Court Opinion

ID: 9489606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:19:37.228752+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:36.959220
License: Public Domain

ALTIMARI, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I vote to affirm the judgment of the district court in full.
I concur in the majority’s decision, except with respect to Donato’s alleged liberty interest. I firmly believe that this Court has gone too far. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to protect probationary employees against negative job evaluations. Accordingly, I must dissent with the majority’s decision to the extent that the liberty interest determination can be read broadly to grant a due process right to all those public employees who are dismissed with negative job evaluations.
The majority suggests that the outcome regarding Donato’s alleged liberty interest is dictated by Huntley v. Community Sch. Bd., 543 F.2d 979 (2d Cir.1976). I cannot agree. The Court in Huntley stated that a liberty interest arises when a public employee is faced with such an overwhelmingly negative job evaluation as to go to “the very heart of [that employee’s] professional competence.” Id. at 985. As the Court concluded in Huntley, “it [was] abundantly clear that Huntley’s chances of obtaining a supervisory position in the public school system [had] been drastically impaired.” Id. While Donato’s job evaluation was by no means laudatory, her future supervisory employment was not foreclosed to the same degree as was Huntley’s.
Unlike the broad-based condemnation of Huntley’s performance, Donato’s evaluation was of a different character. Huntley’s job failures were broadly stated and encompassed the whole range of professional tasks associated with any supervisory position in the public school system. Donato’s alleged failures, on the other hand, can in large part be summarized by the final stated reason for her termination — “[[Ineffective commitment to the Middle School.” (emphasis added). As such, while Donato’s evaluation is unlikely to assist her in acquiring a future supervisory position, much of Donato’s reputed job failure concerned her professional inefficacy at the middle school level and is unlikely to foreclose the possibility of a supervisory position at some other level. Compare O’Neill v. City of Auburn, 23 F.3d 685, 691 (2d Cir.1994) (defendant had been described by employer generally as “incompetent”); Huntley, 543 F.2d at 985 (Board’s publicly announced charges of incompetence went “to the very heart of Huntley’s professional competence” and “drastically impaired” his chances of. receiving another supervisory position “in the public schools or elsewhere.”) (emphasis added).
Finally, I firmly believe that, if read expansively, the majority’s discussion of Dona-to’s liberty interest will place school districts in a difficult position. When faced with a probationary employee who performs below expectations, school districts will be reluctant to state all of that employee’s shortcomings, for fear of triggering a liberty interest. While such an observation clearly should not dictate the outcome of our constitutional analysis, it is illustrative of why the majority has set the threshold too low for those “stigmatizing allegations” that implicate the fourteenth amendment. A probationary employee’s negative job evaluation must clearly foreclose any and all employment in that employee’s chosen field before a liberty right comes into play. No such interest is implicated here.