Respondent Velger’s action shifted its focus, in a way not uncommon to lawsuits, from the time of the filing of his complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to the decision by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit which we review here. His original complaint alleged that he had been wrongly dismissed without a hearing or a statement of reasons from his position as a patrolman with the New York City Police Department, and under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, sought reinstatement and damages for the resulting injury to his reputation and future employment prospects. After proceedings in *625which Judge Gurfein (then of the District Court) ruled that respondent had held a probationary position and therefore had no hearing right based on a property interest in his job, respondent filed an amended complaint. That complaint alleged more specifically than had the previous one that respondent was entitled to a hearing due to the stigmatizing effect of certain material placed by the City Police Department in his personnel file. He alleged that the derogatory material had brought about his subsequent .dismissal from a position with the Penn-Central Railroad Police Department, and that it had also prevented him from finding other employment of a similar nature for which his scores on numerous examinations otherwise qualified him.1

The case came on for a bench trial before Judge Werker, who, in the words of his opinion on the merits, found “against plaintiff on all issues.” He determined that the only issue which survived Judge Gurfein’s ruling on the earlier motions was whether petitioners, in discharging respondent had “imposed a stigma on Mr. Yelger that foreclosed his freedom to take advantage of other employment opportunities.” After discussing the evidence bearing upon this issue, Judge Werker concluded that “[i]t is clear from the foregoing facts that plaintiff has not proved that he has been stigmatized by defendants.”

Among the specific findings of fact made by the District Court was that an officer of the Penn-Central Railroad *626Police Department was shown the City Police Department file relating to respondent’s employment, upon presentation of a form signed by respondent authorizing the release of personnel information. From an examination of the file, this officer “gleaned that plaintiff had been dismissed because while still a trainee he had put a revolver to his head in an apparent suicide attempt.” The Penn-Central officer tried to verify this story, but the Police Department refused to cooperate with him, advising him to proceed by letter. In rendering judgment against the respondent, the court also found that he had failed to establish “that information about his Police Department service was publicized or circulated by defendants in any way that might reach his prospective employers.”

Respondent successfully appealed this decision to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That court held that the finding of no stigma was clearly erroneous. It reasoned that the information about the apparent suicide attempt was of a kind which would necessarily impair employment prospects for one seeking work as a police officer. It also decided that the mere act of making available personnel files with the employee’s consent was enough to place responsibility for the stigma on the employer, since former employees had no practical alternative but to consent to the release of such information if they wished to be seriously considered for other employment. Velger v. Cawley, 525 F. 2d 334 (1975).

We granted certiorari, sub nom. Cawley v. Velger, 427 U. S. 904 (1976), and the parties have urged us to consider whether the report in question was of a stigmatizing nature, and whether the circumstances of its apparent dissemination were such as to fall within the language of Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 573 (1972) and Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341 (1976). We find it unnecessary to reach these issues, however, because of respondent’s failure to allege or prove one essential element of his case.

*627Assuming all of the other elements necessary to make out a claim of stigmatization under Roth and Bishop, the remedy mandated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is “an opportunity to refute the charge.” 408 U. S., at 573. “The purpose of such notice and hearing is to provide the person an opportunity to clear his name,” id., at 573 n. 12. But if the hearing mandated by the Due Process Clause is to serve any useful purpose, there must be some factual dispute between an employer and a discharged employee which has some significant bearing on the employee’s reputation. Nowhere in his pleadings or elsewhere has respondent affirmatively asserted that the report of the apparent suicide attempt was substantially false. Neither' the District Court nor the Court of Appeals made any such finding. When we consider the nature of the interest sought to be protected, we believe the absence of any such allegation or finding is fatal to respondent’s claim under the Due Process Clause that he should have been given a hearing.

