Due Process Violation

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Lafayette Linear v. Village of University Park, Illinois, et al.

Case No.: 17-1940

Officials: EASTERBROOK and ROVNER, Circuit Judges, and GRIESBACH, District Judge.

Focus: Due Process Violation

University Park hired Lafayette Linear as its Village Manager under a four-year contract that ran through May 2015, concurrent with the term of the Village’s Mayor. In October 2014 the Village extended Linear’s contract for a year. But by spring 2015 relations between Linear and the Village’s elected officials had soured. In April 2015 Mayor Covington was reelected, and her new term began in May. That month the Board of Trustees decided that Linear would no longer be Village Manager. His contract provides for six months’ severance pay if the Board discharges him for any reason except criminality. But the Village has taken the position that the contract’s extension was forbidden by Illinois law and that it owes Linear nothing, because his only valid term expired in May 2015.

Linear contends in this federal suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983 that the Board violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by not giving him a hearing before his discharge. The Village replies that he has not been discharged; it just declined to renew his contract—and Linear does not contend that he had a legitimate claim of entitlement to a renewal. Compare Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972), with Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972). The district court decided that, as a maZer of Illinois law, the extension past May 2015 was invalid. The judge understood 65 ILCS 5/3.1-30-5 and 5/8-1-7 to prohibit any contract for a village manager from lasting beyond the end of a mayor’s term of office. As a result, the district court held, the Village did not deprive Linear of a property interest, and without a property interest he had no federal right to a hearing.

In another decision released today, we conclude that a different public employee asserting a right to a hearing before discharge is entitled to litigate in federal court. Breuder v. Board of Trustees, No. 17-1577 (7th Cir. Apr. 17, 2018). The reasons for the disparate outcomes bear emphasis.

Linear’s complaint presents claims under state as well as federal law. For the reasons we have explained, the federal claim rests on a mistaken appreciation of the role the Constitution plays in enforcing state-law rights. The district court relinquished supplemental jurisdiction of Linear’s state-law claims. The state judiciary is free to address those claims from scratch; the district judge’s conclusions about the effects of 65 ILCS 5/3.1-30-5 and 5/8-1-7 lack both preclusive and precedential effect.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.