Charles Bozzo was terminated from his position as a corrections officer for the Michigan Department of Corrections in July 2019 after a coworker accused him of harassment. He challenged his termination through his union’s arbitration process, which ended with an arbitrator ruling against him on March 1, 2021. Bozzo filed a § 1983 lawsuit against two MDOC employees in December 2023, alleging that his termination violated his constitutional rights, primarily under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined that Bozzo’s claim accrued when both the deprivation of his property interest in his job and the allegedly inadequate process occurred. The Court found the latest possible date for this was December 17, 2020 — the end of his arbitration hearing. “As to Bozzo, he alleges a series of procedural violations… And he says those due process violations continued all the way up to his post-termination arbitration hearing, which ended on December 17, 2020. That latter date… was thus the latest possible date when Bozzo allegedly was denied due process.”
Measured from that date, Bozzo’s June 14, 2024, complaint was untimely. The Court rejected Bozzo’s argument that his claim accrued when the arbitrator issued the final decision, stating his complaints about “surprise” testimony and arbitrator bias were about the process itself, knowledge of which he possessed at the hearing. “Because knowledge of procedural defects is what counts, the discovery rule does not change our conclusion,” the Court wrote. The Court also rejected equitable tolling arguments. Further, the Court held that, even if timely, Bozzo’s complaint failed to state a claim, as the pre- and post-termination hearings he received satisfied constitutional requirements.
Bozzo v. Nanasy, 2025 WL 2945609 (6th Cir. Oct. 17, 2025).