Fifth Circuit Upholds Termination of Louisiana Couple from Fire Department

The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the appeal of two former employees of the St. George Fire Protection District who claimed they were discriminated against and forced out of the department over their romantic relationship.

Stacie Dellucky and Frank Dellucky filed suit against the district and Fire Chief Gerard Tarleton alleging violation of their First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Frank alleged he was forced to resign in 2018, and Stacie was fired in 2020. Here is earlier coverage of the case.

The facts as explained in the court’s decision suggest a more complicated fact pattern exists:

• Stacie was employed by St. George in an administrative role in 2014. She was married to Chad Roberson, who had worked at St. George since 1992.
• Frank had begun working for St. George as a firefighter in 1999. For most of his time at St. George, Frank was married to Nichole Dellucky, who was never employed by St. George.
• In 2016, when the events giving rise to this suit began, Roberson was the Assistant Fire Chief. He and Stacie both worked on the second floor of St. George’s administrative building. Although Roberson now serves as the Assistant Chief of Operations, he is slated to succeed the Chief.
• Frank had been promoted several times and eventually became the District Fire Chief for the A Shift, and his office was on the same floor as Stacie’s and Roberson’s.
• Stacie and Frank began spending significant amounts of time together and were rumored to be in an intimate relationship.
• Nichole and Roberson began to suspect Stacie and Frank were having an affair, and Roberson hired a private investigator.
• In October 2016, Nichole and Roberson separately discovered Frank and Stacie together, in various states of undress, at their respective homes.
• Nichole called the Chief to complain about the situation.
• The Chief testified in his deposition that regardless of its nature, Stacie’s and Frank’s personal relationship had disrupted the workplace.
• Roberson similarly testified that the relationship had caused tension among the St. George leadership.
• After Nichole called the Chief, he met with Stacie and Frank and told them that they needed to stop allowing their personal relationship to interfere with work.
• In August of 2017, another St. George employee accused Frank of making sexually explicit comments to her.
• The Chief launched an investigation and, as a result, Frank agreed to resign and entered into a settlement agreement with St. George.
• In the settlement agreement, Frank maintained that he had done nothing wrong, but the parties expressed their “desire to fully settle any and all disputes between them[.]”
• Frank and St. George agreed to “hereby forever release, discharge, compromise and settle all claims and causes of action against each other, whether known [or] unknown, and whether asserted or unasserted.” Frank began working for a different fire department.
• Meanwhile, Roberson and Nichole each filed a petition for divorce from Stacie and Frank, respectively, in early 2017. Both divorces were finalized in 2018.
• After their divorces were finalized, Stacie and Frank formalized their relationship, and they married in late June 2020.
• On July 7th, the Chief called Stacie into his office, and Stacie surreptitiously recorded the meeting on her phone.
• The Chief told Stacie that her marriage to Frank was “problematic[.]”
• Stacie was placed on administrative leave until August 16th, when her employment was officially terminated.
• Following Stacie’s termination, Appellants sued St. George and the Chief in his individual and official capacities. [For purposes of clarify the Appellants are the Plaintiffs and the Appellees are the Defendants (Fire Department and Chief Tarleton)].
• The district court held that there was no evidence that Appellees had an official policy prohibiting one class of employees from marrying another and that the Chief’s decision to fire Stacie survived rational basis review.
• The district court rejected Stacie’s due process claim because she did not present evidence of a property interest of which she had been deprived, her equal protection claim because such claims are precluded in cases involving public employment, and her free exercise claim because she had failed to adduce any evidence of her maintaining sincerely held religious beliefs.
• Appellants do not identify which specific disputed facts the district court arguably resolved in reaching its decision, and they do not cite to any evidence in the summary judgment record calling any factual conclusions into question.
• Appellants failed to satisfy their burden of pointing to evidence calling Appellees’ version of events into question, at least with respect to the facts upon which Appellants’ claims turn. The district court did not err in its handling of the factual issues relevant to resolving Appellees’ summary judgment motion.
• Appellants contend the district court’s dismissal of their right-to-marry claim was erroneous.
• [T]he Supreme Court has rejected constitutional right-to-marry challenges where the relevant government action “placed no direct legal obstacle in the path of persons desiring to get married” or where “there was no evidence that the laws significantly discouraged, let alone made practically impossible, any marriages.”
• Here, the challenged government action—the Chief’s termination of Stacie—did not prohibit whole classes of people from marrying.
• Appellants adduced no evidence of a St. George policy barring co-workers from marrying or banning marriages between members of management and their subordinates.
• The evidence shows that the Chief’s decision was motivated by the fact that Stacie married Frank; there is no evidence that the outcome would have been the same if the marriage had been between two other employees.
• Moreover, Stacie’s termination clearly did not discourage or render practically impossible her marriage to Frank: the record indicates that they remain married today.
• The challenged government action did not directly and substantially interfere with Stacie’s or Frank’s right to marry.
• Maintaining workplace order and morale and ensuring that the chain-of-command operates effectively is a legitimate objective.
• Finally, Appellants maintain that summary judgment was not warranted as to their claim that Appellees unconstitutionally deprived them of their liberty interests. They contend that Appellees’ handling of the situation stigmatized Stacie and Frank in violation of their rights.
• Appellants failed to point to any evidence that the Chief’s reason for firing Stacie was publicized by Appellees, much less that it was done in an “official or intentional” way.
• Indeed, the record suggests that individuals other than the Chief—that is, individuals who were not representatives of St. George—were responsible for spreading that information to other employees.
• Appellants also did not show that the rumors about their relationship prevented either of them from obtaining new employment.
• And to the extent it was publicized by Appellees, it was publicized “in connection with the defense” of this lawsuit, and so its publication is not actionable.
• The district court properly granted summary judgment against Appellants on their claim that they were deprived of a protected liberty interest.

Here is a copy of the decision: