Court Opinion

ID: 9840460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-18 18:00:46.763618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:46:34.645253
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________
No. 22-2031
JESSICA BIGGS,
                                                  Plaintiff-Appellant,
                                 v.

CHICAGO BOARD OF EDUCATION,
                                                 Defendant-Appellee.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
           Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
           No. 1:18-cv-6183 — Mary M. Rowland, Judge.
                     ____________________

 ARGUED FEBRUARY 23, 2023 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
               ____________________

   Before SYKES, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and LEE, Circuit
Judges.
    LEE, Circuit Judge. Jessica Biggs was the interim principal
of Edmund Burke Elementary School (Burke), part of the Chi-
cago Public Schools (CPS) system, from 2012 to 2018. She was
ﬁred after a publicly disclosed investigation found that she
had violated CPS policies. Biggs has not worked as a principal
2                                                        No. 22-2031

since. She sued the Chicago Board of Education (the Board) 1
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the Board deprived her
of her liberty to pursue her occupation as a school adminis-
trator without due process when it made stigmatizing public
statements about her in connection with her termination. The
district court granted the Board’s motion for summary judg-
ment, holding that no reasonable jury could ﬁnd that Biggs
had suﬀered a tangible loss of employment opportunities
within her occupation. Biggs v. Chi. Bd. of Educ., No. 18-cv-
6183, 2022 WL 1591577, at *8–9 (N.D. Ill. May 19, 2022). We
agree and aﬃrm.
                       I.       BACKGROUND
A. Biggs’s Role and CPS Policies
    Biggs served as Burke’s interim principal on an at-will ba-
sis. Her duties included ensuring that Burke employees com-
plied with CPS policies. Two policies are relevant here: the
“Attendance Policy” and the “Transportation Policy.”
    Under the Attendance Policy, teachers must document
student attendance as follows: a student is to be recorded as
“Present” if she receives at least 300 minutes of instruction in
a day; “Half-Day Absent” if she receives 150 to 299 minutes of
instruction; and “Full-Day Absent” if she receives fewer than
150 minutes of instruction.
   The Transportation Policy provides that no employee at a
CPS school may drive a student in a personal vehicle without
ﬁrst obtaining written consent from the school’s principal and
the student’s parent or legal guardian. Additionally, the

    1 The Board is a municipal body that oversees the CPS system pursu-
ant to Illinois law. 105 ILCS 5/34-2.
No. 22-2031                                                           3

principal must ensure that an authorized driver is licensed
and insured and must retain copies of the license and insur-
ance documentation.
B. Investigation, Termination, and Public Statements
    The Board’s Oﬃce of Inspector General (OIG) received an
anonymous tip in 2017 of violations of the Attendance Policy
at Burke. After investigating, the OIG summarized its conclu-
sions in a May 2018 report. It stated that (1) for multiple years,
Biggs had been directing her subordinates to mark late stu-
dents as tardy, rather than absent, regardless of how many
instructional minutes they had received in a day; (2) this prac-
tice had likely skewed Burke’s attendance data for several
years; and (3) Biggs also had violated the Transportation Pol-
icy. 2 As to the last point, Biggs admitted to investigators that
she had ordered Burke employees to pick up students in per-
sonal vehicles, but had failed to obtain written parental con-
sent and did not keep copies of the drivers’ licenses or insur-
ance documentation.
   In June 2018, the Board ﬁred Biggs and designated her Do
Not Hire (DNH). DNH is an internal designation within the
CPS system to note when a CPS employee was terminated for
incompetence or misconduct. A DNH designation, as its
name implies, prohibits any CPS school from rehiring the em-
ployee. But it does not necessarily prevent the employee from
getting a job at a non-CPS school.

