City of Beverly v. Civil Service Commission

Having taken the relevant civil service examination, the defendant Sean Bell applied for a position as a reserve police officer with the city of Beverly (city).3 The city excluded Bell from consideration because it learned that he recently had been fired from his job as a hospital security guard allegedly for improperly having accessed the voice mail accounts of other employees. Bell appealed to the Civil Service Commission (commission) pursuant to G. L. c. 31, § 2(b). Through a three-to-two decision, the commission ruled in his favor, with the majority concluding that the city had not…