Section 2 Established by Legislative Enactment

• Library: Personnel Hearings 2011

At the heart of the relationship between a merit system or civil service employee and the employer or appointing authority is a statute, ordinance, resolution, bill, or other law that establishes a property right in continued employment so that the employee may be removed only for cause. For instance, in the state merit system, § 36.380, RSMo Supp. 2010, provides that a “regular” employee may be dismissed “for cause.” The significance of the existence of a property right is that the government cannot take away or impair that right without affording the employee the procedures required by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In Division of Family Services v. Cade, 939 S.W.2d 546 (Mo. App. W.D. 1997), the court summarized the principles that govern the application of the procedural protections of the due process clause:

To invoke the protections of procedural due process, a person must...