F I L E D
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
January 24, 2007
PU BL ISH
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
UNITED STATES COURT O F APPEALS Clerk of Court
TENTH CIRCUIT
BARBARA PEREA CASEY and
FR AN K CA SEY ,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
W E ST LAS V EG A S IN D EPEN DENT
SCHO OL D ISTRICT, and W ALTER No. 06-2054
A D A MS, A M B RO SE C ASTELLANO,
PATRICK M ARQ UEZ, RA LPH
GARCIA, M ICHAEL VIGIL, and
ARTURO GURULE, in their
individual capacities,
Defendants-Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New M exico
(D.C. No. CIV-04-1157 ACT/DJS)
Kevin M . Brown (Daniel J. M acke with him on the briefs), of Brown & German,
Albuquerque, New M exico, for Defendants-Appellants.
Daniel Yohalem, Santa Fe, New M exico, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.
Before TACH A, Chief Judge, TY M K O VIC H, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
G O R SU CH, Circuit Judge.
Barbara Casey, a longtime New M exico public servant, seeks damages from
the W est Las Vegas Independent School District and various of its officials,
alleging that they demoted and eventually fired her in retaliation for exercising
her First Amendment rights. Having moved unsuccessfully for sum mary
judgment in the district court, defendants appeal to us. W hile this case awaited
oral argument, the Supreme Court issued Garcetti v. Ceballos, __ U.S. __, 126 S.
Ct. 1951 (2006), which profoundly alters how courts review First Amendment
retaliation claims. M s. Casey now concedes that a portion of one claim is barred
by Garcetti. W e agree and find certain other portions also precluded by the
Supreme Court’s recent ruling. Still, we find that at least one aspect of one of
M s. Casey’s claims survives to trial.
I
A former New M exico state legislator and school teacher, M s. Casey served
as Superintendent of the W est Las Vegas Independent School District (“District”)
from January 2002 until A pril 2003. View ing the facts in the light most favorable
to her as the party opposing summary judgment, she fairly establishes the
following:
Upon becoming Superintendent, M s. Casey assumed responsibility for
serving as the Chief Executive O fficer (“CEO”) of the D istrict’s Head Start
program, a federally funded initiative aimed at providing educational
opportunities, meals, and health care services to low-income children between
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three and five years of age. The District’s H ead Start program traditionally
received approximately $2.5 million annually from the federal government, but
prior to the 2001-02 school year, federal authorities determined that the D istrict’s
Head Start program had 61 major deficiencies and threatened to suspend its
funding. Appellants’ A pp. at 131 ¶ 5.
To help address these problems, in June 2002, the District hired Jacqueline
Padilla (at M s. Casey’s recommendation) to manage the H ead Start program. M s.
Padilla became the District’s Head Start director, reported to M s. Casey, and
made a number of changes aimed at bringing the District’s program into
compliance with federal regulations and ensuring its continued funding. Id. at
131 ¶ 6. By the winter of 2002-03, a federal oversight agency determined that the
District’s program had indeed achieved substantial compliance with federal
mandates. Id.
Sometime during the period December 2002 - January 2003, M s. Padilla
informed M s. Casey that her staff had begun to uncover evidence that as many as
50% of the families enrolled in the District’s H ead Start program appeared to
have incomes that were too high for them to qualify for participation. M s. Casey
learned that some families had intentionally omitted family income information or
inflated the size of their family in order to enroll their children in the program.
W orried that these problems threatened the District’s progress and risked its
future funding, M s. Casey reported them to W alter Adams, the W est Las Vegas
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School Board’s (“Board”) president and one of the defendants before us. M r.
Adams allegedly responded that M s. Casey should not worry about the issue.
Several more times between January and April 2003, M s. Casey raised the issue
with M r. Adams and, in executive sessions of the Board, the other individual
defendants. Each time, she was told variously not to worry about it, to leave it
alone, or not to go there. See id. at 55 [51:20-51:24], 59 [60:12-60:21].
