Opinion ID: 774990
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Demotion From Grade 27 to Grade 25

Text: 45 Similarly, Leventhal's demotion from a grade 27 to a grade 25 position was not offensive to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Leventhal concedes that his former grade 27 position as Principal Accountant was a contingent permanent position whose security depended upon John Chevalier, the person who had formerly occupied this position, being hired permanently at the grade 29 position of Director of Transportation Accounting and Fiscal Services. Leventhal was moved back to his former grade 25 position after Chevalier retreated to his former position as Principal Accountant. 46 Leventhal argues that the DOT could have kept both him and Chevalier at their former pay grades if the DOT had created a special 663 position - equivalent to a grade 29 position - for Chevalier after Chevalier failed to win appointment as permanent chief of the Accounting Section. This argument suffers from the same infirmity already discussed. Even assuming that Leventhal had standing to challenge the DOT's failure to create a job for Chevalier, the DOT has not conferred on someone in Chevalier's situation a right to having a special 663 position created whenever that employee fails to win the permanent placement desired. As a result, the DOT's failure to create such a position in this case did not deprive Chevalier and, consequently, Leventhal, of any property interest protected by the Due Process Clause. 47 Additionally, Leventhal implies that his constitutional liberty interest was harmed because his demotion `impose[d] on him a stigma or other disability that foreclose[s] his freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities or that might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community.' Brief of Plaintiff at 37 (quoting Roth, 408 U.S. at 573). On appeal, however, Leventhal has not specified anything within the allegedly stigmatizing material that is arguably false. This omission proves fatal to his claim. See Quinn v. Syracuse Model Neighborhood Corp., 613 F.2d 438, 446 (2d Cir. 1980) ([T]o constitute deprivation of a liberty interest, the stigmatizing information must be both false and made public by the offending governmental entity.) (internal quotation marks and ellipses omitted).