Where the liberty interest involved is that of conditional freedom following parole, we have said that the hearing required by the Due Process Clause in order to revoke parole must address two separate considerations. The first is whether the parolee in fact committed the violation with which he is charged, and the second is whether if he did commit the act his parole should, under all the circumstances, therefore be revoked. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 479-480 (1972); Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 784 (1973). The fact that there was no dispute with respect to the commission of the act would not necessarily obviate the need for a hearing on the issue of whether the commission of the act warranted the revocation of parole.

But the hearing required where a nontenured employee has been stigmatized in the course of a decision to terminate his employment is solely “to provide the person an opportunity to clear his name.” If he does not challenge the substantial truth *628of the material in question, ho hearing would afford a promise of achieving that result for him. For the contemplated hearing does not embrace any determination analogous to the “second step” of the parole revocation proceeding, which would in effect be a determination of whether or not, conceding that the report were true, the employee was properly refused re-employment. Since the District Court found that respondent had no Fourteenth Amendment property interest in continued employment,2 the adequacy or even the existence of reasons for failing to rehire him presents no federal constitutional question. Only if the employer creates and disseminates a false and defamatory impression about the employee in connection with his termination is such a hearing required. Both, supra; Bishop, supra.

Our decision here rests upon no overly technical application of the rules of pleading. Even conceding that the respondent’s termination occurred solely because of the report of an apparent suicide attempt, a proposition which is certainly not crystal clear on this record, respondent has at no stage of this litigation affirmatively stated that the “attempt” did not take place as reported. The furthest he has gone is a suggestion by his counsel that “[i]t might have been all a mistake, [i]t could also have been a little horseplay.” This is not enough to raise an issue about the substantial accuracy of the report. Respondent has therefore made out no claim under the Fourteenth Amendment that he was harmed by the denial of a hearing, even were we to accept in its entirety *629the determination by the Court of Appeals that the creation and disclosure of the file report otherwise amounted to stigmatization within the meaning of Board of Regents v. Roth, supra.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed with instructions to reinstate the judgment of the District Court.

So ordered.

dissenting.

I dissent from today’s holding substantially for the reasons expressed by my Brother Stevens in Part I of his dissent, despite my belief that the Court’s ruling is likely to be of little practical importance.

Respondent alleged that he suffered deprivation of his liberty when petitioners terminated his employment and retained stigmatizing information in his employment file, information later disseminated to a prospective employer. Under Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 573 (1972), respondent therefore was entitled to a timely pretermination hearing. The Court today reaffirms Roth, but holds that respondent’s retrospective claim for damages and equitable relief under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 must be denied because “at no stage of this litigation,”1 ante, at 628, has he “raise [d] an issue *630about the substantial accuracy of the report” in question.2 Ibid. That holding, I believe, erroneously allocates the burden of introducing truth or falsity into the lawsuit.

Twice before this Term we have reasserted the principle that once a plaintiff establishes that another has interfered with his constitutional rights, the burden shifts to the wrongdoer to demonstrate that any such interference was strictly harmless. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., ante, at 270-271, n. 21; Mt. Healthy City Board of Ed. v. Doyle, ante, at 287. In this case respondent met his initial burden, for he adequately alleged that he has suffered injury to his reputation and job prospects in conjunction with a discharge from public employment, and that petitioners failed to comply with Roth’s resulting requirement of a due process hearing. I agree that the District Court remains open to a determination that petitioners’ denial of respondent’s due process rights produced little3 or no compensable injury, since, even had the *631hearing properly been held, the stigmatizing charges would have remained unrefuted. But any such allegation and proof of truthful material properly is a defense to be raised by the defendant wrongdoer — subject, of course, to appropriate disposition of the case by way of summary judgment should, the employee thereupon fail to contest the “substantial accuracy of the report.” Since petitioners interposed no such defense in this case, respondent’s due process claim should be upheld.

I also agree with Part III of Mr. Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion, and I would therefore remand this case to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings.

dissenting.

Although sharing generally the views expressed in the Court’s opinion, I agree with Part III of Mr. Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion, and I would for that reason remand this case to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings.

dissenting.

