Logan V. Zimmerman Brush Co.

''Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co.'', 455 U.S. 422, is a unanimous 1982 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that the petitioner was entitled to have his discrimination complaint adjudged by Illinois's Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which had dismissed it for its own failure to meet a deadline. The decision reversed the Illinois Supreme Court's holding to the contrary two years prior.

Logan, one of whose legs was shorter than the other, had been hired by Zimmerman in 1979 as a machine operator; when that proved beyond his capabilities, he was made a shipping clerk. A month later the company fired him for poor performance; within a week Logan brought a claim with FEPC, alleging he had been discriminated against due to his disability. FEPC was required to hold a factfinding conference with both parties within four months; it accidentally scheduled the one in Logan's case a week after that period ended. The company moved to dismiss the claim on those grounds; after FEPC's denial it petitioned the state Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition which was granted on the grounds that the statutory time limit was mandatory.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted Logan '' certiorari'' to argue on appeal that his constitutional rights to equal protection and due process of law had been violated. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the Court, followed some of its other recent cases in holding that when the state created a process for Logan to seek redress, it had also created a property interest in any claims filed through that process which could not itself be deprived without due process. Unusually, Blackmun also wrote a separate concurrence to the majority opinion, joined by three other justices, arguing that the Illinois Supreme Court had also violated Logan's right to equal protection of the laws by arbitrarily creating two classes of complainants but only granting full rights to one purely on the basis of its own deadline. Justice Lewis Powell also concurred, but would have decided the case on narrower grounds specific to Logan's circumstances, rejecting Blackmun's "broad pronouncements".

The Court has not revisited ''Logan'' in any later case, but it has often been cited as establishing a test for when due process has been denied. Lower courts have sometimes had to choose between ''Logan'' and the '' Parratt v. Taylor'' decision two years earlier (later overruled in part) as guiding precedent based on the record before them. Legal scholars have, in considering how it held Logan's claim a property interest, found it to straddle the line between procedural and substantive due process. It has also been described as the first time a majority of justices agreed that a challenged regulation failed the rational basis test under the Fourteenth Amendment. In the wake of the decision Illinois reformed the statute and replaced the FEPC with the Illinois Human Rights Commission, part of the newly created Illinois Department of Human Rights.

Background

In 1961 the Illinois legislature passed the state's Fair Employment Practices Act (FEPA). It created the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), an administrative body empowered to hear and resolve complaints of employment discrimination in all categories protected by law. Early in its existence it incurred the wrath of large businesses; in 1964 Motorola offered to pay the legal bills of any small businesses in the state facing proceedings before the FEPC after it spent $200,000 fighting a decision to award $1,000 to an unsuccessful applicant. In 1975 the legislature added disability to the law's protected classes, but made FEPC the exclusive venue for resolving those complaints.

The FEPA set a deadline of 180 days from the alleged offense for complaints to be brought, and required only that FEPC notify any employer of a complaint against them within 120 days. After the state's Supreme Court held in its 1978 case ''Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Plan Commission v. Fair Employment Practices Commission'' that the deadlines were mandatory, not merely directory, the statute was amended to require that FEPC convene a fact-finding conference with the parties within the 120-day deadline, to promote speedier resolution of complaints and encourage negotiated settlements., hereafter ''FEPC'' In 1979, in a suit against FEPC brought by Chicago State University and another employer after the commission had waited two years to inform the latter of a pending complaint against it, the state Supreme Court not only reaffirmed its earlier ruling but clarified that if FEPC failed to notify the employer within 180 days of receiving the complaint, it lost jurisdiction permanently.

Underlying dispute

In early October 1979 Laverne L. Logan was hired by the Zimmerman Brush Co., a Chicago manufacturer.''FEPC'', at 101 According to the company's lawyer, at that time it was fully aware that Logan's left leg was several inches shorter than his right. Zimmerman tried to accommodate him by assigning him first to the shipping room, and then to work on a machine where he could sit.

After a month, while he was still in his probationary period and thus not yet covered by the union contract, the company let Logan go since he was unable to perform his duties satisfactorily. Five days later, on November 14, Logan, on his own, filed a complaint with Illinois's Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), alleging that he had been fired because of his physical disability in violation of state law.

