FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
February 19, 2010
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
LISA M. ROHRBOUGH,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 07-1498
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
HOSPITAL AUTHORITY, a body
corporate and political subdivision of
the State of Colorado; and
MARGARET FRUEH, individually
and in her official capacity,
Defendants-Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
(D.C. NO. 1:06-CV-00995-REB-MJW)
David A. Lane, Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, Denver, Colorado, for Appellant.
Thomas S. Rice (Gillian M. Fahlsing with him on the brief), Senter Goldfarb &
Rice, L.L.C., Denver, Colorado, for Appellees.
Before MURPHY, EBEL, and HARTZ, Circuit Judges.
MURPHY, Circuit Judge.
I. Introduction
Plaintiff Lisa M. Rohrbough filed suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
alleging her former employer, the University of Colorado Hospital Authority (the
“Hospital”), and her former manager, Margaret Frueh, fired her in retaliation for
exercising her First Amendment rights. Rohrbough appeals the district court’s
grant of summary judgment. The district court concluded Rohrbough’s speech
was unprotected because it was made pursuant to Rohrbough’s official duties as a
“Transplant Coordinator” in the Hospital’s Heart Transplant Unit. Exercising
jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we AFFIRM.
II. Background
Rohrbough worked for the Hospital from November 9, 1992, until June 1,
2004, when the Hospital terminated her employment. During the final five years
of her employment, Rohrbough served as the “Transplant Coordinator” in the
Hospital’s Heart Transplant Unit. In 2002, she became concerned about patient
care in the Unit due to what she perceived to be a “staffing crisis.” Specifically,
Rohrbough believed the staffing problems were affecting the quality of care the
Hospital’s patients received because labs and other medical tests were performed
“extremely late” and charts were not reviewed in a timely fashion. Rohrbough
raised her concerns with a number of hospital employees “[b]ecause [she] wanted
the patient care issues that were causing patient negative outcomes to be
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addressed, and [because she] believed everyone needed to be held accountable for
their action or inaction.”
First, Rohrbough raised her concerns to Nurses Nancy Ireland and Linda
Stepien, and Karin Keller, her day-to-day supervisor. These conversations took
place both inside and outside the workplace. She next raised her concerns with
Margaret Frueh, her manager, and Dr. JoAnn Lindenfeld, the director of the
Hospital’s Heart Transplant Unit. Rohrbough also discussed the staffing issues
during an appeal of her 2002 performance evaluation with Colleen Goode, vice
president of patient services and the Hospital’s chief nursing officer, and Joyce
Cashman, the Hospital’s executive vice president. Still frustrated by the
Hospital’s lack of response, she took her concerns to Dennis Brimhall, the
president of the Hospital. Rohrbough thought it appropriate to meet with
Brimhall given that her concerns were “related to [her] employment because they
were patient care issues.”
Brimhall informed Rohrbough she had the option of meeting with someone
from the Hospital’s Risk Management Unit. Rohrbough subsequently met with
Susan West of the Hospital’s Risk Management Unit. West informed her of the
Hospital’s incident reporting system and welcomed Rohrbough to create incident
reports covering the instances of substandard care she observed. Indeed, Hospital
policies required all employees to write incident reports whenever they
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encountered unsafe conditions, errors, and near misses. After meeting with West,
Rohrbough composed eleven such reports.
While her performance evaluation appeal was pending, Rohrbough learned
of a possible heart transplant misallocation and cover-up at the Hospital. She
reported information regarding this alleged missallocation and cover-up to the
United Network for Organ Sharing (“UNOS”), an entity established by Congress
to administer organ transplants. As Transplant Coordinator, Rohrbough was
responsible for contacting UNOS to place patients on transplant lists, removing
patients from transplants lists, and providing information about a particular
transplant. In this particular instance, however, Rohrbough testified she called
UNOS because her impression was that Dr. Lindenfeld was not going to be
truthful in her report to UNOS. She contacted the UNOS representative from her
home, identified herself as the Hospital’s Transplant Coordinator, and described
her basis for believing a heart had been misallocated at the Hospital. She also
discussed the alleged heart misallocation with a reporter from the Denver
Westword, a print weekly.
