Embury

MEMORANDUM *

Dr. Talmadge King and other individually named defendants appeal the district court’s denial of qualified immunity. Because we find that any property right that the plaintiff, Dr. Stephen Embury, might have had in his job was not clearly established, we reverse.

Dr. Embury argues that we have no jurisdiction to consider whether he has a property interest in his job for due process purposes. The district court found that there was a genuine issue of material fact and that Dr. Embury’s evidence, if believed, could establish that he had a property interest in continued employment under California law. Thus, this Court would, under Knox v. Southwest Airlines, 1 lack jurisdiction to review that decision at this time.

Under the post-Knox decision in Saucier v. Katz, 2 we are nevertheless required to decide whether, under Dr. Em-bury’s version of the facts, he had a property interest in his non-tenure position sufficient to trigger a full pre-termination hearing. He does not, for two reasons. First, he did not ask for a pre-termination hearing until just before Christmas and nine days before his position was to terminate, when anyone would expect many of the university…