There are three aspects of the Court’s disposition of this case with which I disagree. First, I am not persuaded that a person who claims to have been “stigmatized” by the State without being afforded due process need allege that the charge against him was false in order to state a cause of action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. Second, in my opinion the Court should not assume that this respondent was stigmatized, because the District Court’s contrary finding was not *632clearly erroneous. Third, I would remand the case to the Court of Appeals to consider the claim that respondent had a property interest in his job, since that court did not decide this issue.

I

The Court holds that respondent’s failure to allege falsity negates his right to damages for the State’s failure to give him a hearing. This holding does not appear to rest on the view that a discharged employee has no right to a hearing unless the charge against him is false.1 If it did, it would represent a radical departure from a principle basic to our legal system — the principle that the guilty as well as the innocent are entitled to a fair trial.2 It would also be a departure from Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 572-575. In that case the Court concluded that a person is deprived of liberty when the State’s refusal to rehire him destroys his “good name” in the community or forecloses him from practicing his *633profession. A hearing may establish that such a deprivation of liberty is warranted because the charges are correct. But Bishop v. Wood, 426 U. S. 341, 349, makes it clear that the truth or falsity of the charge “neither enhances nor diminishes [the employee’s] claim that his constitutionally protected interest in liberty has been impaired.” If the charge, whether true or false, involves a deprivation of liberty, due process must accompany the deprivation. And normally, as Both plainly states, the Constitution mandates “a full prior hearing.” 408 U. S., at 574.3

This hearing must include consideration of whether the charge, if true, warrants discharge. The discharge itself is part of the deprivation of liberty against which the employee is entitled to defend. Release of unfavorable information can damage an employee’s reputation and employment prospects, but far greater injury is caused by an official determination, based on such information, that the employee is unfit for public employment. Indeed the Court has held that an injury to reputation had not resulted in a deprivation of liberty because it was not associated with the termination of *634employment. Paul v. Davis, 424 U. S. 693, 709-710. Since allowing the employee to keep his job would eliminate (or at least lessen) the loss of liberty, due process requires that the hearing include the issue whether the facts warrant discharge.4 In short, the purpose of the hearing, as is true of any other hearing which must precede a deprivation of liberty, is twofold: first, to establish the truth or falsity of the charge, and second, to provide a basis for deciding what action is warranted by the facts.5 Even when it is perfectly clear that the charge is true, the Constitution requires that procedural safeguards be observed. Cf. Groppi v. Leslie, 404 U. S. 496, 503. For these reasons, I disagree with the Court’s assertion that the purpose of the hearing is “solely” to provide the person with an opportunity to clear his name.6

*635Even, if I agreed with the Court that this was the sole purpose of the hearing, I could not agree with its holding that failure to demonstrate falsity is fatal to the employee’s suit. Surely the burden should be on the State to show that failure to provide due process was harmless error because the charges were true. See Mr. Justice Brennan’s dissent, ante, p. 629.7 Moreover, failure to provide a hearing might give rise to damages unrelated to the possible outcome of the hearing.8

*636Today’s holding may have the unfortunate effect of encouraging public officials to deny hearings when they feel confident of the correctness of their decision. But, in Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s oft-quoted words:

“That a conclusion satisfies one’s private conscience does not attest its reliability. The validity and moral authority of a conclusion largely depend on the mode by which it was reached. Secrecy is not congenial to truth-seeking and self-righteousness gives too slender an assurance of rightness. No better instrument has been devised for arriving at truth than to give a person in jeopardy of serious loss notice of the case against him and opportunity to meet it. Nor has a better way been found for generating the feeling, so important to a popular government, that justice has been done.” Anti-Fascist Committee v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 171-172 (concurring opinion).

As the last sentence in this quotation demonstrates, if state action has consequences sufficiently grievous to constitute a deprivation of constitutionally protected liberty, it is essential that fair procedures be followed for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of the individual case. Today’s holding is only a minor impairment of this principle. But the principle is one that admits of no compromise.

