Opinion ID: 789575
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiff's liberty interest claim

Text: 38 Adverting again to the Due Process Clause, the plaintiff asserts that the stigma she suffered from public accusations of criminal behavior, combined with the tangible loss of her position as a community board member, amounted to a constitutionally cognizable deprivation of liberty without sufficient process. 11 To state a valid claim for such an injury, Velez's complaint must assert (1) that she possessed a cognizable liberty interest, and (2) that the defendants deprived her of that same liberty without providing process adequate to justify their actions. See DiBlasio v. Novello, 344 F.3d 292, 302 (2d Cir.2003); Vega v. Miller, 273 F.3d 460, 470 (2d Cir.2001). 39
40 A § 1983 liberty interest claim of this sort — commonly referred to as a stigma plus claim, see, e.g., Sadallah v. City of Utica, 383 F.3d 34, 38 (2d Cir.2004) — requires a plaintiff to allege (1) the utterance of a statement about her that is injurious to her reputation, that is capable of being proved false, and that he or she claims is false, and (2) some tangible and material state-imposed burden ... in addition to the stigmatizing statement. Doe v. Dep't of Pub. Safety ex rel. Lee, 271 F.3d 38, 47 (2d Cir.2001), rev'd on other grounds, Connecticut Dept. of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1, 123 S.Ct. 1160, 155 L.Ed.2d 98 (2003). The defamatory statement must be sufficiently public to create or threaten a stigma; hence, a statement made only to the plaintiff, and only in private, ordinarily does not implicate a liberty interest. See, e.g., Donato v. Plainview-Old Bethpage Cent. School Dist., 96 F.3d 623, 631-32 (2d Cir.1996). Similarly, because [a] free-standing defamatory statement ... is not a constitutional deprivation, but is instead properly viewed as a state tort of defamation, id., the plus imposed by the defendant must be a specific and adverse action clearly restricting the plaintiff's liberty — for example, the loss of employment, see, e.g., Siegert v. Gilley, 500 U.S. 226, 233, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991) (noting that [d]efamation, by itself, is a tort actionable under the laws of most States, but not a constitutional deprivation, and that absent a plus, stigmatizing statements do not give rise to constitutional claims), or the termination or alteration of some other legal right or status. Neu v. Corcoran, 869 F.2d 662, 667 (2d Cir.1989). 41 In a typical stigma-plus case, the stigmatizing statement originates from the same state actor who imposes the plus, such as when a government employer defames an employee in the course of terminating that employee. See, e.g., Donato, 96 F.3d at 630; Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). But Velez complains of a less single-sourced injury. She alleges that the board member defendants, by making false charges of harassment and terrorism against Velez, created a significant public stigma. (Indeed, Velez asserts that the board member defendants caused their fabricated claims to appear in local newspapers, as well as in assorted radio and television programs.) It is undisputed, however, that the board members did not themselves directly impose the plus asserted by Velez — namely, her removal from office, which only Levy had the power to bring about. Velez's stigma-plus claim, therefore, involves a stigma that did not originate from the same party who inflicted the plus. Given our clear holdings that stigma without plus is insufficient to support a stigma-plus claim, and vice versa, see, e.g., Donato, 96 F.3d at 630, it might seem to follow that Velez's complaint is fatally flawed. 42 That is not, however, required by the precedents on this issue. Though we have never directly addressed the question, other circuits have approved of stigma-plus claims in which the plus was imposed separately from any explicit stigmatizing statement. For example, in McGhee v. Draper, 639 F.2d 639 (10th Cir.1981), the Tenth Circuit found a liberty deprivation where a number of parents and students made stigmatizing statements at school board meetings and asked for a specific plus, which the defendant school board eventually imposed by terminating the plaintiff. See id. at 643; McGhee v. Draper, 564 F.2d 902, 906-07 (10th Cir.1977) (earlier opinion giving factual background). In so doing, the Tenth Circuit noted that [t]ypically, when one's liberty interest is allegedly infringed upon by a discharge from employment, the termination or non-renewal will either explicitly state the stigmatizing factors or implicitly ratify some other stigmatizing allegations. Thus, the discharge will either cause or contribute to the alleged