## Facts

- Carl Bishop was employed as a police officer by the City of Marion, North Carolina, and classified as a “permanent” employee under a city personnel ordinance.
- The ordinance stated that a permanent employee could be discharged for failing to meet job standards or for being negligent, inefficient, or unfit.
- In 1972, the City Manager terminated Bishop on the recommendation of the Chief of Police, without providing a hearing.
- The City Manager privately told Bishop the reasons for discharge included failure to follow orders, poor attendance at training, causing low morale, and conduct unsuitable for an officer.
- The reasons were not publicly announced; they were later disclosed during pretrial discovery after Bishop filed suit.
- Bishop brought a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging he was denied procedural due process because he was terminated without an opportunity to contest the reasons.

## Issues

1. Whether the ordinance and state law gave Bishop a constitutionally protected property interest in continued public employment requiring a pre-termination hearing.
2. Whether allegedly false and stigmatizing reasons for discharge, communicated privately and later in litigation, deprived Bishop of a constitutionally protected liberty interest in reputation or future employment.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for the city officials in a 5–4 decision.
- The Court held Bishop had no property interest in continued employment because the lower courts’ interpretation of state law treated him as an at-will employee.
- The Court held Bishop had no liberty-interest deprivation because the reasons for his termination were not made public by the government; later disclosure during discovery did not create a due process violation.

## Legal Principles

- A property interest in public employment is not created by the Constitution; it depends on state law or other independent sources that create a legitimate entitlement to continued employment.
- When authoritative state-court guidance is absent, the Supreme Court may accept a lower federal court’s tenable construction of state law in assessing whether an entitlement exists.
- An employment rule listing permissible grounds for discharge does not necessarily confer tenure; it may be construed as procedural guidance rather than a substantive limit on removal.
- A stigma-based liberty-interest claim generally requires governmental public disclosure of stigmatizing charges in connection with the employment action; private communications do not suffice.
- Disclosure of termination reasons during litigation initiated after the discharge, including in discovery, does not constitute the kind of governmental publication that triggers a liberty-interest deprivation.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld the termination without a hearing because Bishop lacked a state-law entitlement to continued employment and because any allegedly stigmatizing reasons for discharge were not publicly disseminated by the government, so no Fourteenth Amendment property or liberty interest was infringed.


Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341 (1976)