Takeaway: While public employees often have an entitlement to continued employment under federal law and thus must receive due process protections before discharge, that is not always the case. Depending on state law, a city employee may not have any protections against discharge.
A police officer for Sisseton, S.D., who was hired as an at-will employee could not bring a due process claim under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 or the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The plaintiff was hired as a law enforcement officer by the Sisseton, S.D., Police Department in January 2021. The plaintiff and the city signed an employment contract requiring the plaintiff to reimburse the city for the cost of her training if she left the department before completing 36 months of employment.
In January 2022, the city's chief of police informed the plaintiff that she had been accused of including false or inaccurate information in her stopped-vehicle reports. As a result, the Roberts County state's attorney placed her on a one-year probation and put her name on a list of reported officers made available to local defense attorneys. The chief told her that the Police Commission had lost confidence in her and asked her to resign. The plaintiff signed the memo adding her to the list of reported officers and resigned, but later claimed that she did so under duress and absent any ability to rebut the accusations.
In July 2022, the plaintiff filed a...
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