In late January 1980 FEPC mailed to both Logan and Zimmerman notice that it had scheduled that conference for March 18. The company was also asked to complete and return a two-page questionnaire about its personnel practices and the circumstances of Logan's termination by March 10, which it did. At the conference, Zimmerman moved to dismiss Logan's complaint on the grounds that, since FEPC had mistakenly scheduled the conference for five days after the 120-day deadline had expired, it was no longer valid. FEPC denied the motion, so the company petitioned the Supreme Court of Illinois for a writ of prohibition barring FEPC from taking any further action; it granted a stay pending resolution of the case. Logan retained counsel and, since the six-month period for him to file a complaint had not yet lapsed, refiled.

In response, the legislature again amended FEPA to allow for the conference to take place after the 120-day deadline if both parties agreed. It took effect in July of that year.

Supreme Court of Illinois

The court unanimously held for Zimmerman in a late September decision. It conceded that the use of "shall" in the statute did not, by itself, make its provisions mandatory. "One must consider the word within the context of the entire statute, looking particularly to the purpose of the legislation", wrote Justice Daniel P. Ward for his colleagues. Since that language had in earlier cases been held to mandate an action, it was presumed that the legislature knew this and intended that construction.''FEPC'', 104–07

The commission attempted to distinguish ''Springfield-Sangamon'' by noting that its delay in bringing that case had been found to have had the potential to cost the employer considerable sums of money in back pay and fines, which would not have been the case here. The court responded that FEPC was reading that decision too narrowly and ignored the purpose of the conference, as clarified by the 1978 amendment, to provide an opportunity for speedy resolution of the complaint (perhaps through a negotiated settlement), save all parties time and money, and protect employers from frivolous complaints. "Without a required fact-finding conference the Commission would in most instances have to proceed solely on the basis of the employee's charge", Ward wrote. "Unless the Commission would be able to obtain information regarding the charge from some independent investigation its decision of whether or not to file a complaint would hardly be an informed one."

The court also found unpersuasive arguments by the commission and Logan that, by submitting the completed questionnaire and attending the conference, Zimmerman had waived any standing to move to have the charge dismissed on grounds of failure to proceed in a timely fashion. By doing so, Ward noted, it had merely been complying with the commission's request and thus the law; to not do so would have made it equally responsible for the delay of the conference. The record also did not reflect any awareness on the company's part that it was aware at that time that the conference had been scheduled too late.''FEPC'', 107–09

Logan raised three additional arguments; the court rejected all of them. His equal protection and due process rights could not have been violated since the legislature had created reasonable procedures for the resolution of employment discrimination complaints, which had been followed. The amendment to FEPA that would have allowed the parties to waive the deadline was not explicitly worded to be retroactive. And since FEPC had otherwise processed his first complaint in compliance with the law, he could not be allowed to file a second one. Under the circumstances, " t only would an employer's rights be prejudiced if an employee were allowed to file a second and successive charge, but also the public interest in promoting an expeditious resolution of charges would be circumvented", Ward wrote.

U.S. Supreme Court

Logan petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for '' certiorari'' on the question of whether his due process and equal protection rights were violated by the state following its own procedures. Early in 1981 the petition was granted. Illinois Attorney General Tyrone C. Fahner filed a brief on FEPC's behalf. The Congress of Organizations of the Physically Handicapped filed an '' amicus curiae'' brief urging reversal.

Oral argument

Oral argument was held in October 1981. Gary Palm, arguing for Logan, went first. The Court was primarily focused on getting him to clarify the nature of Logan's injury and both constitutional claims. Asked whether a post-deprivation remedy would suffice, as the Court had held earlier that year in '' Parratt v. Taylor'', where a state tort remedy was held constitutionally preferable to an inmate's federal Section 1983 lawsuit over some hobby materials he had ordered that were lost by prison officials before they could be delivered to him, Palm demurred. "This is a case involving ... adjudicatory procedures, which just should not be put into the same category as the negligent handling of a hobby kit or the negligent handling of an automobile." Palm noted that his client was not ultimately seeking redress from the state, but his employer. All he had wanted from the former was the opportunity to make his case that he had been illegally fired by the latter, an opportunity he had followed every rule of the state's to exercise.

