PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
TAMMY R. FIELDS,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
TOLBERT PRATER; LAURA ELKINS;
EMOGENE ELSWICK; RUBY RATLIFF
HALE; HAROLD THORNSBURY; JUDY
HOLLAND,
Defendants-Appellants, No. 08-1437
and
W. PAT JUSTUS; CARROLL
BRANHAM; EDDIE LINDSAY; DAVID
RATLIFF; WILLIAM P. HARRIS;
BUCHANAN COUNTY,
Defendants.
2 FIELDS v. PRATER
TAMMY R. FIELDS,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
W. PAT JUSTUS; CARROLL
BRANHAM; EDDIE LINDSAY; WILLIAM
P. HARRIS; DAVID RATLIFF,
Defendants-Appellants,
No 08-1471
and
BUCHANAN COUNTY; TOLBERT
PRATER; LAURA ELKINS; EMOGENE
ELSWICK; RUBY RATLIFF HALE;
HAROLD THORNSBURY; JUDY
HOLLAND,
Defendants.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Virginia, at Abingdon.
Norman K. Moon, District Judge.
(1:07-cv-00019-nkm-mfu)
Argued: March 25, 2009
Decided: May 21, 2009
Before WILLIAMS, Chief Judge, WILKINSON,
Circuit Judge, and David A. FABER, Senior United States
District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia,
sitting by designation.
Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge Wilkin-
son wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Williams and
Senior Judge Faber joined.
FIELDS v. PRATER 3
COUNSEL
Henry Keuling-Stout, KEULING-STOUT, PC, Big Stone
Gap, Virginia; Jim H. Guynn, Jr., GUYNN, MEMMER &
DILLON, PC, Salem, Virginia, for Appellants. Timothy
Worth McAfee, MCAFEE LAW FIRM, PC, Norton, Virginia,
for Appellee.
OPINION
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
This appeal arises out of plaintiff Tammy Fields’s suit
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which alleges that defendants con-
spired to prevent her from being hired as the local director of
a county department of social services ("DSS") because of her
political affiliation and in violation of her First Amendment
rights. Defendants have appealed the district court’s denial of
their motions for summary judgment on the basis of qualified
immunity. We conclude that the First Amendment prohibits
consideration of political affiliation in hiring decisions for
positions like the one at issue here. To hold otherwise would
impose prohibitive costs on the exercise of associative rights
and political speech. However, because this conclusion was
not clearly established at the time of the decision under exist-
ing law, we think the defendants entitled to the qualified
immunity they seek.
I.
A.
This case concerns the selection of a local director for the
Buchanan County Department of Social Services ("BCDSS").
It is thus necessary to explain briefly at the outset the Com-
monwealth of Virginia’s system for administering social ser-
4 FIELDS v. PRATER
vices. Virginia’s social services apparatus serves a number of
functions related to public assistance and child welfare, such
as the provision of financial assistance and medical care to the
indigent, domestic violence prevention, and the enforcement
of court-ordered child support payments. This system has
both state and local components. At the state level, the Gover-
nor appoints the Commissioner of Social Services as well as
the nine members of the State Board of Social Services. Va.
Code §§ 63.2-201, 63.2-215. As the head of the Virginia
Department of Social Services ("VDSS"), the Commissioner
supervises the administration of social services throughout the
state. Id. § 63.2-203. The State Board advises the Commis-
sioner, but also has the power to pass regulations which are
binding throughout the state and which the Commissioner
must enforce. Id. §§ 63.2-203, 63.2-216, 63.2-217.
