Constitutional Law — city contracts

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Constitutional Law — city contracts

A municipality does not violate the due process rights of a contractor by debarring it from municipal contracts.

“The two principals argue that the eight-day debarment deprived them of their occupational liberty—their right to pursue their chosen occupation—in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 573-74 (1972); Townsend v. Vallas, 256 F.3d 661, 669-72 (7th Cir. 2001); Colaizzi v. Walker, 812 F.2d 304, 307 (7th Cir. 1987); Donato v. Plainview- Old Bethpage Central School Dist., 96 F.3d 623, 630-33 (2d Cir. 1996). Even if, as the D.C. Circuit believes, barring a government contractor from doing business with the government, with the effect of destroying the contractor’s business because he neither has nor can obtain any other customer, would be a deprivation of occupational liberty (that is, even if a corporation can have a profession, vocation, or calling), Trifax Corp. v. District of Columbia, 314 F.3d 641, 643-45 (D.C. Cir. 2003); Old Dominion Dairy Products, Inc. v. Secretary of Defense, 631 F.2d 953, 961-62 (D.C. Cir. 1980), an eight-day bar that does not destroy the contractor’s business or even permanently weaken it, but causes merely a temporary loss, is not a deprivation of occupational liberty. ‘A liberty interest is not implicated where the charges merely result in reduced economic returns and diminished prestige, but not permanent exclusion from or protracted interruption of employment.’ Munson v. Friske, 754 F.2d 683, 693 (7th Cir. 1985). If a lawyer’s principal client is a public agency, which gets angry with him and as a result he loses money for five straight months before the agency makes up with him, that is not a de facto revocation of his license to practice law. Anyway it isn’t CUI that’s bringing this claim, but Loera and Massarella, and their employment by the company was never interrupted. ‘One simply cannot have been denied his liberty to pursue a particular occupation when he admittedly continues to hold a job—the same job—in that very occupation.’ Abcarian v. McDonald, 617 F.3d 931, 941-42 (7th Cir. 2010).”

Affirmed.

10-3361 Chicago United Industries, Ltd., v. City of Chicago

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Dow, J., Posner, J.