    2 Biggs disputes the accuracy of these findings and the completeness
of the investigation. We express no opinion as to these arguments, how-
ever, because they are not germane to our decision for the reasons noted
below.
4                                                 No. 22-2031

    The Board disclosed the reasons for Biggs’s termination to
the public on two separate occasions. On July 9, 2018, oﬃcials
from the Board discussed Biggs’s alleged policy violations at
a Burke community meeting. The Chief of Schools for CPS
stated at the meeting that Biggs’s ﬁring was “about integrity”;
the comments were reported by the media. Two weeks later
at another public meeting, Board oﬃcials distributed a re-
dacted copy of the OIG report and read it aloud.
C. Biggs’s Post-Termination Job Search
    After her ﬁring, Biggs reentered the job market. She re-
ceived an oﬀer to serve as an assistant principal at Ravens-
wood Elementary School, another CPS institution, but that
fell through due to her DNH designation. It is clear that Ra-
venswood oﬃcials were aware of Biggs’s DNH; what is less
clear is whether they knew about CPS’s public comments re-
garding the reasons for her termination.
   Biggs also searched for principal openings at suburban
schools in the summer of 2018. But schools that had openings
had already hired their principals for the upcoming school
year, so no positions were available.
    Additionally, Biggs applied for jobs at the Academy
Group, Alternative, Inc., Teach Plus, Leading Educators, and
the Obama Foundation; none proved fruitful. She did receive
an interview with Alternative, Inc., but that was as far as she
got. Biggs provides scant information about what these posi-
tions entailed or whether she was qualiﬁed for them. The rec-
ord is also devoid of any information about whether any of
these organizations were aware of the Board’s public state-
ments about Biggs’s termination. As for the Academy Group
and Leading Educators, Biggs believes that they did not hire
No. 22-2031                                                                5

her because they received funding from CPS, and her DNH
status barred them from doing so.
    The only prospective employer that was aware of the
Board’s public allegations against Biggs was the LEARN
Charter Network, a network of charter schools. Biggs applied
to be a director of operations there (again, she provides no de-
tails regarding the responsibilities or qualiﬁcations that came
with this role). She received an interview, and the interviewer
informed Biggs that he was aware of the allegations involving
Burke, but he nonetheless proceeded with the interview. Ul-
timately, Biggs was not hired. 3 According to Biggs, she later
learned that her DNH status had precluded her from advanc-
ing in the application process.
    In August 2018, Biggs found a job with the Judicial Ac-
countability Project, a nonproﬁt organization that seeks to
raise awareness about judicial elections. Then, in November
2018, she began working with the Southwest Organizing Pro-
ject, where she managed a “collaborative of nine social ser-
vices, healthcare, and behavioral health organizations, and

    3 Former LEARN employee Sarah Adams filed a declaration under
oath, stating that, at the time of Biggs’s application to LEARN, LEARN
had reached, or was negotiating, an agreement with CPS that prohibited
LEARN from hiring anyone designated DNH by CPS. The district court
held that Adams’s declaration was inadmissible because Biggs had not
disclosed Adams as a witness during discovery. Biggs, 2022 WL 1591577,
at *8. Biggs now argues that the district court erred because her nondisclo-
sure was harmless, but she did not raise this issue before the district court
and thus cannot do so here. Mother & Father v. Cassidy, 338 F.3d 704, 707
(7th Cir. 2003) (“[A] party may not raise on appeal an issue it did not pre-
sent to the district court.”).
6                                                             No. 22-2031

four local schools.” Biggs, 2022 WL 1591577, at *8. Biggs
stopped looking for principal jobs around this time. The fol-
lowing year, in August 2019, Biggs and a colleague started an
educational consulting ﬁrm assisting local school districts.
D. Proceedings Below
    Biggs sued the Board under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that
the Board deprived her of her liberty interest 4 in the pursuit
of her occupation without due process. It did so, Biggs asserts,
by making stigmatizing public statements about her after she
was ﬁred, eﬀectively preventing her from being rehired as a
school administrator. The district court granted the Board’s
motion for summary judgment. Noting that Biggs had ob-
tained jobs in the “ﬁeld of education” after her termination,
the district court concluded that Biggs had not created a gen-
uine issue of material fact as to whether she had been de-
prived of employment opportunities within her occupation,
as was her burden. Biggs, 2022 WL 1591577, at *8–9. 5