defamation. In either case, the defamed's liberty `to engage in any of the common occupations of life' is diminished, and the defamation has occurred `in the course of the termination of employment.' McGhee, 639 F.2d at 643 (emphasis added) ( quoting Roth, 408 U.S. at 572, 92 S.Ct. 2701, and Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 710, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976)). See also Bishop v. Tice, 622 F.2d 349, 352-54 (8th Cir.1980) (holding that the stigmatizing statements of two defendants, made at the direction of a third defendant, in conjunction with the imposition of a plus — the denial of administrative remedies — by the third defendant, stated a valid claim for deprivation of plaintiff's liberty interest); Marrero v. City of Hialeah, 625 F.2d 499, 519-20 (5th Cir.1980) (holding, where stigma and plus were imposed by the same actors, that the defamatory communication need not cause the loss of the protected right, or more tangible interest, in order to satisfy the stigma-plus requirement, because it is sufficient that the defamation occur in connection with, and be reasonably related to, the alteration of the right or interest) (emphasis added). Thus, it would seem that, even where a stigma and plus are not imposed by the same actor, a stigma-plus claim may be valid if the stigma and plus were connected. See id. (concluding that plaintiff presented a valid § 1983 claim since the fact that the public perceived the defamatory charges to be connected to the discharge was sufficient to give rise to a liberty interest); cf. Owen v. City of Independence, Missouri, 445 U.S. 622, 626-29, 633 & n. 13, 100 S.Ct. 1398, 63 L.Ed.2d 673 (1980) (upholding stigma-plus claim against a municipality, where the stigmatizing statements were originally made in private by the official imposing the plus and were actually released to the public by another municipal actor who made additional stigmatizing statements; the Court did this on the basis that the accusations had received extensive coverage in the press, and even if they did not in point of fact `cause' petitioner's discharge, the defamatory and stigmatizing charges certainly `occur[red] in the course of the termination of employment.') ( quoting Paul, 424 U.S. at 710, 96 S.Ct. 1155). 43 We now hold that perfect parity in the origin of both the stigma and the plus is not required to state the infringement of a stigma-plus liberty interest. And the absence of a stringent source parity requirement is hardly surprising, given our rules on temporal proximity. When government actors defame a person and — either previously or subsequently — deprive them of some tangible legal right or status, see Abramson v. Pataki, 278 F.3d 93, 101 (2d Cir.2002), a liberty interest may be implicated, even though the stigma and plus were not imposed at precisely the same time. See, e.g., Ulrich v. City and County of San Francisco, 308 F.3d 968, 983 (9th Cir.2002) (holding that the temporal separation of stigma and plus does not bar a stigma-plus claim if the defamatory statements were, in substance, so closely related to discharge from employment that the discharge itself may become stigmatizing in the public eye) (internal quotation marks omitted); Patterson v. City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322, 335 (2d Cir.2004) (noting that successful stigma-plus claims require rough temporal proximity between stigma and plus, but not actual contemporaneity). 44 It follows that in ascertaining whether a complaint alleges the deprivation of a stigma-plus liberty interest, we need only determine that both stigma and plus are claimed to be sufficiently proximate. This requirement will be satisfied where (1) the stigma and plus would, to a reasonable observer, appear connected — for example, due to their order of occurrence, see Ulrich, 308 F.3d at 983, or their origin, see McGhee, 639 F.2d at 643 — and (2) the actor imposing the plus adopted (explicitly or implicitly) those statements in doing so. There is no rigid requirement, therefore, that both the stigma and the plus must issue from the same government actor or at the same time. 12 45 The First Circuit's decision in Hawkins v. Rhode Island Lottery Commission, 238 F.3d 112 (1st Cir.2001), is not to the contrary. In Hawkins, the Rhode Island Lottery Commission removed the plaintiff from office after a flurry of negative publicity in which his conduct in office was criticized, primarily by the state's governor, defendant Lincoln Almond, id. at 113. Almond, however, could not force plaintiff's termination; only the Lottery Commission had that authority. Accordingly Almond, in his public complaints, called on the Commission to remove the plaintiff. But the Commission, in its