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.

Related Link:

• Read the Seventh Circuit's Full Decision in Khan v. Bland, 09-1735