    4 Biggs also originally argued that she had been deprived of a prop-
erty interest in her continued employment at Burke. Biggs has wisely
abandoned this argument, since she was employed at will and has not
pointed to any evidence establishing “a legitimate expectation of contin-
ued employment based on a legitimate claim of entitlement.” Moss v. Mar-
tin, 473 F.3d 694, 700 (7th Cir. 2007).
    5 The district court also held that Biggs had failed to establish that the
Board could be held liable under § 1983 as a municipal entity. Biggs,
2022 WL 1591577, at *9–10; see generally Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs.,
436 U.S. 658 (1978). Because we agree with the district court that Biggs has
not created a genuine factual issue as to whether she has suffered a depri-
vation of her occupational liberty, we need not address this point.
No. 22-2031                                                               7

 II. LEGAL STANDARD AND STANDARD OF REVIEW
    We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment
de novo. REXA, Inc. v. Chester, 42 F.4th 652, 662 (7th Cir. 2022).
A court “shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows
that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the
movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R.
Civ. P. 56(a). “Material” facts are those that “might aﬀect the
outcome of the suit,” and a factual dispute is “genuine” if “the
evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict
for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.,
477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). In determining whether a material
factual dispute exists, we “construe all facts and draw all rea-
sonable inferences in a light most favorable to the non-mov-
ing party.” Baines v. Walgreen Co., 863 F.3d 656, 661 (7th Cir.
2017).
                         III.    DISCUSSION
    Section 1983 creates liability for any person who, acting
under color of state law, deprives a plaintiﬀ of her constitu-
tional rights. 6 Biggs claims that the Board violated her rights
under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,
which prohibits any state from depriving a person of “life, lib-
erty, or property, without due process of law.” U.S. Const.
amend. XIV, § 1. Here, Biggs invokes her right to “liberty,”
speciﬁcally “occupational liberty—‘the liberty to follow a
trade, profession, or other calling.’” Wroblewski v. City of Wash-
burn, 965 F.2d 452, 455 (7th Cir. 1992) (quoting Lawson v. Sher-
riﬀ of Tippecanoe Cnty., 725 F.2d 1136, 1138 (7th Cir. 1984)).

    6 The Board is a “person” for purposes of § 1983. See Quinn v. Illinois,
887 F.3d 322, 325 (7th Cir. 2018).
8                                                   No. 22-2031

    An aggrieved person can bring an occupational liberty
claim against a former public employer when, after an ad-
verse employment action, the employer stigmatizes her “by
making public comments impugning [her] good name,
honor, or reputation or imposes a stigma that forecloses other
employment opportunities” within her occupation. Palka v.
Shelton, 623 F.3d 447, 454 (7th Cir. 2010) (citing Bd. of Regents
of State Colls. v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 573–74 (1972)). To prevail
on such a claim, a plaintiﬀ must establish “that (1) the defend-
ant made stigmatizing comments about [her]; (2) those com-
ments were publicly disclosed; and (3) [she] suﬀered a tangi-
ble loss of other employment opportunities as a result of the
public disclosure.” Id. We assume that the Board’s comments
about Biggs at the July 2018 community meetings satisfy the
ﬁrst two elements of this test, but her claim fails at the third.
   An occupational liberty plaintiﬀ faces a high hurdle to
show that she has suﬀered a tangible loss of employment op-
portunities from a defendant’s public stigmatizing state-
ments. Indeed, she must demonstrate that the statements
have made it “virtually impossible for her to ﬁnd new employ-
ment” within her occupation. Ratliﬀ v. City of Milwaukee,
795 F.2d 612, 625–26 (7th Cir. 1986) (emphasis added). Mere
frustration or delay in getting a new job will not suﬃce. See
Townsend v. Vallas, 256 F.3d 661, 670 (7th Cir. 2001) (stating
that an occupational liberty claim requires evidence that the
defendant’s public statements “had the eﬀect of blacklisting
the employee from employment in comparable jobs”) (quot-
ing Colaizzi v. Walker, 812 F.2d 304, 307 (7th Cir. 1987));
Wroblewski, 965 F.2d at 456 (stating that “permanent exclusion
from or protracted interruption of employment” is required
to make out an occupational liberty claim); Munson v. Friske,
754 F.2d 683, 693 (7th Cir. 1985) (indicating that an
No. 22-2031                                                    9

