Andrew Kressin was a police officer in the City of Madison, Wisconsin. After the police department received a complaint that Kressin responded inappropriately to a domestic abuse call, he was investigated by officer Tracie Jokala of the Internal Affairs unit. Kressin voluntarily resigned before the investigation was complete, and therefore was not constructively discharged by the City. Three months later, Jokala concluded her investigation, and determined that on multiple occasions “Kressin had minimized callers’ allegations or otherwise been untruthful in his call notes.” Based on these conclusions, Jokala sent a ‘Brady letter’ to the local district attorney’s office, detailing the incidents of alleged untruthfulness. Kressin was not notified before Jokala sent the Brady letter, nor did he receive a hearing giving him the opportunity to defend himself. Kressin believed that if he had received a hearing, he could have shown that the allegations in the Brady letter were false and prevented the letter from being issued.
Kressin applied to multiple law enforcement agencies and was told repeatedly that his application could not move forward due to the Brady letter. Kressin alleged that the Brady letter had “completely foreclosed his ability to find another job as a police officer.” Kressin sued Jokala and the City for violating his procedural due process rights by effectively ending his law enforcement career without adequate procedural protections. The trial court disagreed.
The Court explained that for Kressin to prevail, he had to prove that “the defendants (1) deprived him of occupational liberty; and (2) denied him constitutionally sufficient procedural protections.” The Court found that Kressin failed to prove the first prong, because deprivation of occupational liberty requires that the employer undertake an adverse action such as termination, suspension, or demotion. In this case, Kressin voluntarily resigned for reasons pre-dating Jokala’s investigation. Although he did allege that he suffered reputational damage, precedent held that reputational damage alone – without evidence of a change in employment status – is insufficient to satisfy the first prong.
The Court rejected Kressin’s arguments that he stated a procedural due process claim despite presenting no evidence of a change in employment status. The Court dismissed Kressin’s argument that he was deprived of occupational liberty as a result of being barred from future employment as a police officer. It found that precedent required a showing that Kressin suffered some adverse employment action. Then it rejected Kressin’s analogy to a line of cases in which plaintiffs sufficiently alleged procedural due process claims when they were ineligible to work in the childcare industry due to placement on a child abuse registry. In those cases, the placement on the registry satisfied the requirement of a change in legal status, akin to a suspension or demotion. The placement on the registry, and not its consequence of precluding future employment in the industry, was what satisfied the test for a procedural due process claim. Here, Kressin can point to no comparable adverse action by the City, and accordingly, he failed to state a claim that his procedural due process rights were violated.
Kressin v. Jokala, 23-cv-136-jdp, 2024 WL 307490 (W.D. Wis., 2024).