Afterwards, Jay Canel argued for Zimmerman. Justice Thurgood Marshall questioned why the company had taken the case this far, since it might otherwise have long since settled with Logan. Canel agreed, telling Justice William Rehnquist that his client felt the same way at that point but had earlier followed the advice of previous counsel that had advised him to assert his rights under the law. Justice John Paul Stevens saw "a real equal protection concern" with the 120-day deadline, since it might both allow claimants with spurious claims to get the full process while those with legitimate ones would not. Questioning Canel closely about what sort of post-deprivation remedies might still be available to Logan should the Court rule in Zimmerman's favor, since only the commission could order him reinstated, he asked Canel if he was arguing that there could never be a due process violation in litigation between private parties. Specifically Stevens brought up '' Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co.'', where the statutory notice provisions related to the suit were held deficient enough to be a due process violation. Canel said that while he did not think that, he believed Logan could still get economic restitution from the state through either the Illinois Court of Claims or a Section 1983 suit.

Decision

The Court issued its opinion in late March 1982. Unanimously, it had agreed with Logan that his rights had been violated by the process. In what way, and to what extent, it offered three different opinions. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote for the Court that Logan's due process rights had been violated. In an unusual separate concurrence joined by three other justices, he argued that the statute failed the rational basis test and thus denied Logan equal protection of the laws. Justice Lewis Powell agreed with the latter point, but would have limited the holding to the facts specific to the case.''Logan'', 443–44

Opinion of the Court

"At the outset," Blackmun wrote after summarizing the facts of the case, "we are faced with what has become a familiar two-part inquiry: we must determine whether Logan was deprived of a protected interest, and, if so, what process was his due." ''Mullane'', where a requirement that publication in a newspaper was held a constitutionally inadequate level of notice to the beneficiaries of a common trust fund who stood to be deprived of their rights to hold the trustees and fiduciaries accountable for mismanagement through the settlement process, was the precedent that "affirmatively settled" the first question. Zimmerman had attempted to distinguish the cases, but, Blackmun wrote, the Court was unconvinced.

And precedents even older than ''Mullane'' supported the protection of litigants' claims by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In 1971's ''Boddie v. Connecticut'', filing fees for indigent defendants which prevented them from beginning divorce actions were held to violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. "The hallmark of property, the Court has emphasized, is an individual entitlement grounded in state law, which cannot be removed except 'for cause,'" Blackmun explained. "Once that characteristic is found, the types of interests protected as 'property' are varied and, as often as not, intangible, relating 'to the whole domain of social and economic fact.'"''Logan'', 430–32

"A claimant has more than an abstract desire or interest in redressing his grievance: his right to redress is guaranteed by the State, with the adequacy of his claim assessed under what is, in essence, a 'for cause' standard, based upon the substantiality of the evidence", Blackmun continued. Among the many things the Court had found to be protected property interests under the Due Process Clause were a horse trainer's license, he noted, referring to '' Barry v. Barchi'', a 1979 case where the Court had held that New York had unconstitutionally suspended one after the horse had tested positive for banned substances after a race without guaranteeing the trainer a prompt adversarial hearing to offer a defense. It would take a "remarkable reading" of the Court's precedent, Blackmun wrote, "to conclude that a horse trainer's license is a protected property interest under the Fourteenth Amendment, while a state-created right to redress discrimination is not."

The Illinois Supreme Court's deference to the legislature, in holding that Logan only had such a right once the process of adjudicating the claim had actually begun, as it would have after the conference, misunderstood the nature of the Constitution's due process guarantee, said Blackmun. In a case decided around the same time as the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in the instant case, '' Vitek v. Jones'', the Court had held in favor of a Nebraska prison inmate challenging his involuntary transfer to a mental hospital. Justice Byron White had held there that constitutional due process guarantees are federal and "not diminished by the fact that the State may have specified its own procedures that it may deem adequate for determining the preconditions to adverse official action". "Indeed", Blackmun added, "any other conclusion would allow the State to destroy at will virtually any state-created property interest."