Subject to the supervision of the Commissioner and in
accordance with the regulations passed by the State Board,
local boards of social services and their corresponding local
departments of social services administer social services at the
local level. Id. §§ 63.2-313, 63.2-324, 63.2-332. Local depart-
ments can serve a single county, a single city, or some combi-
nation of counties and cities. Id. § 63.2-324. Here, we are only
concerned with the laws governing local departments serving
single counties. A local director of social services supervises
the local department; the director is chosen by, and serves at
the pleasure of, the county’s local board. Id. §§ 63.2-324-
63.2-326. Local directors are also considered the agents of the
Commissioner. Id. § 63.2-333. Local directors who do not
meet personnel standards established by the State Board can
be removed by the Commissioner. Id. § 63.2-327.
Although the local boards delegate responsibility to their
local departments, the boards are the entities ultimately
responsible for administering the laws related to social ser-
vices in their respective jurisdictions. In addition to selecting
a director, the duties of a local board include making local
policy decisions and exercising discretion over funding deci-
FIELDS v. PRATER 5
sions. Under state law and regulations adopted by the State
Board, all DSS employees are to be hired on the basis of
merit, not political affiliation. See id. §§ 63.2-100, 63.2-326;
Va. Admin. Code §§ 40-675-30, 40-675-130, 40-675-180.
The governing body of a county determines the composi-
tion of the county’s local board. Va. Code § 63.2-302. The
county may either designate one local government official as
the board, or appoint an administrative board consisting of
three or more residents of the county. Id. If the county’s gov-
erning body selects the first option, it must also appoint an
advisory board, consisting of between five and thirteen mem-
bers, to aid the government official who has been designated
the local board. Id. § 63.2-305.
B.
We turn now to the facts at hand. Plaintiff Tammy Fields
and her husband have been active supporters of the Republi-
can Party in Buchanan County for many years. Fields started
working for the BCDSS in 1995 as a social worker. In 1997,
she was promoted to office manager, a position she still holds.
As office manager, she deals with issues related to payroll,
insurance, and taxes.
In 2006, the BCDSS local director position became open
when the previous director retired. The Buchanan County
Board of Supervisors ("BOS"), the county’s governing body,
created an interviewing board to evaluate prospective candi-
dates for local director. Fields and six other candidates
applied. The interviewing board ranked the seven candidates;
Fields received the highest score, while a candidate named
Judy Holland received the lowest score. Tony Fritz, the
Regional Director for the VDSS, assisted in the interviewing
process.
At this time, a local government official was serving as the
local administrative board and several other individuals
6 FIELDS v. PRATER
served on an advisory board, as required by state law. For rea-
sons that on the record are unclear, on January 8, 2007, the
BOS passed a resolution dissolving the existing administra-
tive and advisory boards and creating a new, seven-member
administrative board ("the Local Board"). The resolution was
passed unanimously by the BOS, and each of the seven mem-
bers of the BOS chose someone from their respective supervi-
sory districts to serve on the Local Board. Shortly thereafter,
the newly-created Local Board interviewed three candidates,
including Fields and Holland. The Local Board subsequently
hired Holland.
Fields alleges that the Local Board’s hiring decision was
based on the applicants’ party affiliations. According to
Fields, Holland was the only applicant politically affiliated
with the Democratic Party. She alleges that five members of
the Local Board affiliated with the Democratic Party (Laura
Elkins, Emogene Elswick, Ruby Ratliff Hale, Tolbert Prater,
and Harold Thornsbury) conspired with five members of the
BOS who are currently or formerly affiliated with the Demo-
cratic Party (Carroll Branham, William P. Harris, W. Pat Jus-
tus, Eddie Lindsay, and David Ratliff) to prevent Fields from
being hired, and that their reason for doing so was Fields’s
support of the Republican Party. Fields further claims that the
BOS members chose to create the new administrative board
so that they could appoint Democratic Party loyalists to the
new board who would thus appoint Holland instead of Fields,
and that the new Local Board members cooperated by select-
ing Holland.
C.
Alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights, Fields
brought an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking relief in
law and equity in the United States District Court for the
Western District of Virginia on April 5, 2007. She named as
defendants BOS members Branham, Harris, Justus, Lindsay,
and Ratliff; Local Board members Elkins, Elswick, Hale,
FIELDS v. PRATER 7
Prater, and Thornsbury; Buchanan County; and Holland, the
newly-selected local director. All defendants moved to dis-
miss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The
individual defendants contended that they were entitled to
qualified immunity, and Buchanan County argued that coun-
ties cannot be held liable under § 1983 for personnel decisions
made by their local boards.
The district court ordered limited discovery on the issue of
qualified immunity. The district court also referred the issue
to a magistrate judge, who concluded, based on the pleadings
and the record, that defendants were not entitled to qualified
immunity.1 The magistrate also concluded that under Bockes
v. Fields, 999 F.2d 788 (4th Cir. 1993), Buchanan County
could not be held liable under § 1983.
The individual defendants objected to the magistrate’s con-
clusion that they were not entitled to qualified immunity. The
district court, reconsidering the qualified immunity issue de
novo, agreed with the magistrate’s recommended disposition.
The district court reasoned that consideration of political affil-
iation by defendants was clearly forbidden by Supreme Court
and circuit precedent both because a local director plays little
role in developing policy and because there was no evidence
that political affiliation was relevant to effective performance
of a local director’s duties. The individual defendants brought
this interlocutory appeal, arguing that the district court erred
in concluding that they were not entitled to qualified immu-
nity. As the issue before us is purely one of law, we possess
jurisdiction. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313 (1995);
Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 528 n.9 (1985).
1
The magistrate judge correctly concluded that defendants’ motions to
dismiss had to be treated as motions for summary judgment because in
their memoranda defendants had presented to the court matters beyond the
pleadings. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d). We thus refer to defendants’ motions
to dismiss as motions for summary judgment.
8 FIELDS v. PRATER
II.
Fields alleges that her First Amendment rights were vio-
lated when defendants conspired to prevent her from being
hired because of her political affiliation. Defendants respond
that the local director position is one for which consideration
of political affiliation is permissible. Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S.
347 (1976), was the first case directly addressing whether the
First Amendment prohibits consideration of political affilia-
tion in government hiring generally. A plurality of the Court
concluded that the practice of patronage imposed an unconsti-
tutional restraint on "freedoms of belief and association. . . .
An individual who is a member of the out-party maintains
affiliation with his own party at the risk of losing his job." Id.
at 355 (plurality opinion). To condition employment on the
espousal of party loyalty was tantamount to a system of "co-
erced belief." Id. Although there was no majority opinion,
Elrod has come to stand for the proposition that under the
First Amendment, "a nonpolicymaking, nonconfidential gov-
ernment employee" cannot be "discharged or threatened with
discharge from a job that he is satisfactorily performing on the
sole ground of his political beliefs." Id. at 375 (Stewart, J.,
concurring in the judgment).
In Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 (1980), the Court refined
this approach, making clear that "the ultimate inquiry is not
whether the label ‘policymaker’ or ‘confidential’ fits a partic-
ular position; rather, the question is whether the hiring author-
ity can demonstrate that party affiliation is an appropriate
requirement for the effective performance of the public office
involved." Id. at 518. The Court in Rutan v. Republican Party
of Illinois, 497 U.S. 62 (1990), extended the holdings of Elrod
and Branti to "promotion, transfer, recall, and hiring decisions
based on party affiliation and support," id. at 79, and thus to
the hiring decision at issue here. Therefore, we must deter-
mine whether the local director position was one for which
defendants "can demonstrate that party affiliation is an appro-
priate requirement." Branti, 445 U.S. at 518.
FIELDS v. PRATER 9
A.
