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Standard used by the court in evaluating an employee?s defamation claim coupled with a demand for a "name clearing hearing"

Standard used by the court in evaluating an employee?s defamation claim coupled with a demand for a "name clearing hearing"
Matter of Casale v Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 47 AD3d 519

Nicholas Casale was termination from his position as the Authority?s Deputy Director of Security with the Metropolitan He asked the court to order that the Authority give him a name-clearing hearing and that the Authority reinstate him to his former position.

The Appellate Division said that ?defamation alone, even by a government entity, does not constitute a deprivation of a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. Some ?stigma plus? must be shown before mere defamation will rise to the level of a constitutional deprivation.?

Further, said the court, ?in the context of defamation involving a government employee, defamation ? is not a deprivation of a liberty interest unless it occurs in the course of dismissal or refusal to rehire the individual as a government employee or during termination or alteration of some other legal right or status.?

A name clearing hearing, however, serves only one purpose to clear the individual?s good name and reputation. Vindication of the employee at a name clearing hearing does not automatically result in the individual obtaining a right to reemployment in his or her former postion.

Further, as a general rule, a name-clearing hearing is warranted only in the event the employer has disseminated false and stigmatizing information to the public.

In Donato v Plainview-Old Bethpage School District, 96 F3d 623, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a name-clearing hearing is available to the individual when he or she "is terminated along with a contemporaneous public announcement of stigmatizing factors, including illegality, dishonesty, immorality, or a serious denigration of the employee's competence."

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on March 24, 2010 (boomark / email).