Arnett v. Kennedy

Arnett v. Kennedy, 416 U.S. 134 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court rejected a nonprobationary federal civil service employee's claim to a full hearing prior to dismissal over charges he had brought the government into disrepute by recklessly accusing a superior of corruption. The governing federal law prescribed not only grounds for removal but also removal procedures. The employee could only be removed for "cause," but the procedures did not provide for an adversarial hearing prior to termination. The Court also rejected the respondent's claim that his First Amendment rights were violated.

The 6–3 decision was widely criticized by legal scholars for Justice William Rehnquist 's controversial conceptualization of Kennedy's due process rights in his plurality opinion , joined by only two other justices and explicitly rejected by the others. Rehnquist reasoned that since the state creates property interests such as that Arnett held in his job through its statutes, any procedures the state creates to allow an employee to appeal a termination are thus sufficient to constitute due process. Thus, he wrote, those with such interests "must take the bitter with the sweet".

Justices Byron White and Thurgood Marshall disapprovingly quoted that line in their separate opinions (White concurring that Kennedy's First Amendment rights had not been violated but dissenting from the rest of the holding, while Marshall dissented entirely, joined by two other justices). Justice Lewis Powell , concurring with another justice, also rejected Rehnquist's theory. A later case, _Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. _, held differently without explicitly overruling Arnett; in 1985's _Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill _, the Court held that public employees are entitled to some form of hearing before dismissal and formally rejected his "bitter with the sweet" formulation, with Rehnquist (by then Chief Justice) as the only dissenter. Some legal scholars have argued it should have been retained, or that the Court's subsequent disinterest in engaging this question has been to the detriment of its jurisprudence.

The First Amendment aspect of the holding—that the FFLA's provisions that covered employees could only be dismissed for "such cause as will promote the efficiency of the service" was neither overbroad nor so vague that employees lacked notice that speech such as Arnett's could lead to discipline—remains, although it has not been relied on much. After the case was remanded to the district court, Kennedy was again fired. He appealed that to the federal Civil Service Commission and was reinstated with back pay within a year.

Contents

• 1 Underlying dispute

• 2 District court

• 3 Oral argument

• 4 Opinion of the Court

  • 4.1 Powell concurrence

• 5 White opinion

• 6 Dissenting opinions

  • 6.1 Douglas

  • 6.2 Marshall

• 7 Aftermath

• 8 Subsequent jurisprudence

  • 8.1 Later Supreme Court cases

    • 8.1.1 Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co.

    • 8.1.2 Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill

• 9 Analysis and commentary

• 10 See also

• 11 References

• 12 External links

Underlying dispute

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arnett_v._Kennedy&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Underlying dispute")

Wayne Kennedy, who had begun his career in federal employment with the Internal Revenue Service in 1964, transferred to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which administered many of the federal grant programs created under the Johnson Administration 's Great Society agenda, four years later. He began as a field representative in Chicago and was promoted to branch manager for Indiana . He was also head of the national council of OEO locals for the American Federation of Government Employees . His position as field representative was characterized as "fairly important", since it primarily entailed representing the agency's positions to the Community Action Agencies it gave grants to. He was a GS-12 on the federal civilian employee pay scale, earning $16,000 ($91,000 in modern dollars ).

In 1971 Kennedy was suspended for 60 days after having, nearly a year earlier, advised members of a group that OEO had given money to that they should replace their board of directors completely. This violated OEO policy that its field representatives were not to in any way involve themselves in the internal affairs of the community groups the agency worked with. Johnson had already, according to the government, been warned about this after a previous incident; of several charges brought against him, this was the only one that was sustained after he wrote a lengthy written rebuttal.

In April 1972, three weeks after he had been informed of the suspension, further charges were brought against Kennedy, based on allegations he had accused the regional director of violating treaties in his dealings with some Native groups, and that another OEO official had violated the agency's conflict of interest standards by entering into a contract with an insurance agency her husband had an interest in. After he had received that notice, he then claimed at a union meeting that his superior had offered a $100,000 grant to a tribal official if that person would submit a written statement against Kennedy and another employee active in the union. These claims were reported in a newspaper article; Kennedy also held a press conference, with other union leaders, in the lobby of the building that housed OEO's headquarters where he made the same allegations and passed out copies of documents purporting to support those allegations.

Additional charges were brought against Kennedy. He was, per agency policy, again offered the chance to respond to them within 30 days either verbally or in writing. His entire response was to demand an adversarial hearing, and said the disciplinary proceedings in this instance violated his First Amendment right to free speech . Accordingly, OEO notified him that pursuant to the Lloyd-La Follette Act (LLFA), passed during Progressive Era civil service reform , he was fired.

Under regulations promulgated by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the OEO on how he could reply to the charges and appeal any subsequent dismissal, Kennedy appealed to the CSC and filed suit in federal court for the [Northern District of Illinois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Northern_District_of_Illinois "United States District Court for the Northern District

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