Asking whether a position involves policymaking can be
helpful in resolving the aforementioned inquiry, and our cases
reflect that. In Stott v. Haworth, 916 F.2d 134 (4th Cir. 1990),
we adopted the First Circuit’s two-part test for conducting this
analysis. First, the court should ask whether "the position
involve[s] government decisionmaking on issues where there
is room for political disagreement on goals or their implemen-
tation . . . . If this first inquiry is satisfied, the next step is to
examine the particular responsibilities of the position to deter-
mine whether it resembles a policymaker, a privy to confiden-
tial information, a communicator, or some other office holder
whose function is such that party affiliation is an equally
appropriate requirement." Id. at 141-42 (quoting Jimenez
Fuentes v. Torres Gaztambide, 807 F.2d 236, 241-42 (1st Cir.
1986) (en banc)).
Under the first prong of the Stott analysis, we examine the
matters dealt with by the local director position at a very high
level of generality. Is there legitimate political disagreement
over the goals or the implementation of social services pro-
grams? We have previously answered this question in the
affirmative. Nader v. Blair, 549 F.3d 953, 960 (4th Cir. 2008)
("With regard to the first part of the analysis, which is
whether the position relates to partisan political interests or
concerns, positions within social-services agencies clearly
may satisfy this requirement."). This conclusion is plainly
correct; few would dispute that decisions about how social
services are to be provided, and to whom, are a topic of fre-
quent political controversy.
The second step requires a much more concrete analysis of
the specific position at issue. "[I]n conducting this inquiry,
courts focus on the powers inherent in a given office." Stott,
916 F.2d at 142 (quoting Jimenez Fuentes, 807 F.2d at 242).
After examining the duties and responsibilities of a local
director under Virginia law, we conclude that the position is
10 FIELDS v. PRATER
not one for which political affiliation is an appropriate consid-
eration.
Defendants argue that a local director is a "policymaker."
However, local directors do not have significant policymaking
authority under Virginia’s social services scheme. Because
the Commonwealth’s social services programs depend in part
on grants and aid from the federal government, federal stat-
utes and regulations play a significant role in shaping state
policy. See Va. Code §§ 63.2-206, 63.2-406. Of that policy-
making which is not federal, most takes place at the state level
under Virginia’s system. As we earlier observed, "neither
[counties] nor the local boards have authority to set ‘general
goals and programs’ for social services personnel; that author-
ity is reserved for the State Board." Bockes, 999 F.2d at 791.
The State Board has the authority to pass regulations which
local directors must follow. Va. Code § 63.2-217. The Com-
missioner has the authority to remove local directors "who do
not meet the personnel standards established by the [State]
Board." Id. § 63.2-327. Local directors serve as the Commis-
sioner’s agents. Id. § 63.2-333. The VDSS establishes a state-
wide plan that local directors are required to follow. See
Commonwealth of Virginia, Dep’t of Soc. Services, Local
Board Member Handbook 72 (June 2007).
To the extent that there is policymaking authority at the
local level, it belongs not with local directors, but with local
boards. Local boards may set policies which "together [with
state policies], should cover all activities" of a local depart-
ment. Local Board Member Handbook at 22. Local directors
serve at the pleasure of local boards. Va. Code § 63.2-326.
Local directors exercise the power granted to them by state
law "[u]nder the supervision of the local board." Id. § 63.2-
332. Local boards, not local directors, control the budget of
their respective departments of social services, see id. § 63.2-
316, are responsible for hiring counsel to represent employees
of their local departments, id. § 63.2-317, and have the power
to conduct hearings and issue subpoenas. Id. § 63.2-322.
FIELDS v. PRATER 11
As the district court correctly observed, local directors have
"in effect three masters"—the Commissioner, the State Board,
and their local board. J.A. 494. In this system there is little
room for local directors to make important policy decisions.
To be sure, local directors do have the power to set some poli-
cies within local departments, as does any director of a gov-
ernmental institution. Defendants point to the local director’s
personnel responsibilities, namely the "duty to organize
agency staff[,] to supervise and train staff, [and] to make final
hiring promotion, transfer, and discipline decisions." Brief of
Appellants at 36. But that a local director has supervisory
power over her staff does not mean she sets social services
policy. If having power over subordinates were a sufficient
condition for exemption from the requirements of the First
Amendment, only the most low-level government employees
would be protected from politically-based hiring and firing.