Having established that Logan had been deprived of a property interest, Blackmun turned to the question of what process he was due before that happened. " has become a truism," he observed, "that ''some'' form of hearing' is required before the owner is finally deprived of a protected property interest." But Court precedent also recognized that the nature of the process would vary based on "the importance of the private interest and the length or finality of the deprivation ... the likelihood of governmental error ... and the magnitude of the governmental interests involved." Taking all these factors into consideration, Logan was entitled to the full process he would have gotten if the hearing date had been timely set:

Lastly, Blackmun addressed Zimmerman's arguments that the case not be distinguished from ''Parratt'', that Logan still had post-deprivation remedies in state court. "This argument misses ''Parratt''s point", Blackmun responded. That case had involved an unforeseeable accident, whereas Logan had been deprived of his property interest through the prescribed operation of state law. "''Parratt'' was not designed to reach such a situation." He further pointed out that a tort against the state in its Court of Claims would be likelier to be more expensive and protracted for Logan than his FEPC case had been, and as Canel had conceded during oral argument, could not result in him getting his job back, something only the FEPC could order.''Logan'', 435–37

In conclusion, Blackmun reiterated that the Court's decision did not entitle every aggrieved litigant to their day in court or its equivalent. "The State may erect reasonable procedural requirements for triggering the right to an adjudication, be they statutes of limitations ... or, in an appropriate case, filing fees." But, quoting previous cases, he said that the Fourteenth Amendment required "'an ''opportunity'' . . . granted at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner' ... 'for hearing appropriate to the nature of the case'". That, Logan had been denied.

Blackmun concurrence

Blackmun took the unusual step of writing a concurring opinion to his own opinion for the Court. He was joined by three other justices: William Brennan, Marshall, and Sandra Day O'Connor (whom a headnote indicated joined only that concurrence and not Blackmun's majority opinion). "Although the Court considered that it was unnecessary to discuss and dispose of the equal protection claim when the due process issue was being decided in Logan's favor, I regard the equal protection issue as sufficiently important to require comment on my part," he wrote, "particularly inasmuch as a majority of the Members of the Court are favorably inclined toward the claim, although, to be sure, that majority is not the one that constitutes the Court for the controlling opinion."

The equal protection claim in the case was "unconventional", Blackmun conceded, since the state did not explicitly create any classifications among litigants in the FEPA. That changed with the Illinois Supreme Court's strict reading. According to Blackmun, by refusing to allow FEPC the flexibility to correct or ignore its own mistake, claimants for before it were now divided between those whose complaints the commission processed in a timely fashion and those who it failed to do so for, no matter how timely those complaints were otherwise.

Since there was thus a classification, the next step was to decide whether it was rational. After briefly reviewing precedent in the area that held that test was "not toothless" despite its requirements very often being met when considered by courts, Blackmun said that in this case there was no room for doubt: "I see no need to explore the outer bounds of this test, for I find that the Illinois statute runs afoul of the lowest level of permissible equal protection scrutiny."''Logan'', 439–42

Taking under consideration the FEPA's two stated purposes—eliminating employment discrimination while providing employers with a process that protected them from baseless claims—Blackmun wrote that " is evident at a glance that neither of these objectives is served by EPAs deadline provision. Terminating potentially meritorious claims in a random manner obviously cannot serve to redress instances of discrimination. And it cannot protect employers from unfounded charges, for the frivolousness of a claim is entirely unrelated to the length of time the Commission takes to process that claim."

Blackmun likened FEPA as interpreted by the Illinois Supreme Court to an Oregon statute the Court had struck down on equal protection grounds in '' Lindsey v. Normet'' a decade prior. The state had required that tenants challenging their evictions were required to put up a bond equal to twice their monthly rent in advance of beginning proceedings. The Court had rejected all challenges to that law save the equal protection grounds, for the merits of a tenant's case against their landlord had no relation to their ability to afford the potentially exorbitant bond. "While it may well be true that ' bright line divides the merely foolish from the arbitrary law,'" Blackmun wrote, quoting from '' Schweiker v. Wilson'', another equal-protection case the Court had decided the year before, "I have no doubt that his lawis patently irrational in the light of its stated purposes."

The Illinois Supreme Court had also, Blackmun agreed, found two other public purposes for the 120-day deadline—that it expedited dispute resolution, and keeping the commission's case load manageable. He dismissed the first: "Insofar as the court meant to suggest that a factfinding conference may help settle controversies and frame issues for a more efficient future resolution, it was undoubtedly correct. But I cannot agree that terminating a claim that the State itself has misscheduled is a rational way of expediting the resolution of disputes." Blackmun also found this rationale dubious since once the conference had been held, the law set no deadline for the resolution of the dispute.

