ADVERSE EMPLOYMENT ACTIONS AND PUBLIC SCHOOL ...

Issues--Employee Protections
The researcher identified four different areas of issue during litigation that the employees
continually cited as protection against the adverse employment action they levied against them.
Those employee protections were due process, First Amendment, tenure, and breach of contract.
Due process. Administrators claimed violations of procedural and/or substantive due
process. Five common claims were identified during case briefing. First, a number of
administrators claimed that their due process violations had deprived them of property and/or
liberty interests. The issue at hand here was whether or not the school system had violated the
administrator’s right to continued employment or defamed his/her character. The school system
rarely failed to uphold the due process standards in regard to property and liberty interests, as the
systems rarely lost in litigation.
Second, administrators claimed that they had never been provided with a hearing prior to
the adverse employment action. The outcome of a pre-employment action meeting is of little
issue in these cases so long as the meeting was held. A pre-employment action meeting is a
required step that must be taken by the school systems and in accordance with all time
constraints.
Third, a number of administrators claimed that the format of the hearing was not in
accordance with policy. There was a significant amount of variance in these cases, but the issue
was the same. Some facet of the hearing that was provided was not as the administrator felt it
should have been.
Fourth, administrators claimed that certain due process measures were not fulfilled. The
unfulfilled requirements that constituted this issue ranged from invalid notification processes,
409