occupational liberty claim will not lie if the plaintiﬀ is only
“somewhat less attractive to some other employers” (quoting
Roth, 408 U.S. at 574 n.13)).
A. Biggs’s Occupation
   Before we go any further, we must deﬁne Biggs’s “occu-
pation.” On the one hand, Biggs claims that her occupation is
school administration. On the other hand, the district court
characterized Biggs’s occupation as the “ﬁeld of education,”
and it concluded that Biggs could not establish that she had
been excluded from that occupation because her jobs at the
Southwest Organizing Project and her education consulting
ﬁrm fell within that ﬁeld. Biggs, 2022 WL 1591577, at *8. In do-
ing so, however, we think the district court deﬁned Biggs’s
occupation too broadly.
    We have described occupational liberty, as protected by
the Due Process Clause, as “the liberty to follow a trade, pro-
fession, or other calling.” Wroblewski, 965 F.2d at 455 (quoting
Lawson, 725 F.2d at 1138). Like much in the law, it is best to
think of an occupation as existing on a spectrum of general-
ity—somewhere between a “speciﬁc job” and a “ﬁeld.” At one
extreme, the Due Process Clause does not protect an individ-
ual’s right to remain in any one “speciﬁc job.” Id. “It stretches
the concept [of occupational liberty] too far to suggest that a
person is deprived of ‘liberty’ when [she] simply is not re-
hired in one job but remains as free as before to seek another.”
Roth, 408 U.S. at 575. In other words, the mere “removal of one
job or employer from the universe of all jobs does not aﬀect
occupational liberty.” Blackout Sealcoating, Inc. v. Peterson,
733 F.3d 688, 690 (7th Cir. 2013). Along these lines, we have
held that, while being a police oﬃcer is an occupation, being
a police lieutenant is a speciﬁc job that cannot create an
10                                                    No. 22-2031

occupational liberty interest. Ill. Psych. Ass’n v. Falk, 818 F.2d
1337, 1344 (7th Cir. 1987); see also Bigby v. City of Chi., 766 F.2d
1053, 1057 (7th Cir. 1985) (stating that “ranks within an occu-
pation” are not separate occupations). Applied here, Biggs
could not (and does not) claim that her “occupation” is serv-
ing as a school principal.
    At the other extreme is a “ﬁeld” of employment. Used in
this context, a ﬁeld is “an area of activity or interest.” Field,
Cambridge             Dictionary,         https://dictionary.cam-
bridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ﬁeld (last visited Sept. 5,
2023); see also Field, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/ﬁeld (last visited Sept. 5, 2023) (“[A]n
area or division of an activity, subject, or profession.”). And a
ﬁeld often includes a number of interrelated, yet distinct, oc-
cupations. For example, medicine is a ﬁeld, which includes
various occupations such as nurses, doctors, and therapists.
Bigby, 766 F.2d at 1057. Thus, a doctor who, upon termination,
can only ﬁnd work as a nurse can bring an occupational lib-
erty claim, even though she still works in the medical ﬁeld.
See id. (stating that an occupational liberty claim “rest[s] on
the idea that stigmatization may prevent [an employee] from
getting another position in the same line of work”); see also
Townsend, 256 F.3d at 670 (indicating that an occupational lib-
erty claim will lie when an employee has been “blacklist[ed]”
from “comparable jobs” (quoting Colaizzi, 812 F.2d at 307)).
    Thus, determining a plaintiﬀ’s “occupation,” as distin-
guished from a speciﬁc job or ﬁeld, requires a case-speciﬁc in-
quiry and a healthy dose of common sense. An occupation en-
tails the performance of a discrete set of professional respon-
sibilities that can be meaningfully distinguished from those of
other occupations in a ﬁeld. An occupation may also require
No. 22-2031                                                              11

