Cite as: 520 U. S. 924 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
an interest we "deemed sufficiently important . . . to justify a brief period of suspension prior to affording the suspended trainer a hearing," Mallen, 486 U. S., at 241.
The last factor in the Mathews balancing, and the factor most important to resolution of this case, is the risk of erroneous deprivation and the likely value of any additional procedures. Petitioners argue that any presuspension hearing would have been worthless because pursuant to an Executive Order of the Governor of Pennsylvania a state employee is automatically to be suspended without pay "[a]s soon as practicable after [being] formally charged with . . . a felony." 4 Pa. Code § 7.173 (1997). According to petitioners, supervisors have no discretion under this rule, and the mandatory suspension without pay lasts until the criminal charges are finally resolved. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 20. If petitioners' interpretation of this order is correct, there is no need for any presuspension process since there would be nothing to consider at the hearing except the independently verifiable fact of whether an employee had indeed been formally charged with a felony. See Codd v. Velger, 429 U. S. 624, 627-628 (1977) (per curiam). Cf. Loudermill, supra, at 543. Respondent, however, challenges petitioners' reading of the Code, and contends that in any event an order of the Governor of Pennsylvania is a "mere directiv[e] which do[es] not confer a legally enforceable right." Brief for Respondent 20. We need not resolve this disputed issue of state law because even assuming the Code is only advisory (or has no application at all), the State had no constitutional obligation to provide respondent with a presuspension hearing. We noted in Loudermill that the purpose of a pre-termination hearing is to determine "whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the charges against the employee are true and support the proposed action." 470 U. S., at 545- 546. By parity of reasoning, the purpose of any pre-suspension hearing would be to assure that there are reasonable grounds to support the suspension without pay.
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