"[T]he Branti inquiry is one of degree, and . . . low-level poli-
cymaking authority . . . does not outweigh [an] employee’s
First Amendment rights of political affiliation." Akers v.
Caperton, 998 F.2d 220, 225 (4th Cir. 1993).
It is not enough for defendants to show merely that local
directors make some policy; the ultimate question under
Branti is whether local directors make policy about matters to
which political ideology is relevant, and we conclude that
they do not. Defendants make conclusory assertions about the
local director’s policymaking power, but they cannot show "a
rational connection between shared ideology and job perfor-
mance." Stott, 916 F.2d at 142 (quoting Savage v. Gorski, 850
F.2d 64, 68 (2d Cir. 1988)). Unlike the sheriff’s deputies in
Jenkins v. Medford, 119 F.3d 1156 (4th Cir. 1997) (en banc),
a local director is not the "alter ego" of an elected official, id.
at 1164, and does not "play a special role in implementing"
an elected official’s policies. Id. at 1162.
Defendants insist, however, that because a local director’s
duties involve confidential information, political affiliation is
a relevant consideration under Stott. But this argument proves
12 FIELDS v. PRATER
too much; by virtue of the sensitivity of such matters as public
assistance and child welfare, many social services workers
deal with confidential information. Yet it cannot be the case
that party affiliation is an appropriate criterion for the effec-
tive performance of their jobs. As with their arguments about
policymaking, defendants attempt to fit the local director
position into the labeled category "confidential" without
explaining how it proves that political affiliation is actually
relevant to a local director’s duties.
Indeed, there is every indication that political philosophy is
irrelevant to those duties. VDSS Regional Director Tony Fritz
stated in his affidavit that he was "aware of no relationship
between political party affiliation and the effective perfor-
mance of a local Director of DSS. The duties and responsibili-
ties of a local Director do not contain any reference to
political party ideologies." See McConnell v. Adams, 829 F.2d
1319, 1324 (4th Cir. 1987) (noting that state Secretary of
Elections asserted that political affiliation was not relevant to
the job performance of a general county registrar).
We also find it significant that Virginia has explicitly des-
ignated the local director position as non-partisan. Regula-
tions passed by the State Board make clear that political
affiliation is not an appropriate consideration when hiring
DSS employees, and the handbook provided to all local board
members across the state underscores this point. See Local
Board Member Handbook at 63-67. At the top of the job
application form that Fields filled out is the statement that
political affiliation shall not be taken into consideration in hir-
ing. See Commonwealth of Virginia, Application for Employ-
ment, DHRM Form 10-012. The fact that the State Board—
one of the major policymakers in Virginia’s social services
system—has forbidden local boards from taking political
affiliation into consideration provides further support for our
conclusion that political affiliation is not relevant to the duties
of a local director.
FIELDS v. PRATER 13
Of course, "whether a patronage-based dismissal violates
the First Amendment is ultimately a question of federal law."
McCrerey v. Allen, 118 F.3d 242, 245 (4th Cir. 1997). But
whether state law prohibits politically-based hiring for a par-
ticular position is relevant to whether political affiliation is
"necessary for effective job performance." McConnell, 829
F.2d at 1323. Although we do not consider state law’s classi-
fication of a particular position as dispositive of the constitu-
tional issue, we certainly take it into consideration in our
analysis. See, e.g., Jenkins, 119 F.3d at 1163-64; Stott, 916
F.2d at 142-43; McConnell, 829 F.2d at 1324. "[L]egislative
findings are given deference," Akers, 998 F.2d at 225 n.7,
even if that deference is not absolute; we see no reason why
a state administrative agency’s reasoned judgment should not
be given some respect as well. Here, the state’s judgment con-
firms our independent assessment and reinforces the conclu-
sion that the First Amendment prohibits the consideration of
political affiliation in hiring for the local director position. In
this instance, state law and constitutional law may be seen as
pulling in the same direction, with state law protecting the
goal of professional merit in employment and constitutional
law guarding simultaneously against retribution on the basis
of political belief.