II

Although the plaintiff does not have the burden of proving that he was discharged for a false reason, if he claims that the discharge deprived him of liberty, he does have the burden of proving that he was stigmatized. The District Court found that respondent did not meet that burden in this case. Under the proper standard of appellate review,9 I cannot .say that *637finding was clearly erroneous, particularly when the record discloses that the respondent did not prove exactly what the unfavorable information in his file was, or exactly what information was disseminated to others.

The District Court found that unfavorable information from respondent’s police record reached a prospective employer in only one instance. In that instance, a private employer was allowed to see the file with respondent’s permission. The private employer then discharged respondent, who was on probationary status. The District Court expressly found that no' information was released to any government agency to which respondent had applied. App. 113a-114a.10 Thus, as far *638as the past effects of the unfavorable file are concerned, we have only the finding that one employer discharged respondent on the basis of the information. This does not in itself constitute a “stigma” as that term is used in Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564.11

The Court of Appeals also relied on the nature of the information itself as demonstrating that future release to employers would bar respondent from obtaining employment. Velger v. Cawley, 525 F. 2d 334, 336 (CA2 1975). Notwithstanding the broad discovery authorized by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, respondent failed to prove precisely what adverse information was in his personnel file. The revolver incident occurred sometime before respondent’s 21st birthday, when he was still a trainee; as his counsel points out, it might well have been “a little horseplay”; and his subsequent conduct as a police officer was presumably good. There was no finding that the revolver incident was the official reason for discharge.12 On this record, it cannot be said as a matter of law *639that prospective employers would reject respondent’s attempts to explain this incident and would uniformly refuse to hire him.

In the performance of our appellate function “[i]t is not enough that we might give the facts another construction, resolve the ambiguities differently, and find a more sinister cast to actions which the District Court apparently deemed innocent. . . . We are not given those choices, because our mandate is not to set aside findings of fact ‘unless clearly erroneous.’ ” United States v. Real Estate Boards, 339 U. S. 485, 495-496.

I conclude that the Court of Appeals was incorrect in setting aside the District Court’s findings of fact. Since those findings do not establish the existence of a stigma, the Court of Appeals erred in holding on this basis that a hearing was required.

Ill

It is possible, however, that a hearing was required because the discharge deprived respondent of a property interest. The District Court rejected the claim that he had an entitlement to his job as a matter of state law, but the Court of Appeals found it unnecessary to reach this issue. I believe there is enough merit to the property claim to justify a remand to the Court of Appeals with directions to consider it.

In Bishop v. Wood, the plaintiff’s job was “terminable at the will of either party irrespective of the quality of performance by the other party.” 426 U. S., at 345 n. 9, and accompanying text. There was no right to state judicial review. In this case, however, the state law may afford the employee some protection against arbitrary discharge. According to the state case cited by Judge Gurfein, App. 37a, the Police Commissioner may terminate only “unsatisfactory employee[s],” 13 and his determination is reviewable in the *640state courts on an “arbitrary and capricious” standard. In re Going v. Kennedy, 5 App. Div. 2d 173, 176-177, 170 N. Y. S. 2d 234, 237-238 (1958), aff’d, 5 N. Y. 2d 900, 156 N. E. 2d 711 (1959); see In re Talamo v. Murphy, 38 N. Y. 2d 637, 345 N. E. 2d 546 (1976).14 Unlike Bishop, in which a hearing would have been pointless because nothing plaintiff could prove would entitle him to keep his job, in this case the plaintiff may have had a right to continued employment if he could rebut the charges against him.15

*641By directing the Court of Appeals to reinstate the District Court judgment, the Court summarily rejects this claim without the benefit of briefing or oral argument on the point.16 I would remand the case to the Court of Appeals for consideration of this claim.

concurring.

I join the Court’s per curiam opinion, but I emphasize that in this case there is no suggestion that the information in the file, if true, was not information of a kind that appropriately might be disclosed to prospective employers. We therefore are not presented with a question as to the limits, if any, on the disclosure of prejudicial, but irrelevant, accurate information.