Blackmun conceded that claims where the deadline had been missed, such as Logan's, were indeed resolved expeditiously. But that was less analysis than the Fourteenth Amendment required, he wrote.

So, too, was the state's possible interest in administrative efficiency. If that was indeed the goal, Blackmun wrote, " tsuffers from the defect outlined above: it draws an arbitrary line between otherwise identical claims." It was also "speculative and attenuated" in relation to that goal as to arbitrary on its face. "The State's rationale must be something more than the exercise of a strained imagination; while the connection between means and ends need not be precise, it, at the least, must have some objective basis", he concluded. "That is not so here."

Powell concurrence

Justice Powell, joined by William Rehnquist, characterized the case as being of "little importance except to the litigants" since the statute had long since been amended, arising from "an isolated example of bureaucratic oversight". He expressed surprise that the more likely solution, tolling the deadline until the hearing could be held, was rejected in favor of a strict reading of the statute.

"The issue presented, at least for me, is too simple and straightforward to justify broad pronouncements on the law of procedural due process or of equal protection", Powell wrote. Rejecting the expansive reading he believed was suggested by Blackmun's opinions, "should be decided narrowly on its unusual facts". Those facts supported Blackmun's reasoning that the state denied Logan equal protection of the laws by creating two arbitrarily different classes of claimants:

Powell agreed that ''Lindsey'' and ''Schweiker'' compelled the result. " Although I do not join Justice Blackmun's separate opinion, I agree that the challenged statute, as construed and applied in this case, failed to comport with this minimal standard", he concluded. "I am concerned by the broad sweep of the Court's opinion, but I do join its judgment."

Aftermath

While the case was pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on another challenge to the FEPA's deadlines provision. The 1978 amendment to the law following the ''Springfield-Sangamon'' decision had allowed claimants who had filed with the FEPC prior to that amendment's effective date but not had their claims acted on to refile those claims in state court. An employer facing a revived lawsuit argued the amended statute allowing it was a violation of the state constitution's guarantees of equal protection and due process, as well as its prohibition of laws benefiting a special interest without a rational justification. Again, in ''Wilson v. All-Steel, Inc.'', a unanimous opinion by Justice Ward, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed that by reviving extinguished claims for a class of plaintiffs distinguished purely by an arbitrary date of filing, it violated the equal protection rights of the other plaintiffs and the due process rights of the employers.

''Wilson'' was interpreted as effectively barring the revival of any claim FEPC had administratively closed prior to 1981—until ''Logan''. A federal class action suit brought by 3,000 plaintiffs who met its conditions went back and forth between the district court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals for the rest of the decade until Judge Brian Barnett Duff held in 1989 that the retroactive application of ''Logan'' the plaintiffs sought, while otherwise justifiable, would have led to an inequitable result for employers who, possibly lacking access to the evidence necessary to defend claims that were at that point well over a decade old, would effectively be forced to settle to their own financial detriment. The plaintiffs appealed that as well, arguing that '' Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson'' allowed an exception, but the Seventh Circuit again held for the state.

Subsequent jurisprudence

Two years later, in '' Hudson v. Palmer'', another prisoner argued a guard's deliberate destruction of his property during a search of his cell constituted a due process violation per ''Logan''. The Court declined to make the distinction. "In ''Logan'', we decided a question about which our decision in ''Parratt'' left little doubt, that is, whether a postdeprivation state remedy satisfies due process where the property deprivation is effected pursuant to an established state procedure", wrote Chief Justice Warren Burger. "We held that it does not. ''Logan'' plainly has no relevance here."

The following year, in the landmark ''Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill'' decision on the due process rights of public employees facing termination from their jobs, Justice Byron White's majority opinion characterized ''Logan'' as "reiterat ng its earlier holding in '' Vitek v. Jones'', that while states are free to create, modify or even abolish whatever procedures they wish for the remedy of constitutional wrongs, those procedures still must comply with federal law. The Court has not had the occasion to revisit ''Logan'' since then; but many lower courts have.