This view is consistent with our holding in Nader v. Blair,
549 F.3d 953 (4th Cir. 2008), where we concluded that an
Assistant Director of the Baltimore City Department of Social
Services was a policymaker under Stott. Although the two
positions bear some similarities, Maryland law gives the
employees of local social services departments significantly
more power to shape local policy than does Virginia law. See
Nader, 549 F.3d at 960-62. In Virginia, most policy is made
at the state level; that which is made at the local level is made
by local boards, not local departments. Furthermore, while
Virginia regulations prohibit considering political affiliation
when hiring and firing local DSS employees, Maryland law
explicitly stated that the Nader plaintiff’s position was one
from which she could be dismissed "for any reason, solely in
14 FIELDS v. PRATER
the discretion of the appointing authority." Id. at 956. Virginia
has chosen to make its social services policymaking more
centralized and more separated from local departments than
has Maryland. "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal
system" that two states are free to make different choices
about how to structure their governments. New State Ice Co.
v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissent-
ing).
B.
We therefore agree with plaintiff that in the event the facts
are as alleged, defendants violated her constitutional rights.
But to defeat defendants’ claim of qualified immunity plain-
tiff must further show that defendants violated clearly estab-
lished "constitutional rights of which a reasonable person
would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818
(1982). "Officials are not liable for bad guesses in gray areas;
they are liable for transgressing bright lines." Maciariello v.
Sumner, 973 F.2d 295, 298 (4th Cir. 1992). It is true that
defendants knew or should have known that consideration of
political affiliation when hiring a local director was forbidden
by the State Board’s regulations. However, "an official’s clear
violation of a state administrative regulation does not allow a
§ 1983 plaintiff to overcome the official’s qualified immu-
nity." Elder v. Holloway, 510 U.S. 510, 515 (1994). The law
requires something more, namely that it be clear to a reason-
able official at the time of the decision that selecting a local
director on the basis of political affiliation contravened the
First Amendment.
We conclude that at the time of the hiring decision the law
had not achieved that level of constitutional clarity that would
allow us to hold defendants liable. In Jenkins, we acknowl-
edged that the caselaw applying Branti had been "conflicting
and confusing." 119 F.3d at 1160 (quoting Upton v. Thomp-
son, 930 F.2d 1209, 1212 (7th Cir. 1991)). See also Pike v.
Osborne, 301 F.3d 182, 186 (4th Cir. 2002) (Hamilton, J.,
FIELDS v. PRATER 15
concurring in the judgment) (observing that "Jenkins is con-
fusing, at best" when applied to a slightly different context
than that at issue in the case). The lack of clarity is under-
standable, given that political patronage at the policymaking
level contributes not only to the growth of strong political par-
ties, but to the responsiveness of bureaucracies to electoral
mandates whose results policymakers and top government
officials properly seek to translate into programs for the pub-
lic benefit. Thus issues like this one are often matters of
degree, and matters of degree are not always plain a priori.
Because application of the principles of Branti and Jenkins to
new situations invariably requires particularized inquiries into
specific positions in the context of specific systems, it is not
always easy to say that there is a clearly drawn line between
those positions for which consideration of political affiliation
is allowed and those for which it is not.
We find McConnell v. Adams, 829 F.2d 1319 (4th Cir.
1987), which held that Virginia electoral boards could not
permissibly consider political affiliation in employment deci-
sions regarding county registrars, the closest analogue in our
precedent to the case at hand. This conclusion supports our
determination that there was a constitutional violation here.
