Duncan v. Department of Personnel Administration (January 28,
2000)
* Court: California State Appellate
* Jurisdiction: State of California
* Plaintiff's Job Class: Associate Life Actuary
* Trial Court: Against employee
* Appellate Court Against employee
* Issues: Due process, right to a pre-layoff hearing
Duncan Facts
* Duncan was a permanent associate life actuary with the Department
of Insurance (DOI).
* DOI in 1996 experienced a large budget shortfall and laid off 90
employees.
* The Department of Personnel Administration (DPA) oversaw the layoff
process; DPA took several months to determine the schedule of layoffs,
using seniority as a primary factor.
* Duncan in February 1997 was offered a demotion in lieu of layoff,
which he accepted.
* Duncan also filed an appeal, with an administrative law judge in
October 1997 denying his appeal.
* Duncan in June 1998 filed a petition for writ of mandate, which the
trial court denied; Duncan thereafter appealed.
Duncan Analysis
* Duncan’s main argument was that not providing him a pre-layoff
hearing violated his due process rights.
* The Duncan court in its opinion summarized due
process principles.
* The court refereed to the California Supreme Court’s 1997 Skelly
decision and the United States Supreme Court’s 1985 Loudermill
decision for the proposition that public employees possess a due process
right to a limited pre-disciplinary hearing.
* The court noted that these leading cases in coming to this
conclusion balanced the employee’s interest in retaining employment,
with the government’s interest in removing unsatifactory employees,
and with the risk of an erroneous termination.
* The court also referred to the California Supreme Court’s 1991 Coleman
decision in which the court held that, with respect to an employee
deemed to have resigned under an AWOL statute, the employee possessed a
due process right to a pre-disciplinary hearing but not to a
post-disciplinary hearing.
* The court also referred to the United States Supreme Court’s 1997
Gilbert decision in which the court held that, where an
employee had been charged with a felony and where an employee had been
charged with a felony and therefore and had had the evidence reviewed by
an "independent body", i.e., the DA’s office, the employee
was not entitled to a Skelly/Loudermill pre-disciplinary
hearing.
* Turing to Duncan, the court concluded (1) that his interest is not
significant, since he was not being fired or subject to stigma; (2)
that, unlike a discipline situation which turns on individual facts, the
employer in a layoff makes the "big picture" determination
concerning financial circumstances, with the specific layoff schedule
being the result of the application of the "objective"
criterion of seniority, and so the odds of an error being made are
small, and (3) that the governmental interest in insuring financial
soundness is significant. The balance of factors under a due process
analysis thus inclined against Duncan.
Duncan Conclusion
This care and the reasoning in it illustrates the power as well as
the limits of the constitutional principle of due process, with the Duncan
court holding that due process does not require a Skelly/Loudermill
hearing in the context of layoffs.
