BALTIMORE, MD — A former Frederick Douglass High School cafeteria manager cannot sue after retiring in the midst of an investigation into a $995 shortfall in cafeteria funds.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that Bessie Miller had not been deprived her due process rights because her retirement was voluntary and she had a “full understanding of her options.”
“There is no concern that Miller either misunderstood her rights or was not granted ample opportunity to discover them…,” the 4th Circuit wrote in a per curiam opinion Thursday. “Miller was able to choose retirement, an option not even offered by the [Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners].”
Miller filed a lawsuit in July 2010, suing the board and several school officials for $300,000.
Miller claimed the board threatened her with termination, suspended her without pay, and gave her no opportunity to advocate for herself in a hearing.
She also claimed the board stalled the investigation, essentially leaving her in employment limbo, and that forced her to retire on disability because she had no other source of income.
“The process that is due ended because there was no point going through the process because she voluntarily retired,” said the school’s attorney, Edmund J. O’Meally of Pessin Katz Law P.A. in Towson. “A public sector employer has an obligation to provide due process, but once an individual resigns or retires that process ends and there is no longer a need for any kind of a hearing.”
Miller’s attorney, Baltimore solo attorney John H. Morris Jr., did not respond to a request for comment.
Miller worked in the school system from September 1997 to August 2009, most recently as a cafeteria manager at Frederick Douglass.
She found out during a meeting in February 2009 that the school suspected she was to blame for the $995 discrepancy in cafeteria funds.
A few days later, the school notified her she had been suspended without pay pending a pre-termination hearing.
In March 2009, Miller met with the school’s labor relations associate, Jerome Jones, who told her that she could keep her job if she accepted a demotion to food service worker with a reduction in pay and hours — from 40 hours a week to 30.
Jones told her that while he did not think she was guilty of theft, the school thought she had failed to comply with proper money-handling procedures.
Miller did not accept the offer and she remained suspended without pay until she retired because of disability.
Jones was one of the defendants named in Miller’s lawsuit.
The former cafeteria worker said she suffered damages, humiliation, embarrassment and pain and suffering as a result.
Judge William D. Quarles Jr. granted the school board’s motion for summary judgment in June 2013 in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, saying Miller made the choice to retire even though she believed she had to leave because she needed to maintain her income.
The 4th Circuit agreed, finding Miller was not rushed to accept the board’s offer and had the help of a union representative throughout the process.
The case is Miller v. Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners, US4th No. 13-1962 (unpublished, per curiam opinion, April 10, 2014).