Hearing About Cause of Dismissal Possible : Hill’s Bid to Get SDSU Post Back Refused

A Superior Court judge refused Thursday to reinstate Mary Alice Hill as athletic director at San Diego State University, the job she was fired from Aug. 8 after less than two years as the first female sports chief at a major football-playing university.

But Judge Mack P. Lovett of the San Diego County Superior Court left open at least a slim possibility that Hill could regain the post by indicating he was reluctantly leaning toward ordering SDSU to grant her a hearing into the reasons for her dismissal.

Lovett rejected Hill’s claim that she was a civil service employee of the university and thus should have been accorded a series of due-process hearings before her removal by SDSU President Thomas Day.

Instead, the judge said Hill served strictly at Day’s pleasure--which began dwindling in late July, when Hill fired three athletic department employees and cut ties with a private contractor. Day reversed those actions within hours and soon informed Hill he had lost confidence in her.

Nonetheless, Lovett said state law appeared to require that he order SDSU to hold a “liberty hearing” at which Hill could attempt to clear her name of the stigma she said resulted from Day’s order before her firing that she undergo a psychological evaluation. Hill refused to do so.

“There’s a certain circus atmosphere to this unfortunate situation already, and I’m kind of reluctant to add to it, but I’m supposed to follow the law,” Lovett said. “She’s probably entitled to that, to clear her name.”

Christopher Ashcraft, Hill’s lawyer, said after the court session that a liberty hearing could give Hill new hope of winning reinstatement to the athletic director’s post.

If it could be demonstrated that Day had no grounds for ordering the psychological exam, and that Hill’s firing was based in part on her refusal to take it, then she could return to court to argue that the firing violated her constitutional rights to due process, Ashcraft said in an interview.

Hill, too, said that despite Lovett’s denial of most of her claims, she was heartened by the prospect of a hearing to clear the air about her firing.

“Naturally, I’m disappointed about the reinstatement,” she said. “But, hopefully, there’s going to be an opportunity for me to get a hearing, and that’s what I’ve wanted all along.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Melvin Segal, who represented SDSU in court Thursday, said the university had prevailed on all the major issues in the case and that the hearing was “not a paramount question.”

Hill said her search for a new job in college athletics has been hindered by the circumstances of her removal from the top post at SDSU. She has applied for several jobs as an athletic director but has not even been interviewed for any.

“Being the first woman athletic director and then being fired in two years makes it very difficult for anyone to consider taking the risk on me,” Hill said.