Court Opinion

ID: 9646285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 12:55:04.300337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:37.105266
License: Public Domain

DAY, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The majority, while reaffirming the sovereign immunity of the university from suit based on contract, holds that Courtney is entitled to prosecute his suit to “test” his property right to continued employment by the university, reasoning that to rule otherwise would violate Courtney’s constitutional right to due process.
In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972) the U.S. Supreme Court, in construing the constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process of a year-to-year, non-tenured college professor, wrote:
The Fourteenth Amendment’s procedural protection of property is a safeguard of the security of interests that a person has already acquired in specific benefits.
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Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law....

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To have a property interest in a benefit, a person clearly must have more than an abstract need or desire for it. He must have more than a unilateral expectation of it. He must, instead, have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it.
Id. at 576-77, 92 S.Ct. at 2708-09 (emphasis added).
While Roth rejected the teacher’s constitutional complaint on the grounds that he had no legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment, on the same day the Supreme Court upheld the teacher’s due process claim in Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), holding that the teacher there had alleged the existence of rules and understandings, promulgated and fostered by state officials, that may justify his legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment. In Sindermann, the state college had promulgated an official Faculty Guide which stated:
Teacher Tenure: Odessa College has no tenure system. The Administration of the College wishes the faculty member to feel that he has permanent tenure as long as his teaching services are satisfactory
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Id. at 600, 92 S.Ct. at 2699 (emphasis added). The teacher in Sindermann, who had been discharged without a hearing, alleged that the foregoing language created a de facto tenure system and his justifiable reliance thereon vested him with a legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment. The Supreme Court held that since the teacher’s claim to continued employment was alleged by him to be based upon language officially promulgated by the college that could constitute a property interest, he was entitled to the procedural protection of the Constitution.
The facts in the instant case clearly reflect that the trial court properly granted summary judgment to the university since *289Courtney wholly failed to allege or show that he had any legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment. It is clear from both Roth and Sindermann that a legitimate claim of entitlement rising to the level of a “property interest” must be based upon rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.
The majority holds that Courtney’s reliance upon the Mckenna letter vested him a legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment by the university. The university’s regulations specifically promulgated the exclusive method of granting tenure.
The Mckenna letter which purported to grant Courtney “tenure-type” employment was in clear contravention of the university’s regulations. These regulations had the force and effect of statute. Courtney was charged with constructive notice that only the Board of Regents could grant him continuing employment. To hold that Courtney has the right to “test” his claim of “tenure-like” employment based upon the ultra vires Mckenna letter1 is to ignore the holdings in both Sindermann and Roth.
Being convinced that Courtney cannot base a legitimate claim of entitlement to continued employment (which would vest in him a cognizable property right procedurally protected under the Constitution) upon the Mckenna letter, I would affirm the summary judgment granted by the trial court.

. Although Courtney argues in his brief that the university’s board of regents "approved" the Mckenna letter, the record fails to show that the board had any knowledge of the letter.