whether a stigma-plus claim could be grounded on a statement communicated only within a police department). The stigma-plus claim fails for lack of evidence. At a minimum, it was objectively reasonable for the Defendants to believe that their actions did not violate a clearly established federal right.