The system Virginia uses for selection of registrars bears sig-
nificant similarities to that used to select local directors, and
in both contexts the state has strong reasons to prefer profes-
sionalism over partisanship. There, as here, we concluded that
the defendant board could not consider political affiliation
because there was no evidence that political affiliation was
relevant to the effective performance of the position, and sig-
nificant evidence to the contrary. Id. at 1324. There, as here,
the state agency whose policies the official in the position at
issue would be responsible for carrying out indicated that
political affiliation was not an appropriate requirement. Id.
However, because a registrar is even less involved in policy-
making than is a local director, we do not think that McCon-
nell would have clearly put defendants on notice that their
conduct was unconstitutional.
16 FIELDS v. PRATER
Our respect for the decisions and deliberations of our col-
leagues also counsels a certain caution in imposing liability
here. As we have earlier indicated, the facts of Nader are dis-
tinguishable from the case at bar, given the significant differ-
ences between Virginia’s and Maryland’s social services
systems. In designing its social services apparatus, Virginia,
in felicitous harmony with the Branti decision, sought to fur-
ther three goals: (1) protection of a measure of freedom of
conscience and belief within the daily administration of the
social services system; (2) recognition of professional merit in
a field in which education and experience weigh importantly;
and (3) prevention of the politicization of individual determi-
nations on matters such as child support collection and wel-
fare eligibility. Other states might legitimately attempt to
protect these values in other ways, but Virginia has sought to
do so by lodging policymaking authority at numerous levels
above the local director. Undisputed evidence in the record,
including an affidavit from a state official familiar with the
system and the job application itself, show that political affili-
ation was not "an appropriate requirement for the effective
performance of the public office involved." Jenkins, 119 F.3d
at 1161 (quoting Branti, 445 U.S. at 518).
But to say that the rule in the Commonwealth is now clear
going forward is a different matter from the retrospective
imposition of monetary consequence. Both Nader and this
case concerned management positions in local services agen-
cies. In both cases, resolving the constitutional issue required
a fact-intensive inquiry into the particular responsibilities of
the positions and their role in their respective state systems.
There was thus no "bright line[ ]" rule in this context. Maciar-
iello, 973 F.2d at 298. The values that Branti and Virginia’s
system seek to protect are significant, but qualified immunity
also protects important values. Without it, local officials like
defendants would be retroactively subject to significant penal-
ties at law for which they did not have proper notice. We find
no fault with the able district judge, who concluded that the
constitutional rights at issue were clearly established; this was
FIELDS v. PRATER 17
a close question. But because we cannot unequivocally say
that defendants knew or should have known they were violat-
ing Fields’s constitutional rights when they refused to hire
her, they are entitled to qualified immunity.
III.
Fields’s complaint underscores two important values. The
first is the right of a citizen to express her basic beliefs with-
out punitive consequences in the workplace. The second is the
interest of government in not having its administrative opera-
tions overly politicized through patronage below the policy-
making level. Defendants claim that when it comes to
welfare, "[t]here is a Republican perspective, [a] Democrat[ic]
perspective, an Independent perspective, and numerous other
political perspectives." Brief of Appellants at 8. But the Con-
stitution imposes limits on holding the livelihood of citizens
hostage to party loyalty and state law imposes limits on sup-
planting professional attainment and non-partisan administra-
tion in the field of social services with partisan requirements.
Both of these interests support the same conclusion here,
namely that basing this hiring decision on political affiliation
violated plaintiff’s First Amendment rights. "[E]ven though a
person has no ‘right’ to a valuable governmental benefit and
even though the government may deny him the benefit for any
number of reasons, there are some reasons upon which the
government may not rely." Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S.
593, 597 (1972). Fields had no right to serve as BCDSS direc-
tor, but defendants had no right to rely on her political affilia-
tion as a reason for not hiring her. Because, however, it was
not clearly established under existing law at the time of the
hiring decision that the action taken was unconstitutional,
defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. The judgment
is accordingly reversed and the case is remanded for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
REVERSED AND REMANDED