Federal courts

''Holman v. Hilton''

Blackmun had rebuked Zimmerman for "miss ngthe point" of ''Parratt'' with its attempts to distinguish the two cases, noting that what distinction there was—between the negligence of a government and its prescribed acts following its own procedures—actually weighed in Logan's favor. Two years later, in ''Holman v. Hilton'', the Third Circuit discussed the relationship between the two cases at greater length in resolving a claim with elements of both., hereafter ''Holman'' II

Like ''Parratt'', the case had been brought by a prison inmate, Charles Holman, serving a life sentence at what was then known as Rahway State Prison in New Jersey. While he had been at Trenton State Prison in 1976, some of his personal items had been impounded following a search after an abortive escape attempt. They included 65 record albums, a quartz Timex watch and a set of diamond engagement rings. After collecting mail room receipts to prove the items had been shipped to him, he filed a replevin action in Mercer County Court to recover either the items or their cash value, which he put at over $600. The complaint was dismissed per New Jersey law which forbade prisoners from suing the government or its employees until they had completed their sentences and been released.,, hereafter ''Holman I''''Holman II'', 855–56

After his transfer to Rahway, he filed several more claims within the prison system for items (books, clothing and food) he had been told were destroyed in a fire at Trenton. In March 1979 those claims were denied on the grounds that despite knowing of the impending transfer he had refused to assist in packing his personal items. Five months later Holman filed a ''pro se'' federal lawsuit under Section 1983, alleging that the law barring his suit violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying him due process after a deprivation of property. The District of New Jersey agreed, granting Holman summary judgement,

Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise held for Holman. The state had defended the statute as rational since it believed it limited the potential for conflict between prisoners and correctional officers; also it insisted that it reduced the likelihood of prisoners filing frivolous lawsuits in order to get taken to court appearances. "At the very least, the rationality of his lawis open to serious question", Debevoise wrote. It seemed more sensible to him that having recourse to the courts would make the feared conflicts ''less'' likely. For two reasons he also doubted that the bar on lawsuits against the state and its employees by those still incarcerated would serve to deter frivolous lawsuits: ''Parratt'' would divert inmate suits to federal court, and the law did not distinguish between frivolous and meritorious suits.

It was not enough that the law fail the rational-basis test; it also had to serve to deny Holman his rights. Debevoise looked to ''Parratt'' and ''Logan'' for guidance. The former case was enough, he felt, but it was "confusing, however, and raises a number of difficult questions" that were answered by ''Logan''. That case allowed him to see the challenged law as procedural and thus analogous to the FEPC's 120-day deadline in ''Logan''. Since Holman's interests in the resolution of his dispute outweighed the state's, and he ran the risk of either dying in prison before he could bring suit or having to collect aged or unavailable evidence after release some time in the distant future, " re, as in the ''Logan'' case, the state has created an 'established procedure' which 'destroys laintiff'sentitlement without according him proper procedural safeguards.'"

The state appealed to the Third Circuit. Judge James Hunter III wrote for a unanimous panel that ''Parratt'' and ''Logan'' governed the case. After briefly reviewing the facts, similar to the former, he noted the difference: New Jersey, unlike Nebraska, barred prisoners from suing under state tort law for the duration of their sentence.''Holman II'', 856–60

Hunter first asked if the state law was constitutional by itself, without consideration of the presence of alternative procedures the state cited in defending the statute. He agreed with Debevoise that, following ''Logan'', the law deprived Holman of his property interest, one "quite substantial ... as its arbitrary denial could leave him with an uncompensated loss of what little personal property is allowed him in prison." He was equally doubtful of the state's logic behind the law, and also found Holman's interests greater than the state's.

New Jersey also argued that its administrative processes were an adequate substitute for litigation, but Hunter found them constitutionally deficient since they did not guarantee a hearing, and the state had the sole discretion to act on them. He specified that it was not necessary to have a hearing in every prison administrative process, just "some kind of meaningful opportunity to have claim properly evaluated at some point." It "need not be formal nor need it be conducted pursuant to the requirements of the Federal Rules of Evidence or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure."

''Diggs v. United States''

The following year, the Third Circuit held against a prisoner whose ''pro se'' petition to have his sentence reduced under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b) was sent by him before the 120-day deadline it set expired but not acted upon by the court for another year and a half. The government challenged the ensuing reduction to time served for lack of notice. The sentence reduction was vacated, and Diggs then filed a '' habeas'' petition challenging the '' vacatur'' order. After the district court dismissed it, he appealed.