In February 2004, Rohrbough received a performance evaluation that
indicated she had failed to meet Hospital standards. In March 2004, several of
Rohrbough’s coworkers approached the Hospital’s human resources department to
express concerns about Rohrbough’s poor job performance and her negative
impact on the work environment. In response, Rohrbough was placed on
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administrative leave. She was reinstated, but failed to improve her performance.
As a result, Frueh terminated Rohrbough’s employment on June 1, 2004. In
explaining her decision to terminate Rohrbough, Frueh testified that “[a]t no time
during Ms. Rohrbough’s employment at the Hospital did I have knowledge of her
reports to UNOS regarding the alleged ‘heart-switch cover-up.’ . . . Therefore, I
could not have disciplined Ms. Rohrbough for this alleged reporting.”
Rohrbough filed suit against the Hospital and Frueh, in both her individual
and official capacity, alleging the Hospital impermissibly retaliated against her
for exercising First Amendment rights. Rohrbough specifically alleges her speech
relating to the Hospital’s staffing crisis, the heart misallocation, and incident
reports were protected under the First Amendment. The Hospital moved for
summary judgment, arguing that all of Rohrbough’s speech was made pursuant to
her official responsibilities and therefore unprotected under Garcetti.
The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the Hospital. It
held that under the standards developed in the wake of Garcetti, it was “clear that
all the speech for which plaintiff was allegedly retaliated against [fell] squarely
within the scope of her official duties.” The district court held Rohrbough’s
complaints about inadequate staffing “by her own admission, directly related to
her concerns about patient safety and welfare” and fell squarely within her
“overarching job responsibility as a nurse” to ensure those concerns were met.
Similarly, the district court held the occurrence reports were also written pursuant
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to Rohrbough’s “broader, official duties as a nurse to safeguard patient welfare.”
Finally, with respect to her communications with UNOS, the district court held
this speech was a “natural, foreseeable outgrowth” of Rohrbough’s official duty
to contact UNOS to place patients on the transplant list or to change a patient’s
status on that list. As a result, the district court held that none of the speech
activities on which Rohrbough’s claim was based were “subject to protection
under the First Amendment in the wake of Garcetti.” On appeal, Rohrbough
argues the district court erred in determining she spoke pursuant to her official
duties as the Hospital’s Transplant Coordinator.
III. Analysis
A. Standard of Review
“We review the district court's grant of summary judgment for the
[defendants] de novo, applying the same legal standard as the district court.”
Shero v. City of Grove, Okla., 510 F.3d 1196, 1200 (10th Cir. 2007). Summary
judgment is proper when “the pleadings, the discovery and disclosure materials on
file, and any affidavits show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact
and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” F ED . R. C IV . P.
56(c)(2). “Furthermore, because this case involves the First Amendment, we have
an obligation to make an independent examination of the whole record in order to
make sure that the judgment does not constitute a forbidden intrusion on the field
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of free expression.” Brammer-Hoelter v. Twin Peaks Charter Acad., 492 F.3d
1192, 1201 (10th Cir. 2007) (quotation omitted).
B. Freedom of Speech Retaliation Claim
In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that “the First
Amendment protects a public employee’s right, in certain circumstances, to speak
as a citizen addressing matters of public concern.” 547 U.S. 410, 417 (2006).
The Court recognized the inherent tension between an employee’s right to free
speech and the government employer’s right to exercise “a significant degree of
control over their employees’ words and actions,” and concluded “while the First
Amendment invests public employees with certain rights, it does not empower
them to constitutionalize the employee grievance.” Id. at 418, 420 (quotation
omitted).
To balance these competing interests, this court employs the inquiry set out
in Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563 (1968), and modified by Garcetti.
Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1202. The Garcetti/Pickering inquiry comprises
five steps:
(1) whether the speech was made pursuant to an employee’s official
duties; (2) whether the speech was on a matter of public concern; (3)
whether the government’s interests, as employer, in promoting the
efficiency of the public service are sufficient to outweigh the
plaintiff’s free speech interests; (4) whether the protected speech was
a motivating factor in the adverse employment action; and (5)
whether the defendant would have reached the same employment
decision in the absence of the protected conduct.
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Dixon v. Kirkpatrick, 553 F.3d 1294, 1302 (10th Cir. 2009).
