## Facts

- Dr. W. Channing Nicholas was a tenured associate professor at a public university laboratory.
- After a new laboratory director became Nicholas’s supervisor, the director sought Nicholas’s updated academic materials, research plans, and a written work schedule, and requested assurance of regular full-time lab hours.
- The university believed Nicholas’s outside emergency-room work interfered with his lab presence; Nicholas disputed that characterization.
- Nicholas did not provide the requested materials or assurances and received written warnings that termination would follow continued noncompliance.
- Following internal proceedings, the university terminated Nicholas’s tenured appointment.
- Nicholas sued, asserting procedural due process, substantive due process, First Amendment retaliation, and breach of contract.
- The district court found a breach of the tenure contract but entered judgment for defendants on all federal constitutional and First Amendment claims.

## Issues

1. Whether a tenured professorship at a public university is a “fundamental” property interest protected by the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
2. Whether Nicholas established any procedural due process or First Amendment violation based on his termination.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed judgment for defendants on the substantive due process, procedural due process, and First Amendment claims.
- The court held that tenured public employment, while potentially a property interest for procedural due process purposes, is not a fundamental property interest protected by substantive due process.
- The court rejected Nicholas’s remaining constitutional arguments as lacking merit.
- The university did not appeal the district court’s contract ruling; the appeal resolution left any contract remedy separate from constitutional relief.

## Legal Principles

- Procedural due process and substantive due process protect different categories of interests; an interest qualifying as “property” for procedural purposes is not necessarily protected by substantive due process.
- Substantive due process protects only a narrow class of fundamental rights and property interests deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions and implicit in ordered liberty.
- Tenured public employment is a state-created, contract-based interest and generally does not qualify as a fundamental property interest for substantive due process.
- Alleged breaches of state-created contract rights ordinarily are addressed through state contract law and, where applicable, procedural due process—not substantive due process.

## Conclusion

The court held that termination from a tenured position at a public university does not, without more, implicate substantive due process because tenured public employment is not a fundamental property interest, and it affirmed dismissal of Nicholas’s federal constitutional and First Amendment claims.


Nicholas v. Pa. State Univ., 227 F.3d 133 (3d Cir. 2000)