termination of the plaintiff, uttered no defamatory statements, and instead specifically denied that its actions were an endorsement of Almond's stigmatizing claims. Significantly, the Commission issued a press release a few days before [plaintiff's] termination stating that a new Lottery Director should be selected not because plaintiff (the then-current Lottery Director) was dishonest and incompetent (as Almond had publicly and repeatedly claimed), but because the controversy surrounding [the plaintiff] was diverting law makers' attention from more pressing state problems, and the selection of a new Lottery Director would end the controversy. Id. at 116 n. 8. To be sure, the First Circuit noted that the party responsible for the alleged defamation was not the party responsible for the termination, but this was only one piece of evidence tending to show that there was no actual connection between the stigma and plus. And this lack of connection was the fundamental reason no due process violation occurred; the court pointed, for example, to the fact that Almond neither spoke for the Commission nor controlled its actions. Id. at 116 & n. 8. Little wonder, then, that the First Circuit held that the plaintiff had failed to state a viable due process claim. Id. at 116. 46 Velez, in contrast, asserts that not only did none of the defendants seek to separate the removal decision from the allegedly stigmatizing statements, but that the Chancellor's decision to exclude her from office was expressly based on her purportedly criminal and inappropriate behavior. In other words, Velez alleges that the board members made, and sought to publicize in local news sources, highly stigmatizing statements that explicitly requested her removal by Chancellor Levy. She also asserts that Levy responded to the board members' charges by removing her from office on the basis of those charges. Thus, Velez's complaint claims that the board members imposed a stigma and asked for a plus, and that the Chancellor, against the backdrop of, and based upon, the board members' statements, imposed the very same plus requested by the board members, thereby adopting the stigma. Taking these allegations as true, we conclude that this combination of activities implicated Velez's stigma-plus liberty interest, and that Velez adequately asserts the deprivation of such an interest. We leave for later the question of who, if anyone, may be liable for the deprivation of that interest. 13 47
48 Defendants submit that Velez's stigma-plus claim should, nonetheless, be dismissed because Velez has been afforded adequate process in the form of a post-removal hearing. The district court, having found, as we have, that the plaintiff possessed a cognizable liberty interest, agreed with the defendants that the opportunity, which Velez received, to clear her name after the fact was all the process to which she was entitled. 49 In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on Donato, in which we remanded a stigma-plus claim and ordered a name-clearing inquiry. We there wrote: A hearing must be held for the limited purpose of giving a discharged employee an opportunity to clear her name. A name-clearing hearing significantly reduces the risk that an employee will be dismissed with false stigmatizing charges placed in her personnel file. See Donato, 96 F.3d at 633. Pointing to that language, the district court in the instant case observed, [t]he appeals process that the plaintiff took advantage of not only allowed the plaintiff to contest the findings of the investigative report, but also her removal from office, and as a result of this process, the plaintiff was restored to School Board # 1. 274 F.Supp.2d at 453. Since, the court reasoned, Velez concededly received this ex post process, she failed to allege a valid stigma-plus, procedural due process claim. Id. 50 The district court, when it so concluded, did not, however, have the benefit of our recent decision in DiBlasio v. Novello, 344 F.3d 292 (2d Cir.2003). In a context similar to the one before us, DiBlasio reconfirmed the long-standing and well settled proposition that an ex post, as opposed to a pre-removal, hearing is inadequate to satisfy the dictates of due process where the government actor in question is a high-ranking [state] official with `final authority over significant matters.' Id. at 302 (quoting Burtnieks v. City of New York, 716 F.2d 982, 988 (2d Cir.1983)). 