Charles W. Gross and James A. Grant v. University of Tennessee and Charles B. McCall Dean of the College of Medicine

The question on appeal is whether plaintiffs’ employment termination violates either 42 U.S.C. § 1983 or the Fourteenth Amendment.

Plaintiffs, Drs. Gross and Grant, were tenured faculty members of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. At the time the doctors accepted employment, it was university policy that full-time medical faculty enter into a “medical practice income agreement” that would siphon off outside medical earnings above a certain level. The primary purpose of this rule was to limit the faculty’s outside private practice and thus to foster greater devotion to teaching…