The first three steps of the Garcetti/Pickering analysis are issues of law “to
be resolved by the district court, while the last two are ordinarily for the trier of
fact.” Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1203; see also Thomas v. City of Blanchard,
548 F.3d 1317, 1322 & 1326 (10th Cir. 2008) (describing step one of the
Garcetti/Pickering inquiry as a question of whether speech is constitutionally
protected and therefore one of law, not fact); Hesse v. Town of Jackson, Wyo.,
541 F.3d 1240, 1249 (10th Cir. 2008) (“The determination of whether a public
employee speaks pursuant to official duties is a matter of law.”). Nevertheless,
these cases review disputed facts relevant to step one of the Garcetti/Pickering
analysis in the light most favorable to the non-moving party at the summary
judgment stage. See, e.g., Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1204 (“[V]iewing the
evidence in the light most favorable to them, Plaintiffs’ speech regarding some of
the matters was not made pursuant to their official duties.”); Hesse, 541 F.3d at
1249 (viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff to conclude as
a matter of law that Plaintiff’s speech was made pursuant to his official
employment duties); Green v. Board of County Comm’rs, 472 F.3d 794, 799 (10th
Cir. 2007) (same). Accordingly, this court will view any disputed facts relevant
to the issue of whether Rohrbough spoke pursuant to her official duties in the
light most favorable to her in making its determination under the first prong of
the Garcetti/Pickering analysis.
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The Garcetti Court did not have the opportunity to articulate “a
comprehensive framework for defining the scope of an employee’s duties,”
because the parties did not dispute the presence of the factor. 547 U.S. at 424.
The Tenth Circuit’s decisions addressing the first step of the Garcetti/Pickering
analysis “have taken a broad view of the meaning of speech that is pursuant to an
employee’s official duties.” Thomas, 548 F.3d at 1324 (quotations omitted); see
also Casey v. W. Las Vegas Indep. Sch. Dist., 473 F.3d 1323, 1331 (10th Cir.
2007) (referring to the first prong of the Garcetti/Pickering analysis as a “heavy
barrier”). These decisions, however, have not developed a set of bright line rules
to determine when an employee speaks pursuant to her official duties for the
purposes of Garcetti/Pickering. Rather, in line with the Court’s admonition in
Garcetti that “[t]he proper inquiry was a practical one,” 547 U.S. at 424, the
Tenth Circuit has taken a case-by-case approach, looking both to the content of
the speech, as well as the employee’s chosen audience, to determine whether the
speech is made pursuant to an employee’s official duties.
In general, the court has focused on whether the speech activity “stemmed
from and [was of] the type . . . that [the employee] was paid to do,” Green, 472
F.3d at 801, and has highlighted that the ultimate question in determining whether
speech falls within an employee’s official duties is “whether the employee speaks
as a citizen or instead as a government employee,” Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at
1203. As examples of protected government employee speech, Green listed
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“communicating with newspapers or . . . legislators or performing some similar
activity afforded citizens.” 472 F.3d at 800; see also Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 423
(listing “writing a letter to a local newspaper” and “discussing politics with a co-
worker” as examples of such speech). The Garcetti decision also suggested that a
government employee’s speech is not protected when there is “no relevant
analogue to speech by citizens who are not government employees.” Id. at 424.
Regarding the content of an employee’s speech, the Tenth Circuit has
recognized that not all speech “about the subject matter of an employee’s work
[is] necessarily made pursuant to the employee’s official duties.” Brammer-
Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1204. The court has also noted that speech pursuant to the
employee’s duty to report a particular activity is usually within that employee’s
official duties under Garcetti/Pickering. See, e.g., Casey, 473 F.3d at 1329
(holding that speech made pursuant to an employee’s duty to report to her
employer regarding the legality of the employer’s operations was within the scope
of her official duties).
In addition, the court has not foreclosed unauthorized speech or speech “not
explicitly required as part of [an employee’s] day-to-day job” from being within
the scope of that employee’s official duties under Garcetti/Pickering. Green, 472
F.3d at 800-01; see also Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1203 (holding that speech
could be considered within the scope of an employee’s official duty even if “the
speech concerns an unusual aspect of an employee’s job that is not part of his
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everyday functions”). To the contrary, Green emphasized the employee’s
unauthorized speech at issue “inescapably invoke[d] Garcetti’s admonishment
that [a] government employee’s First Amendment rights do ‘not invest them with
a right to perform their jobs however they see fit.’” 472 F.3d at 801 (quoting
Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 422). In this vein, Green also noted that protecting
unauthorized speech would result in “‘judicial oversight of communications
between and among government employees and their superiors in the course of
official business’ and ‘displacement of managerial discretion by judicial
supervision.’” Id. (quoting Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 423).
