Court Opinion

ID: 9476663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:01:42.615939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:26.278455
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I write separately even though I concur in Judge Ferguson’s opinion. This case calls upon us once again to engage in the difficult line-drawing enterprise of deciding whether a given employment situation gives rise to a cognizable property right under the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. I agree with the district court and with Judge Ferguson that Oregon law gave Merritt a constitutionally significant property interest in his continued employment. In my view, this conclusion follows not only from Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), but also Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), in which the Supreme Court recognized that a contractual interest in continued employment falls within the class of “property” interests that may be subject to procedural due process protections. Id. at 601, 92 S.Ct. at 2699. At heart, it is this Supreme Court precedent — liberating the definition of property from “rigid, technical forms,” id, —with which Judge Wallace is really quarrelling in his dissent. Thus, while I share his concern that our jurisprudence not afford constitutional status to the entirety of state contract law, I believe that we cannot escape the Supreme Court’s mandate explicit in Roth and Perry that state law can create a constitutionally significant property interest in an employment relationship.