''Logan'' had been decided during the pendency of the case, which Judge Edward R. Becker admitted had a "provoking" effect on the case. But it was not sufficient for him to hold for Diggs. He was doubtful that a single rule could give rise to the property interest that ''Logan'' had found derived from an entire procedure, and that even if it could be said to there was less risk of erroneous deprivation than under the FEPA's 120-day limit because federal judges have almost unlimited discretion in considering sentence reductions.''Diggs'', at 248–50

Becker further distinguished ''Logan'' from the instant case by noting that while the extinction of Logan's claim by the lapsed deadline in his FEPC claim frustrated the state's interest in fighting employment discrimination, Diggs could still address the issues that might make early release better for him and the government through parole applications. Lastly the federal government's bases for limiting the time 35(b) petitions could be filed was a finding that the Parole Commission was generally better suited to considering when prisoners could be released, which Becker found rational.

Dissenting Judge John Joseph Gibbons argued that the delay in processing Diggs' original petition was not "unreasonable" since it was entirely the district court's fault. As a result it was unnecessary for the court to reach the due process claim that had been based on ''Logan'', and he would have remanded the case to the district court to reconsider with the stipulation that no events subsequent to the original sentence reduction be considered in evaluating the petition.

''Yates v. Jamison''

In 1986 the Fourth Circuit split over whether ''Logan'' or ''Parratt'' controlled a case brought by a Fayetteville, North Carolina, couple who sought compensation from the city of Charlotte after it demolished a house they owned there without notifying them beforehand. The city's building inspector's office had, the Yateses said, failed to exercise proper diligence in trying to locate them after it found the vacant house uninhabitable. After the district court denied the city's motion to dismiss, the city filed an interlocutory appeal.

Writing for the majority, Judge Robert F. Chapman held for himself and district judge Terrence Boyle, sitting by designation, that the sole question on appeal was whether ''Parratt'' reached the Yates' complaint. They had argued it came under ''Logan'' as having happened as a result of the city's "policy or custom" of inadequate searches of public records when trying to locate absentee property owners. Chapman noted that they themselves had attributed the demolition to "willful or reckless negligence" on the city's part. Finding the state's inverse condemnation procedures adequate enough remedy, he and Boyle reversed the district court and ordered the Yates' claim dismissed.

Judge Samuel James Ervin III dissented. He agreed that it was necessary to consider the applicability of ''Parratt'' and ''Hudson'' to the case to decide it, however after a lengthy review of those cases and other relevant precedent he found ''Logan'' more to the point since the other two cases concerned unauthorized takings of property. " is clear that, if the allegations in the complaint are true," Ervin wrote, "notice and the opportunity for a hearing were required prior to the destruction of the Yates' house."''Yates'', 1186–91

Ervin analogized the inverse condemnation process to the tort claim the Illinois Supreme Court had held an acceptable remedy for Logan—it would have been time-consuming, expensive and in the end could not have undone the original injury. "A predeprivation hearing after appropriate notice is the only possible way in which the owner of a building alleged to be unfit for human habitation can adequately protect his interest. Under the ordinance he may elect to contest the unfit characterization of the structure, or he can, by making repairs, save his property from destruction", Ervin wrote. "Hence, a postdeprivation hearing cannot possibly meet the owner's needs."

