Court Opinion

ID: 9479084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:08:12.457701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:49.419093
License: Public Domain

E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent because I object to footnote 2 and because the majority allows recovery for damage to general reputation. I otherwise concur.
A.
I object to footnote 2 on two grounds; one is pragmatic, the other substantive. My first objection is that note 2 is dicta, and serves no purpose in resolving the case before us. Second, by its “deliberate” decision to obliterate the word “stigmatize” from the printed books and substitute the annointed term “defamatory” in its stead, I believe the majority has wrongly assumed the authority to rewrite earlier opinions of this court and the Supreme Court.
Judge Reavley is correct in his reading of Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), to allow a discharged employee two avenues for complaining that his liberty interest has been implicated as a result of his discharge by a government employer: first, if the charge made against the employee “might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community,” for example, a charge “that he has been guilty of dishonesty, or immorality,” id. at 92 S.Ct. 2707; and second, if the state “imposes on him a stigma or other disability that forecloses his freedom to take advantage” of other comparable employment in his chosen profession.
However, I am convinced that in the years since the writing of Roth, the law has been refined to the point that, in a discharge case, the due process clause reqr ognizes only the employee’s liberty right not to have the government bar future employment opportunities by publicly assigning false reasons for discharge that stigmatize the employee in obtaining employment in his line of work. The reasons offered to support the employee’s discharge must defame his professional competence in such a way as to characterize him as fundamentally unfit for that line of work.
In Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 696, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 1158, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976), the Supreme Court itself said that
[wjhile we have in a number of our prior cases pointed out the frequently drastic effect of the “stigma” which may result from defamation by the government in a variety of contexts, this line of cases does not establish the proposition that reputation alone, apart from some more tangible interests such as employment, is either “liberty” or “property” by itself sufficient to invoke the procedural protection of the Due Process Clause.
Id. 96 S.Ct. at 1160-61.
Paul makes clear that reputation alone is not a protected liberty interest. In a discharge-from-employment case, an employee’s liberty interest is infringed only when the government’s defamatory charges stigmatize the employee in connection with his future employment opportunities. Id., 96 S.Ct. at 1164-65.
*400In the years following the Paul opinion, the Court has made it even clearer that charges that are only defamatory do not of themselves implicate liberty interests; the charges must be stigmatizing. In Codd v. Velger, 429 U.S. 624, 97 S.Ct. 882, 51 L.Ed. 2d 92 (1977), the Supreme Court repeatedly used the word “stigma” or a variant of that term to explain the plaintiffs burden in a liberty-interest case. Although the court at one point characterized the impression the employer must make as “false and defamatory,” “defamatory” as used in context requires that those defamatory charges be stigmatizing. Id., 97 S.Ct. at 884. In Board of Curators of University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78, 83, 98 S.Ct. 948, 951, 55 L.Ed.2d 124 (1978), the Court continued to recognize the right to a good reputation as protected only against charges that so stigmatized the plaintiff that her opportunities to a career in her chosen profession were substantially impaired. Furthermore, the Court characterized its holding in Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 349, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2079, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976), where a policeman was discharged for alleged defamatory reasons, as not amounting to “a stigma infringing one’s liberty.” Id. 98 S.Ct. at 952.
In turning to our cases, I am thoroughly persuaded that, on the whole, we have faithfully followed the Supreme Court concept that a plaintiff must show that he has been stigmatized. In Ball v. Board of Trustees of Kerrville Independent School District, we stated that for a charge to be stigmatizing it must be worse than merely adverse; it must be such as would give rise to a “badge of infamy,” public scorn, or the like. 584 F.2d 684, 685 (5th Cir.1978) cert. denied, 440 U.S. 972, 99 S.Ct. 1535, 59 L.Ed.2d 788 (1979). “To establish ... a due process deficit, [the plaintiff] must establish that in the course of terminating his employment, the agency prepared a report, without giving him notice and an opportunity to be heard, which was (a) false, (b) stigmatizing and (c) published.” Huffstutler v. Bergland, 607 F.2d 1090, 1092 (5th Cir.1979) (footnote omitted). “A constitutionally protected liberty interest is implicated only if an employee is discharged in a manner that creates a false and defamatory impression about him and thus stigmatizes him and forecloses him from other employment opportunities. White v. Thomas, 660 F.2d 680, 684 (5th Cir.1981) (citing Codd v. Velger). “A party does not have a liberty interest in his reputation protected by the fourteenth amendment unless he can establish that the governmental employer’s charges against him rise to such a level that they create a badge of infamy which destroys the claimant’s ability to take advantage of other employment opportunities.” Evans v. City of Dallas, 861 F.2d 846, 851 (5th Cir.1988).
