Opinion ID: 536159
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Objective Legality of Gilley's Actions in Light of Pre-existing Law

Text: 33 The Supreme Court's recent decision in Anderson makes clear that the constitutional right alleged to have been violated is not to be defined in such abstract terms as to make it impossible for officials reasonably to anticipate when their conduct may give rise to liability for damages. Id., 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. at 3039 (internal quotations omitted). Rather, 34 the right the official is alleged to have violated must have been clearly established in a more particularized, and hence more relevant, sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. 35 Id. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039. While the Court noted that the very act in question need not have been held unlawful, nonetheless in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent. Id. 36 While the district court seems to have recognized this principle, 692 F.Supp. at 1412, it has misapplied the standard to the facts of this case. The district court relied on Doe and Bartel to establish that it is a violation of a constitutionally protected liberty interest when the government is the source of the defamatory allegations and the resulting stigma involves some tangible change of status vis-a-vis the government. Siegert, 692 F.Supp. at 1415 (internal quotations omitted). 37 Although Doe and Bartel may stand for that proposition, and although the district court attempts an analogy between this case and Bartel, 692 F.Supp. at 1416, the effort fails because the court's definition of the right at issue in this case was insufficiently particularized to meet the requirements of Anderson. Doe involved the discharge of a Department of Justice employee who was at the same time accused by her supervisors of unprofessional conduct and dishonesty; it did not involve, as this case does, a response by a government official to a request for information about a former employee from a prospective government employer. 38 This is not an insignificant difference. Common law defamation itself recognizes both that there is a qualified privilege for reports on employees to prospective employers, Smolla, Law of Defamation Sec. 8.08[d], and that the privilege is more likely to be applicable when the information given is in response to a request rather than volunteered. Id. Sec. 8.08[b]. These common law privileges carry over into our due process analysis as it is the government's involvement, through Gilley, that transforms a [common law] defamation into a [constitutional] deprivation of liberty. Doe, 753 F.2d at 1108 (internal quotation and citation omitted). Even if the district court were to be found correct in its view that there is no constitutionally significant difference between terminating an employee directly amidst stigmatizing allegations and merely responding to a solicitation for a job reference, such a view cannot be said to follow ineluctably from Doe. 39 Bartel fares no better. While that case did involve a supervisor who, upon hearing of a former employee's attempt to gain another position, sent letters to several Federal Aviation Administration officials critical of the plaintiff, the letters were not sent in response to a request for an evaluation of a former employee. They were volunteered. In the instant case, by contrast, Gilley responded to a request for information about the employee's performance. Although there is some dispute as to whether the evaluation sought here was subjective or objective, the relevant question, under Anderson, is not whether Gilley misunderstood the nature of the information requested, but whether the constitutional right claimed by Siegert was so clearly established that a reasonable person would have known that a candid response to such an official inquiry might give rise to liability for damages. 40 We conclude that while Doe and Bartel illustrate circumstances in which a government official's stigmatizing comments will violate a former employee's protected liberty interest by effecting a change in his status vis-a-vis the government, they do not clearly establish, within the meaning of Harlow, that Gilley's actions amounted to such a violation. 41