Khan v. Bland, 09-1735
Plaintiff's section 1983 suit against the housing authority
Khan v. Bland, 09-1735, concerned a plaintiff's suit against the Housing Authority of Champaign County (HACC), Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other HACC officials, for violation of his substantive and procedural due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment pursuant to 42 U.S.C. section 1983, claiming that defendants wrongfully terminated his existing HAP contracts and debarred him from the Section 8 program without due process.
In affirming the district court's grant of defendants' motion for
judgment as a matter of law, the court held that plaintiff does not have
a property right in his expectancy to enter into new contracts under
the Section 8 program, and he has not pointed to any provision of the
HAP contract, federal law, or state law that would entitle him to
continued participation in the program, and the relevant regulations
state that owners/landlords are not entitled to continued
participation. Also, while plaintiff may have property rights in his
existing HAP contracts and extensions of those contracts, he was
afforded all the process that was due by his available post-deprivation
remedy of a state law breach of contract action. The plaintiff has no
liberty interest in participation in the Section 8 program - a
government assistance program designed to provide benefits to third
party participants. Lastly, the court held that plaintiff cannot make
out a substantive due process claim for his property interest in
existing contracts, as a mere breach of contract does not support a
substantive due process claim.
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