51 In DiBlasio, the commissioner of the New York Department of Health issued a press release indicating that he had suspended the license of the plaintiff, a radiologist, based on a finding of incompetence and of criminal[ ] behavior. Id. at 295. The plaintiff sued the commissioner, asserting, among other things, a stigma-plus liberty violation. On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the district court dismissed the due process claim, citing Hellenic Am. Neighborhood Action Comm. v. City of New York, 101 F.3d 877, 880 (2d Cir.1996). ( Hellenic American amplified the Supreme Court's distinction between (a) claims based on established state procedures and (b) claims based on random, unauthorized acts by state employees, id., and emphasized that, because the state is in no position to provide adequate pre-deprivation process in the latter case, post-deprivation review is adequate. Id. But in so holding, it also indicated that where established state procedures are involved, pre-removal hearings will normally be required. Id. ) On its reading of Hellenic American, the district court in DiBlasio concluded that the commissioner's statements required only a post-deprivation proceeding. 52 On appeal we held that the district court had erred in this conclusion. We started from the long accepted premise that due process dictates that persons ordinarily deserve some kind of hearing prior to the deprivation of a liberty interest, 344 F.3d at 302, and that it is only where the state is effectively unable to anticipate and prevent a random deprivation of a liberty interest, [that] post deprivation remedies might satisfy due process. Zinermon v. Burch, 494 U.S. 113, 132, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990). For this reason, we held that post-deprivation remedies do not suffice where the government actor in question is a high ranking official with `final authority over significant matters' DiBlasio, 344 F.3d at 302 (quoting Burtnieks v. City of New York, 716 F.2d 982, 988 (2d Cir.1983)); see also Dwyer v. Regan, 777 F.2d 825, 832 (2d Cir.1985). Since the state acts through its high-level officials, the decisions of these officials more closely resemble established state procedures than the haphazard acts of individual state actors that the Hellenic American exception was designed to cover. DiBlasio, 344 F.3d at 303. The health commissioner's actions in DiBlasio could therefore not be deemed to be random or unauthorized, and pre-removal process was required. On that basis, plaintiff's liberty interest claim was reinstated. Id. 14 53 Here, with respect to Chancellor Levy, our reasoning in DiBlasio applies with equal force. Levy is precisely the sort of high ranking official identified by this line of cases. Just as in DiBlasio, where the commissioner had the authority to suspend summarily DiBlasio's license, and had the duty as commissioner to ensure that the department followed the prescribed procedures governing summary suspensions, id. at 304, Levy had the authority to remove Velez, and the duty as Chancellor to follow the governing New York statutes and regulations. And, as in DiBlasio, any abuse of that authority that rose to the level of a due process violation cannot be considered `random and unauthorized.' Id. 15 Accordingly, Velez was entitled to a pre-deprivation hearing before Levy executed the decision to remove her from the board. 16 54 It follows that the plaintiff's allegation that the Chancellor acted without providing an adequate pre -deprivation hearing states a valid claim under the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution. 17 We hold otherwise, however, with respect to the plaintiff's procedural due process cause of action against the board members. To begin with, it seems to us likely that the board members' alleged acts — inventing a story of the plaintiff's criminal behavior in an effort to secure her removal from the board — fall within the random and unauthorized exception articulated in Hellenic American. More important, none of the board member defendants had the power to provide process to the plaintiff. They did not undertake or oversee the investigation, and they could order neither pre-removal review nor post-removal remedies. As a consequence they cannot be held legally accountable for the alleged process failure. 55 The same is true as to the investigators, Hyland, DeLeo, and Colon. Velez alleges that the investigators acted in concert with the Chancellor in effecting her removal from office. [JA116] But Velez concedes that the investigators had no legal authority to bring about her ouster, for only Levy was empowered to impose that plus. Accordingly, Velez's complaint does not state a theory under which the investigators can be taken to have deprived Velez of her stigma-plus liberty interest. They are not alleged to have uttered the stigma at issue, and they could not have imposed the plus to which she avers. We therefore affirm the district court's dismissal of Velez's liberty interest claim against the investigators. 56