## Facts

- Dorothy Bailey was a classified federal civil-service employee from 1939 until a 1947 reduction in force.
- In 1948 she received a temporary appointment and was reinstated subject to regulations permitting removal within 18 months if an investigation disclosed “disqualification,” including “reasonable grounds” to believe the employee was disloyal.
- A Regional Loyalty Board notified Bailey that investigative information might affect her eligibility and required her to answer interrogatories.
- Loyalty proceedings resulted in a recommendation that she be separated on loyalty grounds; she appeared before a departmental loyalty board and appealed to the Civil Service Commission’s Loyalty Review Board.
- Bailey was not given the identities of informants or detailed adverse evidence; some material remained confidential.
- The Loyalty Review Board found reasonable grounds to believe Bailey was disloyal, directed her separation, and imposed a three-year bar on federal employment.
- Bailey sued federal officials for declaratory and injunctive relief seeking to invalidate her removal and debarment and obtain reinstatement.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal civil-service employee has a Fifth Amendment due process interest that requires trial-type procedures (including disclosure of evidence and confrontation of witnesses) before removal on loyalty grounds.
2. Whether the Due Process Clause limits the political branches’ authority to remove executive-branch personnel based on loyalty determinations using confidential sources.
3. Whether a three-year debarment from federal employment is an impermissible punishment absent judicial trial.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit upheld Bailey’s removal, holding that the Constitution did not require trial-type procedures for her loyalty-based separation.
- The court invalidated the three-year debarment, characterizing it as punishment imposed without judicial trial.
- The Supreme Court affirmed by an equally divided Court, leaving the D.C. Circuit’s judgment in place without an opinion.

## Legal Principles

- Federal employment, as treated by the court in this case, is not “property” for Fifth Amendment purposes in a manner that constitutionally compels trial-like process before executive removal on loyalty grounds.
- In loyalty and security matters involving executive personnel, the political branches have broad discretion, and due process does not necessarily require disclosure of confidential investigative sources or evidence.
- A sanction extending beyond separation—such as a time-limited bar from all federal employment—may be treated as punitive and invalid if imposed without judicial trial.

## Conclusion

The court sustained the government’s authority to separate an executive-branch employee based on a loyalty finding reached through procedures that relied on confidential information, but it rejected an additional three-year government-wide employment bar as a punitive measure that could not be imposed without judicial adjudication; the Supreme Court’s evenly divided affirmance left that result in effect only for the case.


Bailey v. Richardson, 182 F.2d 46 (D.C. Cir. 1950), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 341 U.S. 918 (1951)