a particular type of professional education, training, or licen-
sure that other occupations do not. But the performance of
professional duties for a particular employer or customer or at
a particular level of prestige or authority is a speciﬁc job, not
an occupation. To provide another example, food service is a
ﬁeld of employment, in which a cook has a diﬀerent occupa-
tion from that of a waiter. But a cook would not have an occu-
pational liberty interest in serving as the head chef at a famous
restaurant. That is a speciﬁc job within his occupation. 7
    With these principles in mind, we think the district court
erred when it deﬁned Biggs’s occupation as the “ﬁeld of edu-
cation.” Education is a ﬁeld of employment that encompasses
many occupations. Within that ﬁeld, Biggs’s occupation, as
she herself states, is that of a school administrator. A school
administrator’s responsibilities include overseeing or manag-
ing the logistical operations of schools. These duties distin-
guish the occupation of school administration from other oc-
cupations within education, such as classroom instruction.
Also, Biggs has obtained special education, training, and li-
censure in school administration. She has a master’s degree in
education with a concentration in “School Leadership” from
Harvard University; she trained as a principal intern and a
resident principal before starting at Burke; and she has com-
pleted multiple professional development courses for school

    7 One issue not raised by the parties is whether the definition of a
plaintiff’s “occupation” is a question of law or fact. We need not decide
that issue here, but note only that, in the past, we seem to have implicitly
treated the inquiry as one of law, and district courts within this circuit
have done the same. See Wroblewski, 965 F.2d at 455–56; Falk, 818 F.2d at
1344; Bigby, 766 F.2d at 1057; Martin v. Haling, No. 21 C 5494, 2022 WL
14634854, at *8 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 25, 2022) (citing district court cases).
12                                                  No. 22-2031

administrators. She also has an Illinois principal’s license,
which is distinct from a teacher’s license (which Biggs does
not have). These facts demonstrate that school administration
is a distinct profession or calling within the educational ﬁeld.
By contrast, the position of school principal is a speciﬁc job at
a particular rank within her occupation. Vice and assistant
principals, attendance clerks, and the like are also school ad-
ministrators, even though their jobs are perhaps less lucrative
and prestigious than that of a principal.
    From this, it follows that the jobs Biggs succeeded in ob-
taining (the jobs at the Southwest Organizing Project and her
consultancy), while they may be in the education ﬁeld, were
not within her occupation of school administration. Although
both positions involved work with schools, there is no indica-
tion that Biggs had any input into school operations, as a
school administrator would. Nor is there any evidence that
Biggs had to be licensed as a school administrator to perform
either job. Thus, Biggs’s ability to obtain these jobs does not
doom her occupational liberty claim.
B. Tangible Loss of Employment Opportunities
     Having deﬁned Biggs’s occupation, we now ask whether
a reasonable jury could conclude that she suﬀered a tangible
loss of employment opportunities in that occupation as a re-
sult of the Board’s public stigmatizing statements. Palka,
623 F.3d at 454. To answer that question, we ﬁrst must iden-
tify the “public stigmatizing statements” at issue. As noted,
we will assume that the Board’s statements at the two Burke
community meetings in July 2018 (at least one of which was
reported in the media) qualify as such for purposes of Biggs’s
claim. Biggs also contends that her DNH designation is a pub-
lic stigmatizing statement, but on this point we disagree.
No. 22-2031                                                   13