Regarding the employee’s chosen audience, or chosen method of
disseminating speech, the court has similarly refrained from establishing per se
rules for determining whether speech is made pursuant to an employee’s official
duties. For example, in Brammer-Hoelter, the speech regarding the budgeting of
teacher salaries and staffing levels was not within the scope of the plaintiffs’
official duties in part because the speech occurred outside the school, after hours,
and with “ordinary citizens and parents.” 492 F.3d at 1205. Similarly, the court
has observed that speech directed at an individual or entity outside of an
employee’s chain of command is often outside of an employee’s official duties.
See, e.g., Thomas, 548 F.3d at 1325 (protecting speech based upon the employee’s
threat to go “outside of his usual chain of command . . . and not merely to his
supervisors or to the state housing inspector”); Casey, 473 F.3d at 1332-33
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(protecting speech directed to the New Mexico Attorney General because the
employee had no responsibility to report to that entity regarding potential
violations of the Open Meetings Act).
By contrast, speech directed at an individual or entity within a employee’s
chain of command is often found to be pursuant to that employee’s official duties
under Garcetti/Pickering. See, e.g., Casey, 473 F.3d at 1329-32 (leaving
unprotected speech directed at a federal authority due to plaintiff’s responsibility
to independently report to that authority); Green, 472 F.3d at 800-01 (leaving
unprotected speech directed at third parties regarding drug testing policies
because the plaintiff “had the responsibility for communicating with clients and
with third parties regarding testing.”). But an employee’s decision to go outside
of their ordinary chain of command does not necessarily insulate their speech.
Rather, as noted above, the proper focus is ultimately still whether the speech
“stemmed from and [was of] the type . . . that [the employee] was paid to do,”
regardless of the exact role of the individual or entity to which the employee has
chosen to speak. Green, 472 F.3d at 798.
In this case, Rohrbough alleges she was retaliated against because of her
communications regarding the Hospital’s alleged staffing crisis, the alleged
instances of substandard care, and the alleged heart transplant misallocation.
Rohrbough’s communications with other Hospital employees regarding the
alleged staffing crisis, the alleged instances of substandard care, and the alleged
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heart misallocation all fall squarely within the scope of her official duties under
the first prong of the Garcetti/Pickering analysis.
1. The Alleged Staffing Crisis
Rohrbough’s communications with other Hospital employees regarding the
alleged staffing crisis were made pursuant to her official duties. Her own
admissions about why she was concerned about the alleged staffing crisis, as well
as other undisputed facts about her job at the Hospital, demonstrate this speech
was within the scope of her official duties as Transplant Coordinator in the
Hospital’s Heart Transplant Unit. Rohrbough admits she had the conversations
about the staffing crisis because the staffing crisis affected her ability to do her
job and provide appropriate patient care. Furthermore, she directed her speech
toward other hospital employees such as Karin Keller, her day-to-day supervisor,
Margaret Frueh, her manager, and Dr. Lindenfeld, the director of the Transplant
Unit.
Rohrbough correctly points out that a government employee’s speech
regarding staffing, although work-related, may fall outside the employee’s official
duties. See Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1204-05 (concluding that plaintiffs’
speech regarding staffing levels was not made pursuant to their official duties).
The speech protected by Brammer-Hoelter, however, occurred after hours in
groups including ordinary citizens and parents and concerned aspects of school
administration over which the plaintiffs had no supervisory responsibility and no
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duty to report. Id. at 1205. Unlike the plaintiffs in Brammer-Hoelter, however,
Rohrbough spoke only to Hospital employees and only about matters within the
scope of her duties as a nurse and Transplant Coordinator. See id. at 1204
(holding “[n]early all” of the communications at issue were unprotected because
they fell within the scope of the plaintiffs’ “inherent duty as teachers to ensure
they had adequate materials to educate their students”). Thus, Rohrbough’s
complaints to her coworkers and supervisors about the Hospital’s alleged staffing
crisis were similarly made pursuant to her official duties under
Garcetti/Pickering.