I do not contest the majority’s observation that the precedents are sometimes inconsistent and somewhat confusing. On at least two occasions our court appears to revive the Roth dichotomy of reputation and stigma by stating that “[t]o establish a liberty interest, an employee must demonstrate that his government employer has brought false charges against him that ‘might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community,’ or that impose a stigma or other disability ‘that forecloses freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities.’ ” Wells v. Hico, 736 F.2d 243, 256 (5th Cir.1984) (quoting Roth) (emphasis added). See also Campos v. Guillot, 743 F.2d 1123, 1125 (5th Cir.1984) (quoting same language from Roth). In both Wells and Campos the court was quoting from Roth without adverting to the later fusing of reputation with stigma in Bishop and Paul. However, both the Wells and Campos panels implicitly acknowledged the merger when each went on to restate the proposition of Paul that reputation alone is not a constitutionally protected interest, even though state law may create an action for defamation. Wells, 736 F.2d at 256; Campos, 743 F.2d at 1125. Thus, the conclusion I reach is that our precedents, when read as a whole, plainly require a plaintiff to prove more than that the governmental employer’s charges were defamatory; he must prove that they were stigmatizing, and, specifically, that they were so damaging as to foreclose employment opportunities.
*401The majority, on the other hand, by choosing the word “defamatory,” in footnote 2, takes several steps back through the cases to Roth and suggests that harm to general reputation infringes a protected liberty interest. Because I believe that the state of the law today makes a perfectly clear distinction between “defamatory” and “stigmatizing,” and that a liberty interest of an employee is infringed only when the government makes charges that place a stigma upon him that forecloses other employment opportunities, I would choose “stigmatizing,” not “defamatory,” to describe the nature of the charge that implicates a liberty interest. I therefore respectfully dissent from the inclusion of footnote 2 in this opinion.
B.
I further part company with my distinguished brothers in their holding that Ro-senstein may recover damages for general loss of reputation. In my view, such a holding — for which the majority acknowledges there is no case authority — is clearly contrary to Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 696, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 1158, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976), and Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1978).
The majority acknowledges in footnote 1, as it must, that reputation alone is not a constitutionally protected interest; only damage to reputation that results in a loss of a more substantial interest, such as the loss of employment opportunity that is involved here, is actionable under the Constitution. Paul, 96 S.Ct. at 1161. I should think, therefore, that the majority would acknowledge the fundamental principle that constitutional damages must flow from the constitutional right infringed. Since Paul makes clear that the City of Dallas did not infringe any constitutional right of Rosenstein when it damaged his general reputation apart from his substantial interest in employment, it is difficult to see how he can collect damages from the city for no legally recognizable wrong that was committed against him.
Even if, however, this logic is unpersuasive to the majority, it should be persuaded by the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Carey v. Piphus:
In order to further the purpose of section 1983, the rules governing compensation for injuries caused by the deprivation of constitutional rights should be tailored to the interests protected by the particular right in question — just as the common-law rules of damages themselves were defined by the interests protected in the various branches of tort law.
Id., 98 S.Ct. at 1050. The rule is simple. We must fit the remedy to the right protected. The right protected is not reputation, but the liberty to seek employment opportunities without improper government interference. Thus, if we are faithful to Carey, we can only allow compensation that results from damages suffered from the impairment of that right.
. Of course, under this rule, the plaintiff effectively recovers for harm to reputation, but he recovers only for a particular and special harm done to his reputation, that is, the harm that causes loss of job opportunities. Such a result flows directly from Paul and Carey: Paul specifically holds that one’s constitutional liberty rights are violated only when the government harms one’s reputation in connection with the loss of a more substantial interest, here, the right to earn a living; Carey specifically holds that under section 1983 compensation should be tailored to redress losses for violation of the particularized constitutional right. Because I believe that the majority cuts a back door in the case law to collect damages when the front door was closed by Paul, and because I believe that the majority closes its doors on the rule established in Carey, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s allowing recovery for damage to general reputation.
C.
In conclusion, because the majority opinion, both in footnote 2 and in its creating recovery for all damage done to reputation, erodes distinctions, drawn by Supreme Court authority and by our authority, between common law defamation and deprivation of liberty under the Constitution to *402earn a living in one’s chosen line of work, I dissent.