    A public stigmatizing statement is one that is distributed
“in a manner which would reach future potential employers
of the plaintiﬀ or the community at large.” Ratliﬀ, 795 F.2d at
626–27. Because Biggs’s DNH designation was internal to
CPS, it does not qualify. See id. (holding that internal publica-
tion of reasons for police oﬃcer’s discharge could not support
occupational liberty claim). Admittedly, at least according to
Biggs’s testimony, her DNH status precluded her from being
hired at LEARN, because LEARN was aﬃliated with CPS and
abided by the DNH designation. She also attested that her
DNH status might have found its way to other organizations
that receive funding from CPS, including Leading Educators
and the Academy Group. But, taking these statements to be
true, we do not ﬁnd this highly limited dissemination suﬃ-
cient to turn Biggs’s DNH status into a “public statement” for
purposes of an occupational liberty claim. See id. at 627 (not-
ing that an occupational liberty claim requires that stigmatiz-
ing statements be subject to “broader publication”).
    Furthermore, even if CPS’s DNH designation of Biggs
qualiﬁed as a public stigmatizing statement, no reasonable
jury could conclude that Biggs has suﬀered a tangible loss of
employment opportunities “as a result” of it. Palka, 623 F.3d
at 454. As noted, to succeed in her occupational liberty claim,
Biggs must show that she has been essentially frozen out from
all meaningful opportunities to work as a school administra-
tor. See id. She cannot make that showing merely with evi-
dence that she can no longer work for CPS or CPS-aﬃliated
organizations due to her DNH. After all, CPS is just “one of
many school systems in the [Chicago] metropolitan area and
state [of Illinois].” Townsend, 256 F.3d at 671 (cleaned up). And
this is not a situation when a single employer “so dominates
the ﬁeld of opportunity” in an occupation that inability to
14                                                 No. 22-2031

work for that employer would constitute a denial of occupa-
tional liberty. Id. (quoting Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v.
McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 185 (1951) (Jackson, J., concurring)). As
such, Biggs’s DNH designation within CPS cannot support
her occupational liberty claim.
    Turning next to the Board’s statements at the July 2018
community meetings, we ask whether those statements have
made it “virtually impossible” for Biggs to ﬁnd work as a
school administrator. Ratliﬀ, 795 F.2d at 626. Biggs introduced
the following evidence to support her claim: after she was
ﬁred in June 2018, she searched for principal openings for a
few months, but she could not ﬁnd any because they had al-
ready been ﬁlled for the upcoming school year. Additionally,
Biggs applied without success to positions at (1) Ravenswood,
(2) LEARN, (3) Leading Educators, (4) Teach Plus, (5) the
Academy Group, (6) Alternative, Inc., and (7) the Obama
Foundation. Unfortunately for Biggs, these facts cannot save
her claim.
    First, Biggs simply did not apply to enough school admin-
istration positions for a suﬃciently lengthy duration of time
to permit a reasonable jury to ﬁnd that she has been excluded
from that occupation altogether. Of Biggs’s seven unsuccess-
ful applications, only one was for a school administration po-
sition—the assistant principal job at Ravenswood—and she
received an oﬀer (although she could not take the position
due to her DNH designation). The other six applications were
predominantly to education-focused organizations rather
than schools. And Biggs provides few, if any, details about the
responsibilities or qualiﬁcations those positions entailed (for
instance, we do not know if any of them required Biggs to be
No. 22-2031                                                            15

