Opinion ID: 496641
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Threat of Discipline or Loss of Employment

Text: 12 The least speculative claim asserted by AFRP is that its members risk discipline if they fail to enforce Amtrak's policy. An Amtrak document submitted to the court in support of AFRP's preliminary injunction motion revealed that at least one disciplinary charge had been grounded in part on the officer's failure to implement the policy. This claim is ripe and reveals a genuine case or controversy, and AFRP has standing to assert it. Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 241 & n. 5, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 1925 & n. 5, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968). It has other flaws, however, that made dismissal appropriate. 13 To begin with, we note that AFRP members have no substantive constitutional right not to be disciplined or dismissed from their jobs. See, e.g., Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 1491, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985); Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). The complaint does not assert either a state-law property interest in employment, though there may well be one, or any denial by Amtrak of constitutionally required procedural protections in connection with disciplinary or dismissal proceedings. 14 AFRP's complaint also states that the Amtrak policy provides the policemen with no definition of the terms homeless and undesirable, and no guidelines or instructions as to standards or expected procedures. The district court properly construed this as an attack on a work rule promulgated by Amtrak. Since the terms and conditions of employment for Amtrak police personnel are governed by a collective bargaining agreement, resolution of AFRP's challenge to this work rule is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NRAB. See 45 U.S.C. Sec. 153 First (i). 15 Finally, AFRP asserts in its brief on appeal that the Amtrak policy mandates false arrest and excessive force, arguing in both its written and its oral presentations to this Court that Amtrak has instructed its policemen to beat homeless and undesirable persons. While such a policy would no doubt provide grounds for a suit by the victims of the false arrest or the excessive force, AFRP's assertions that this is in fact the nature of the policy--rather than simply AFRP's interpretation of it--lack support in the present record. The assertions that Amtrak has ordered beatings and excessive force are to an extent contradicted by AFRP's own complaint, which alleges that Amtrak has told AFRP members that Amtrak has authority to use necessary physical force to remove or eject homeless and undesirable persons. Moreover, though AFRP has repeatedly purported to quote Amtrak as ordering its policemen to beat indigents found in the station, no such instruction appears in any of the documents submitted by AFRP. When questioned at oral argument, AFRP counsel eventually conceded that his only support for the representations that Amtrak had instructed its policemen to administer beatings was a statement in one Amtrak memorandum that ejectment from Penn Station should begin during the warm weather months so that homeless and other undesirable persons would be educated that they could not remain in the station when the weather turned cold. The Amtrak policemen's unsubstantiated assumption that an instruction to educate[ ] is an instruction to use excessive force or administer a beat[ing] is an unacceptable basis for a federal claim.