Melinda Beazley Pearson v. City of Augusta, Georgia, et al.

I. Was it error for the panel to affirm a grant of summary judgment, finding due process had been provided where a challenged demotion had been effected before or without implementation of the three steps of Cleveland Bd. of Educ. v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532 (1985), particularly the preclusion of a decision by a neutral decision maker; where the panel, in violation of Tolan v. Cotton, construed the facts of a public employment investigation about a department’s policy on the accrual and use of comp time by salaried employees, to find that due process had been provided to Plaintiff Pearson, who was demoted before being provided the opportunity to show a neutral decisionmaker that she had followed comp time process and policy, that similarly situated males had followed, but who were not facing discipline -- which resulted in the panel’s finding that the evidence could show the proffered reason for the demotion was pretext (Appx. 20a-23a) -- where the panel’s construction of the evidence about the investigation upon which the due process finding was based, was an investigation by the official who made the demotion recommendation, implicating due process concerns, and where other evidence could show personal or other unlawful motive or bias, and where the panel’s construction of the evidence about the investigation to find compliance under Loudermill, (Appx. 16a) omitted the need for the process to have had the substantive step of a decision by a neutral decisionmaker, and where the exonerating evidence that could have been presented was the evidence of which the investigator and recommender of demotion was aware, that formed the basis of the panel’s pretext finding at Appx. 20a-23a?