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

Heading: Leventhal's Due Process Claim

Text: 41 Leventhal claims that when the DOT demoted him and failed to award him a salary increase, it did so without the due process guaranteed to him by the Fourteenth Amendment. This claim fails because Leventhal did not possess a property or liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause in either his former job grade or the salary increase. 42 In order to be protected by the Constitution against the deprivation of a government benefit without due process of law, a claimant must have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it. Bd. of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577 (1972). The expectation of entitlement is typically derived from existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law-rules or understandings that secure certain benefits. Id.; see also Bernheim v. Litt, 79 F.3d 318, 322 (2d Cir. 1996) (To state a cause of action under the [D]ue [P]rocess [C]lause, a plaintiff must show that she has a property interest, created by state law, in the employment or the benefit that was removed.).
43 Leventhal's discretionary salary increase was not a form of property protected by the Constitution against deprivation without due process of law. On September 28, 1998, the DOT notified Leventhal that, because of the pending disciplinary charges against him, he would not receive the 3.5% salary increase granted to most other management employees. The salary increase could, by law, be withheld from any employee who, in the opinion of the director of the budget, had substandard job performance or when the increase was otherwise unwarranted. 1995 N.Y. Laws Ch. 314 § 3(11). 7 44 Because Leventhal cannot satisfy the threshold requirement that the salary increase was his property, the claim that he was deprived of the increase without due process of law must fail. See Bernheim, 79 F.3d at 323 ([W]here the complained-of conduct concerns matters that are within an official's discretion, entitlement to that benefit arises only when the discretion is so restricted as to virtually assure conferral of the benefit.).
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).