Kevin Kirk v. National Institute for People with Disabilities of New Jersey

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a litigant a meaningful opportunity to be heard before the State finally deprives him of a protected legal claim. Petitioner, proceeding without counsel, attempted to oppose summary judgment by submitting written responses and witness statements contradicting Respondent's factual presentation. The trial court refused to consider Petitioner's witness statements because they were not submitted in affidavit or certification form, deemed Respondent's extensive statement of material facts admitted because Petitioner's opposition did not conform to the prescribed paragraph-by-paragraph format, and dismissed Petitioner's claims with prejudice. At the same time, the court considered Respondent's employment-investigation materials containing out-of-court employee statements. Whether the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process is satisfied when a state court terminates a pro se litigant's civil claims with prejudice by treating the opposing party's factual assertions as admitted because of the litigant's failure to comply with the technical form of a summary-judgment rule, while declining to consider evidence the litigant actually submitted to dispute those assertions, thereby denying the litigant a meaningful opportunity to have genuinely disputed facts heard.