2. The Occurrence Reports
The undisputed facts also establish that Rohrbough’s eleven Occurrence
Reports were generated pursuant to her official duties. She wrote these reports at
the behest of Susan West of the Hospital’s Risk Management Unit. Furthermore,
Hospital policies required that all employees, including Rohrbough, create
Occurrence Reports to report unsafe conditions, errors, and near misses.
Rohrbough’s reporting about the conditions affecting her ability to fulfill her
duties as Transplant Coordinator at the Hospital undoubtedly was an activity that
“stemmed from and [was of] the type . . . that she was paid to do.” Green, 472
F.3d at 801.
Rohrbough nevertheless argues the communications in these reports were
not within the scope of her official duties because drafting them was not
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something she was “actually expected to do.” Rohrbough relies on Garcetti’s
focus on “the duties an employee actually is expected to perform,” 547 U.S. at
424-25, and notes Brammer-Hoelter expressly held that employers may not rely
upon generalized grievance policies to characterize “official duties,” 492 F.3d at
1204.
These arguments misconceive the thrust of the analysis in Tenth Circuit
case law. First, as noted above, employee speech “not explicitly required as part
of [an employee’s] day-to-day job” may nevertheless fall within the scope of that
employee’s official duties. Green, 472 F.3d at 800-01. Indeed, Brammer-
Hoelter, the case upon which Rohrbough relies, held that speech could be
considered within the scope of an employee’s official duty even if “the speech
concerns an unusual aspect of an employee’s job that is not part of his everyday
functions.” 492 F.3d at 1203. Brammer-Hoelter’s statement that a generalized
grievance policy does not free an employer to retaliate against any grieving
employee certainly does not also mean that every grievance necessarily falls
outside the scope of that employee’s official duties. 492 F.3d at 1204. Rather,
Brammer-Hoelter specifically held that “[n]early all” of the plaintiffs’ grievances
were unprotected because they were made “pursuant to their duties as teachers.”
Id. at 1204.
Rohrbough’s Occurrence Reports were similarly made pursuant to her
duties as Transplant Coordinator. Her reports documented the eleven instances of
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substandard care she observed while fulfilling her job responsibilities. They
detailed several cases in which Rohrbough felt the Heart Transplant Unit’s
patients had received inadequate care following medication changes, lab results,
and other medical tests. Like the teachers’ complaints about the school’s
curriculum and pedagogy in Brammer-Hoelter, these reports were all made
pursuant to Rohrbough’s official duties as Transplant Coordinator within the
Hospital’s Heart Transplant Unit. Her assertions that her immediate supervisors
did not order her to write the reports and that other nurses did not write similar
reports does not change the analysis.
3. The Alleged Heart Misallocation
Finally, Rohrbough’s claim that she was retaliated against for her speech
regarding the alleged heart misallocation also fails as a matter of law. On appeal,
she argues her communications with UNOS, the Colorado State Board of Nursing,
and the Westword newspaper reporter about the alleged organ misallocation at the
Hospital were all protected under the First Amendment. An examination of the
record, however, reveals that Rohrbough failed to raise her communications with
the Colorado State Board of Nursing and the Westword reporter in the district
court. Her allegations regarding the “Heart Switch Cover up” appear in
paragraphs 18-31 of her complaint. Those paragraphs state that Rohrbough
initially directed her concerns to the following individuals: (1) Dr. Ronald Zolty,
an attending physician in the Heart Transplant Division; (2) Dr. JoAnn
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Lindenfeld, the Division’s director; (3) Karin Keller, Rohrbough’s supervisor; (4)
Nancy Ireland, a nurse within the Division; (5) Joyce Cashman, the Hospital’s
executive vice president; and (6) Colleen Goode, the Hospital’s vice president of
patient services and chief nursing officer.
