Court Opinion

ID: 9467749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:55:38.98436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:30.389812
License: Public Domain

JAMES C. HILL, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I am troubled by a sense of some tension between our opinion in this case and the Supreme Court’s holding in Delaware State College v. Ricks, 449 U.S. -, 101 S.Ct. 498, 66 L.Ed.2d 431, not yet three months old. I am, however, persuaded that Judge Hatchett has correctly differentiated the cases for our panel. I concur with these additional observations.
My reading of Delaware State College is that Ricks’ injury was inflicted, completely, when tenure was denied and he was notified of the denial. Theretofore, he had substantial expectation of tenure; thereafter he had no basis for such expectation. His being given a one year terminal contract before ending his employment relationship with the college was in no way inconsistent with the finality of his injury. Indeed it appears that such further employment, under the practices at that institution, confirmed the lack of tenured status and did not reflect tentativeness. The deprivation of which Ricks complained was not employment per se, but tenured employment even though the damages flowing from the already inflicted injury may have been measured by loss of employment, itself.
In Delaware State College, the Court emphasized the significance of locating the precise civil rights violation alleged. The date of that violation commenced the appropriate state limitations period. Plaintiff’s cause of action would have survived in that case had he “identified the alleged discriminatory acts that continued until, or occurred at the time of, the actual termination of his employment.” 101 S.Ct. at 504 (footnote omitted). In the case before, us plaintiff’s complaint fairly read, alleges, inter alia, that defendants unlawfully failed to provide her with a hearing or notice of the charges that resulted in her dismissal. These alleged violations clearly continued until February 1977, when her dismissal was upheld by the university grievance committee1. Plaintiff’s complaint, filed some eight months later, was timely without regard to the Alabama law of tolling.

. In Delaware State College, the Court observed that a “grievance procedure, by its nature, is a remedy for a prior decision, not an opportunity to influence that decision before it is made.” 101 S.Ct. at 506 (emphasis in original). My analysis does not in the least bit conflict with that statement because of the crucial distinction between Delaware State College and the case before this Court, namely, that here the precise civil rights violations complained of occurred not only prior to the grievance procedure but also within the grievance procedure itself.