Other federal cases

*''Haygood v. Younger'': In 1985, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a Section 1983 jury verdict in favor of a former prisoner who alleged California had miscalculated his sentence, resulting in him serving five years more than he should have, could proceed with a Section 1983 action against the state for excessive custody. In such a case, wrote Judge Alfred Goodwin for an ''en banc'' court, " court's first task is to determine whether ''Parratt'' (random act) or ''Logan'' (official practice and procedure) controls." The court agreed that Haygood's extra time was the result of the latter.
*''Bretz v. Kelman'': The same year, the Ninth Circuit found ''Logan'' applicable when remanding a Section 1983 malicious prosecution suit by a Montana man back to the district court which had dismissed it. "As in ''Logan'', Bretz is challenging the direct abuse of the state process itself. It is meaningless to speak of the state's ability to provide postdeprivation remedial process where the state process itself has been abused", Goodwin wrote. "Consequently, also as in ''Logan'', the state cannot satisfy the due process clause here by providing Bretz with a postdeprivation remedy in state court in the form of a tort action for malicious prosecution."
*''Burch v. Appalachee Community Mental Health Services'': Judge Thomas Alonzo Clark relied on ''Logan'' when concurring in this 1988 Eleventh Circuit decision that held a Florida man had been deprived of his rights when, after being involuntarily committed to a local mental hospital, he was held there for five months without a legally required hearing before being discharged. Despite the greater factual similarities to ''Hudson'' and ''Parratt'', Clark found ''Logan'' the controlling case, as the plaintiff had been taken into custody under established state procedure, and his lengthy commitment had been the result of the state's failure to follow that procedure, just as Logan's complaint had been closed due to the state's mistake.
*''Matthias v. Bingley'': In 1990, the Fifth Circuit upheld a jury verdict for several plaintiffs whose seized property was ultimately sold due to a series of paperwork mistakes by members of the Houston Police Department. The defendants had likened the case to ''Parratt'', as an unforeseeable and random action for which no predeprivation remedy could be possible. Judge Irving Loeb Goldberg was not convinced, seeing the case as more like ''Logan'': "In fact, this case involves a systemic problem ''far more'' constitutionally problematic than that in ''Logan''. In ''Logan'', had the system worked correctly and no error occurred, the Commission's actions would not violate the Due Process Clause", he wrote. "But here, even if every City employee strictly complies with the City's system for processing seized property ... the system itself still blatantly violates the Due Process Clause."
*''Long v. Morris'': In this 1991 case, the Sixth Circuit relied on ''Logan'' to deny qualified immunity to Tennessee correctional officers who suspended, or threatened to, inmates' visitation privileges in retaliation for their refusal to comply with a strip search. Since state prison regulations said those privileges could only be abridged for good cause, they were a protected interest and came under the protection of ''Logan'' as settled law.
*''Shvartsman v. Apfel'': In 1998, the Seventh Circuit rejected this challenge to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 by permanent resident aliens whose food stamps were terminated in August 1997, per the act, unless they could prove they had gained U.S. citizenship by that point. They had likened their case to ''Logan'', but Judge Joel Flaum was unpersuaded, distinguishing the cases by noting that ''Logan'' had recognized a property right in the claim itself, not the procedures to assert it: "Northern District of Illinois sided with foster parents who challenged a reform in the system that denied them retroactive benefits past a certain date if the state's Illinois Department of Children and Family Services">Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) had not yet acted upon their applications, even if they were later found by DCFS to have been in continual compliance with new licensure requirements up to a certain date. Judge John Albert Nordberg found this provision "analogous to the 120-day deadline in ''Logan''. Neither Plaintiffs here nor the plaintiff in Logan had any ability to expedite the process, their property interest was entirely in the hands of the State and the State is proceeding arbitrarily." And unlike ''Logan'', there was no postdeprivation remedy available.
*''Hettinga v. United States'', in 2012, considered a different aspect of ''Logan'': the degree of deference involved in rational basis review. The D.C. Circuit affirmed a district court decision upholding the provision of the Milk Regulation Equity Act of 2005 (MREA) that eliminated a classification exempting large producer-handlers of milk from federal milk marketing orders, adversely affecting the interests of the plaintiff Arizona dairy processor. Among other issues, Hettinga claimed that the district court had been too deferential in applying the rational basis review to the MREA, noting that ''Logan'' had said the process is "not toothless". "Regardless of how Justice Blackmun characterized rational basis review, the Supreme Court's subsequent decision in ''Beach'' makes clear that 'not toothless' does not mean 'growling,'" the court's ''per curiam'' opinion responded. In the instant case, regardless of the impact on the plaintiffs, the government had satisfactorily explained the basis for the law, which was found to be rationally related to that purpose.

State courts

''Board of County Commissioners of Calvert County v. Pritchard''

In 1988 the Maryland Court of Appeals, that state's highest court, reversed the state's Court of Special Appeals, holding ''Logan'' inapplicabe, in a case where landowners challenged a rezoning of their property. The respondents in ''Board of County Commissioners of Calvert County v. Pritchard'' owned a lot at an intersection on Maryland Route 4 north of Dunkirk

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