Due to her continuing concerns about the situation, Rohrbough then alleges
she called UNOS and spoke with a representative who was already investigating
the incident. Nowhere in her complaint does she allege that she contacted any
other individuals or outside entities, or that she was retaliated against for
engaging in such speech. In addition, Rohrbough completely failed to raise these
issues in her response to the Hospital’s motion to dismiss or in her subsequent
response to the Hospital’s motion for summary judgment. As a consequence, this
court will not consider the purported communications with the Colorado State
Board of Nursing and the Westword reporter as part of the allegedly protected
speech. Walker v. Mather (In re Walker), 959 F.2d 894, 896 (10th Cir. 1992)
(noting this circuit follows the general rule that “a federal appellate court does not
consider an issue not passed upon below” (quotation omitted)).
Rohrbough’s communications with other Hospital employees regarding the
alleged heart misallocation and UNOS cover-up fall within the scope of her
official duties. The undisputed facts demonstrate Rohrbough’s responsibilities
included contacting UNOS to list a patient for an organ transplant and to change a
patient’s status. Her internal discussions about these duties certainly “stemmed
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from and were the type of activities that she was paid to do.” Green, 472 F.3d at
801. Indeed, Rohrbough testified that Goode, the Hospital’s chief nursing officer,
told her to “leave [the UNOS] problems with those within the hospital at a level
above myself.” Rohrbough also testified that Cashman, the Hospital’s executive
vice president, told her that her “only recourse was to take the problem to Dr.
Lindenfeld because she was in charge and was the director of the heart transplant
program.” Under the undisputed facts, Rohrbough’s internal discussions with Dr.
Zolty, Dr. Lindenfeld, Keller, Ireland, Cashman, and Goode about the UNOS
misallocation fell within the scope of her official duties under Garcetti/Pickering.
Rohrbough’s additional reporting to UNOS, an outside agency that
Rohrbough was nevertheless required to maintain some official contacts with,
presents a closer question. This court, however, need not resolve the question of
whether this additional reporting fell within the scope of Rohrbough’s official
duties because her claim cannot survive the fourth prong of the Garcetti/Pickering
analysis. Step four looks to “whether the protected speech was a motivating
factor in the adverse employment action.” Dixon, 553 F.3d at 1302. Although
this step is ordinarily resolved by the trier of fact, see, e.g., Brammer-Hoelter,
492 F.3d at 1203, there simply is no evidence in the record from which a trier of
fact could reasonably conclude the UNOS speech was a motivating factor in
Rohrbough’s termination.
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Rohrbough’s supervisor, Margaret Frueh, testified that she had no
knowledge of Rohrbough’s UNOS reporting prior to terminating Rohrbough.
Specifically, Frueh testified that “[a]t no time during Ms. Rohrbough’s
employment at the Hospital did I have knowledge of her reports to UNOS
regarding the alleged ‘heart-switch cover-up.’” Against the weight of this
statement, Rohrbough simply argues that she has “presented enough evidence for
a reasonable jury to find that her speech was indeed the motivating factor in her
termination.” Specifically, she contends that Frueh’s credibility should be
determined by a jury and that discussions regarding the “heart transplant
continued through the spring and summer of 2003—just before her September
2003 performance evaluation.”
The record certainly supports a conclusion that Rohrbough engaged in a
number of discussions with a variety of Hospital employees about the alleged
misallocation of the heart. This evidence might allow a jury to infer that Frueh
knew of Rohrbough’s involvement in the incident. However, there is no evidence
whatsoever that Rohrbough told Frueh, or any of her other superiors, of her
decision to report the incident to UNOS. Accordingly, she has failed to present
sufficient evidence for a reasonable trier of fact to find that her communications
with UNOS were a motivating factor in her termination.
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IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, all of Rohrbough’s claims fail as a matter of law.
Her discussions with other Hospital employees about the alleged staffing crisis,
the alleged incidents of sub-standard care, and the alleged heart misallocation
were all within the scope of her official duties under the first prong of the
Garcetti/Pickering analysis. Furthermore, her reporting of the alleged heart
misallocation to UNOS cannot survive the fourth Garcetti/Pickering prong
because there is no evidence this speech was a motivating factor in Rohrbough’s
termination. Finally, this court will not consider Rohrbough’s claims based upon
her communications with the Colorado State Board of Nursing and the Westword
reporter because of her failure to present them below. Accordingly, the district
court’s grant of summary judgment for the Hospital is AFFIRMED.
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