a licensed school administrator or involved duties akin to
those of a school administrator).
    Biggs points out that she did look for principal jobs after
she was terminated and found no openings. But that is hardly
surprising, given that she searched only for a few months in
the summer, at a time when schools had already selected their
principals for the upcoming school year. In addition, she ap-
parently conﬁned her search to Chicago’s suburbs, even
though she is licensed as a principal in the State of Illinois.
And she limited her review to principal openings, rather than
other school administration positions. Biggs’s exceedingly
brief, ill-timed, and narrow search does not provide triable
evidence that it is “virtually impossible” for her to ﬁnd work
as a school administrator. Ratliﬀ, 795 F.2d at 626.
   Second, given the limited number of positions to which
Biggs applied, no reasonable jury could ﬁnd that she has ex-
perienced anything more than the customary diﬃculties and
delay that individuals encounter when looking for a new job,
especially where, as here, they were ﬁred from their previous
one. 8 See Hedrich v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Wis. Sys., 274 F.3d
1174, 1184 (7th Cir. 2001) (holding that no reasonable fact-
ﬁnder could conclude that it was “virtually impossible” for
plaintiﬀ to ﬁnd work within her occupation where she had
applied to just seven jobs); see also Michael R. Dalton & Jeﬀrey

    8 Of course, the Board necessarily stigmatized Biggs to some degree
when it fired her. But as we have said, the stigma inherent in termination
alone cannot support a claim for deprivation of occupational liberty. Ra-
ther, due process is implicated only if the employer makes stigmatizing
public statements in connection with an adverse employment action and
those statements cause a tangible loss of employment opportunities. See
Palka, 623 F.3d at 454.
16                                                     No. 22-2031

A. Groen, How Do Jobseekers Search for Jobs? New Data on Ap-
plications, Interviews, and Job Oﬀers, U.S. Bureau of Lab. Stats.
(Nov. 2020), https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/how-
do-jobseekers-search-for-jobs.htm (showing the probability
of getting a job is at its highest after 21–80 applications).
Biggs’s failure to ﬁnd a role after so few attempts is unremark-
able and falls short of demonstrating unusual or insurmount-
able obstacles to reemployment, within her occupation or oth-
erwise.
    Finally, Biggs has not produced evidence that any diﬃcul-
ties she faced in obtaining employment were a “result” of the
Board’s public stigmatizing statements. Palka, 623 F.3d at 454.
The record is devoid of any evidence that the public allega-
tions against Biggs made her signiﬁcantly less attractive to po-
tential employers. And there is no evidence that any of the
prospective employers outside CPS even knew about those al-
legations, except for LEARN. See Piccoli v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ.,
No. 08-CV-8344 (CS), 2009 WL 4794130, at *3–4 (S.D.N.Y. Dec.
11, 2009) (dismissing occupational liberty claim where it was
“not even clear whether … prospective employers knew or
could know that Plaintiﬀ was the subject of the alleged state-
ments”). And even at LEARN, Biggs was not rejected out of
hand. The LEARN employee who interviewed Biggs knew
about the circumstances of her termination and yet inter-
viewed her anyway.
   Nor was LEARN the only entity that seemed interested in
Biggs. Ravenswood even gave Biggs a bona ﬁde job oﬀer
within her occupation, as an assistant principal. 9 Biggs also

     9 As noted, Biggs could not accept the Ravenswood job due to her
DNH designation, and there is some evidence that LEARN declined to
No. 22-2031                                                         17

received an interview with Alternative, Inc. Biggs’s ability to
obtain interviews and job oﬀers shows that the public allega-
tions against her were not so serious or widely disseminated
as to prevent her from obtaining employment. See Thuet v. Bd.
of Educ., No. 20 C 1369, 2022 WL 6122622, at *7 (N.D. Ill. Oct.
7, 2022) (holding plaintiﬀ had not created a genuine factual
issue as to whether she had suﬀered a tangible loss of employ-
ment opportunities where she had obtained “interviews and
two job oﬀers”).
    In sum, no reasonable jury could ﬁnd on this record that
Biggs has suﬀered a tangible loss of employment opportuni-
ties as a result of the Board’s public allegations against her.
The district court rightly entered summary judgment in the
Board’s favor.
                      IV.     CONCLUSION
   We have considered Biggs’s remaining arguments, and
they lack merit. The judgment of the district court is
AFFIRMED.

hire her for the same reason. But as we explained, Biggs’s internal DNH
designation alone cannot support her occupational liberty claim.