Opinion ID: 1408458
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: procedural due process claim

Text: Mrs. Orr's procedural due process claim is based, in large part, on the fact that in 1973, the West Virginia Board of Regents gave college presidents the authority to grant faculty status to librarians. The plaintiff contends that in conversations with Drs. Adkins and Crowder in the fall of 1975 she was promised faculty status and that such faculty status would be made retroactive to July, 1971, the date on which she was first hired. Drs. Adkins and Crowder, while admitting faculty status was offered to Mrs. Orr, testified that they agreed to extend it back to July, 1974, not July, 1971. Mrs. Orr relies heavily on State ex rel. McLendon v. Morton, W.Va., 249 S.E.2d 919 (1978), where we provided some procedural due process rights to an assistant professor at a community college who had met the eligibility standards for tenure. In Syllabus Point 3 of McLendon we said: A teacher who has satisfied the objective eligibility standards for tenure adopted by a State college has a sufficient entitlement so that he cannot be denied tenure on the issue of his competency without some procedural due process. McLendon in turn relied on Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), and Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), where the United States Supreme Court recognized that property interests could not be withdrawn by governmental action without appropriate due process procedures. In Roth, the United States Supreme Court indicated that protected property interests were not limited to the traditional concepts of real and personal property. It pointed out that a benefit which merits protection as a property interest is one to which there is more than a unilateral expectation, and there must exist rules or understandings which can be characterized as giving the claimant a legitimate claim of entitlement to [the benefit]. 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d at 561. Roth involved an assistant professor at a state university who had been hired on a one-year contract that was not renewed. A state statute granted tenure after four years of continuous service. The United States Supreme Court held that since he did not have the requisite years of service, he did not have a protected property interest that would be afforded constitutional procedural due process protection. In Perry, a professor had been employed for four years at a junior college. He claimed that the college had a de facto tenure program under which he qualified. The United States Supreme Court concluded that his claim had been improperly dismissed since he was not given the opportunity to prove the existence of and his eligibility for the de facto tenure program. It concluded that if the professor could establish these facts, then he would have shown a legitimate claim of entitlement to tenure and would be entitled to procedural due process protection. The plaintiff's claim for tenure eligibility must be viewed against several facts which are undisputed. First, it was not until 1973 that the Board of Regents gave discretionary authorization to college presidents to extend grants of faculty status to librarians. Second, there was no formal policy adopted by the Board of Regents as to how the discretionary grant of faculty status for librarians should be awarded. Furthermore, there was no policy formulated with regard to whether a librarian given faculty status could receive credit toward tenure for the years worked prior to faculty status designation. It is this lack of any formal policy for retroactive faculty status that forms the heart of the controversy on the tenure eligibility issue. The plaintiff argues that she was promised faculty status retroactive to July, 1971. With this as her beginning date, plaintiff states that she would have accumulated five years of faculty status at the end of the 1975-76 academic year, which would have then given her tenure eligibility under McLendon. [3] The evidence on the offer of retroactive faculty status is diametrically opposed. The plaintiff asserts that after several meetings with Drs. Adkins and Crowder, she was orally promised faculty status back to her initial employment in July, 1971. According to the plaintiff, this promise was made in a meeting with Drs. Adkins and Crowder on November 20, 1975. On the following day, the plaintiff wrote a memorandum to Dr. Adkins requesting some time to consider the offer. Prior to receiving any response to this memorandum, Mrs. Orr wrote another memorandum to Dr. Adkins dated December 4, 1975, in which she accepted the offer of retroactive faculty status. The defendants deny making such a promise to the plaintiff. Near the end of 1975, Dr. Adkins advised the plaintiff that faculty status was granted to two other employees of the College's Learning Resources Center, retroactive to July 1, 1974. At this time, he also informed the plaintiff that her status would be determined after Christmas. The plaintiff wrote to Dr. Adkins requesting a decision on her faculty status and on February 24, 1976, Dr. Adkins responded that she would be granted faculty status effective July 1, 1974. This was confirmed by the College president, Dr. Crowder, in a letter dated April 6, 1976. We believe that it is fundamental under Roth and Perry, as well as under McLendon and related cases, that before a protected property interest, such as a right to tenure, can be found, something more than a unilateral expectation must be shown. Plaintiff must demonstrate that there existed some rules or understandings governing tenure eligibility fostered by the college upon which the college employees relied. We do not believe that the plaintiff can create in an ex parte fashion the rules or understandings tailored to the facts of her particular case. If this were possible, every claim involving a unilateral expectation would be converted to a legitimate claim of entitlement by a plaintiff testifying that tenure had been promised in his particular case. [4] The United States Supreme Court in both Roth and Perry took occasion to point out that legitimate claims of entitlement to job tenure are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law. Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. at 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d at 561. See also note 7, Perry, 408 U.S. at 602, 92 S.Ct. at 2700, 33 L.Ed.2d at 580. Here there was no showing of any such general understanding or rule with regard to retroactive faculty status. The plaintiff urges two additional points in regard to her procedural due process claim. First, she claims that Dr. Crowder was obliged to accept the recommendation of the faculty appeals committee, which had considered her claim for retroactive faculty status and had found that the plaintiff was entitled to faculty status as of July 1, 1971. However, there was no administrative policy at the College nor any requirement under the Board of Regents' Policy Bulletin No. 36 making such a recommendation binding upon Dr. Crowder. Under the Board of Regents' Revised Policy Bulletin No. 40, college presidents are empowered to make the final decisions at the college level on all personnel matters, [5] subject to the right of appeal to the Board of Regents under its Policy Bulletin No. 36. [6] Her other procedural due process issue was that she was entitled to be evaluated by a faculty member instead of by Dr. Adkins. The College had an evaluation policy, Defendants' Exhibit No. 3, and under it, Mrs. Orr as an administrator of the library was supposed to be evaluated by Dr. Adkins. We find no merit factually on this point. [7] For the foregoing reasons, we agree with the defendants that the plaintiff's procedural due process claim fails as a matter of law.