Laid-off civil service employees who sued over their removal from a ”rehire list” have no Fourteenth Amendment property right in their inclusion on that list, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled.

In a precedential ruling, the appeals court affirmed a ruling from the District of New Jersey granting summary judgment to Passaic County, Sheriff Jerry Speziale and Warden Charles Myers in a lawsuit brought by two former corrections officers. The former employees have no constitutionally protected interest in any benefit if the government has broad discretion to deny that benefit, unless it constrains that discretion, the appeals court said.

The New Jersey Civil Service Commission has broad discretion to take the plaintiffs off the rehire list, and it never promised the employees they would stay on the lists or acted to constrain its discretion to remove them, the appeals court said.