Court Opinion

ID: 9482865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:03:18.077187+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:15.487870
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with Judge Easterbrook that the plaintiffs have not been deprived of a liberty interest under the fourteenth amendment because the defendants have not published the results of their psychological tests. However, I must take issue with his suggestion, raised in dicta, that Siegert v. Gilley, — U.S. —, 111 S.Ct. 1789, 114 L.Ed.2d 277 (1991), may have doomed plaintiff’s case even had the defendants done so.
As I read it, Siegert is consistent with prior case law providing that a public official’s publication of a defamatory statement may infringe an individual’s liberty *608interest if the statement (1) stigmatizes the individual in a manner that substantially forecloses opportunities for future government employment, and (2) is made incident to an adverse current employment decision. See Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972); Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976); Clark v. Maurer, 824 F.2d 565 (7th Cir.1987). It is indeed true, as Judge Easterbrook observes, that Siegert found the defamatory statement at issue to be not actionable (in a civil rights lawsuit) owing to “the lack of any constitutional protection for the interest in reputation.” Siegert, 111 S.Ct. at 1794. But underlying that finding is the fact that the defamatory statement only affected the plaintiffs opportunities for future government employment; the Court clearly and unequivocally stated that the statement was not made incident to the plaintiffs loss of current employment: “[t]he alleged defamation was not uttered incident to the termination of Sigerf s employment by the hospital, since he voluntarily resigned from his position at the hospital, and the letter was written several weeks later.” Id.; see also id. (actionable stigmatization in Roth “made in the context of the employer discharging or failing to rehire a plaintiff”). As such, Siegert is analogous to Paul because the defamatory statement therein satisfied only the first element of this brand of liberty deprivation claim (as I number the elements above).
To the extent that Siegert modified the legal landscape, it did so with regard to the second element by limiting the circumstances under which statements are considered to have been made incident to an adverse employment decision. That modification does not affect the case sub judice, for the allegedly defamatory test results were unquestionably incident to — in fact they were the motivating factor behind— the plaintiffs being denied positions on the police force. This ease is properly decided under Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 348-49, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2079-80, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976), and Clark, 824 F.2d at 567, which stand for the proposition that defendants who do not publish do not infringe liberty interests.