M s. Casey became concerned that, given the Board’s inaction, “she had a
duty as Head Start’s executive director to report this wrong doing [sic] to federal
authorities.” See Appellees’ B r. at 5, 39; see also Appellants’ App. at 138
[51:25-52:3]. M s. Casey thus instructed her subordinate, M s. Padilla, to approach
the federal Head Start regional office in Dallas and relay her findings. This M s.
Padilla did. Eventually, on August 8, 2003, the United States Department of
Health & Human Services (“HHS”) determined that certain enrollments in the
District’s Head Start program w ere indeed improper and ordered the repayment of
more than half a million dollars in federal aid.
During the 2002-03 school year, M s. Casey also informed the Board that it
was violating the New M exico Open M eetings Act by making personnel and other
decisions in executive session without proper notice and meeting agendas.
Because defendants apparently ignored her warnings, on approximately M arch 17,
2003, M s. Casey filed a written complaint with the New M exico Attorney
General’s office. On M arch 25, 2003, the A ttorney General’s office w rote to M r.
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Adams outlining the particulars of M s. Casey’s complaint, enclosing a copy of the
complaint, and requesting a response. After receiving the Board’s response and
completing its review of the matter, the Attorney General’s office determined that
the Board had in fact violated the Open M eetings Act and ordered corrective
action.
Finally, M s. Casey brought to the Board’s attention a number of other
issues during the 2002-03 school year regarding the District’s operations that, she
believed, violated federal or state laws. These included, by way of example, an
allegation that the District hired employees without advertising vacancies or
conducting a review process, and that it improperly handled a case where a
teacher and school principal were carrying on an affair.
On April 10, 2003, the Board demoted M s. Casey to Assistant
Superintendent. W hile there is some lack of clarity regarding exactly when the
school board further decided not to renew M s. Casey’s contract for the 2003-04
school year, the facts before us suggest that this may have occurred as early as
April 10 or as late as M ay 8, 2003. See Appellants’ App. at 130-31 ¶ 3 (“I was
demoted by Defendants to the position of Associate Superintendent on April 10,
2003. On M ay 8, 2003 Defendants voted not to renew my contract of
employment for any position in the school district.”); id. at 73 (M inutes, Regular
Board M eeting, April 10, 2003) (Board unanimously voted “not to renew the
employment contract with Barbara Casey as Superintendent” and “to immediately
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reassign M s. Casey from her present position to the position of Assistant
Superintendent through the remainder of the fiscal year”); id. at 174 (letter from
Superintendent Arturo Gurule to M s. Casey) (“I regret to inform you that on [sic]
the M ay 8, 2003 W est Las V egas [School District] board meeting, you[r]
employment contract for the 2003-2004 school year was not renew ed.”).
Following her termination, M s. Casey filed an action against the District,
the new Superintendent, and individual members of the Board alleging, inter alia,
that she was dismissed in retaliation for exercising her First Amendment rights.
The defendants unsuccessfully sought summary judgment in the D istrict Court
with respect to M s. Casey’s First A mendment claims based on qualified immunity
and now pursue this appeal raising the same defense. 1 Immediately prior to
A ppellants’ submission of their reply brief, the Supreme Court handed down
Garcetti and, accordingly, we sought and received supplemental briefing from the
parties to help us in assessing the impact of the Supreme Court’s new guidance.
II
W e review the district court’s denial of summary judgment de novo. See
M edina v. Cram, 252 F.3d 1124, 1128 (10th Cir. 2001). W hen a defendant asserts
qualified immunity at summary judgment, the responsibility shifts to the plaintiff
to meet a “heavy two-part burden,” id. (internal quotation marks omitted),
1
This Court has jurisdiction over this interlocutory appeal of a denial of
summary judgment because it involves the assertion of qualified immunity. See
Blossom v. Yarbrough, 429 F.3d 963, 966 (10th Cir. 2005).
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demonstrating, first, that the defendant’s actions violated a constitutional or
statutory right and, second, that the right at issue was clearly established at the
time of the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct. In assessing whether the
right was clearly established, we ask whether the right was sufficiently clear that
a reasonable government officer in the defendant’s shoes would understand that
what he or she did violated that right. If the plaintiff fails to satisfy either part of
the tw o-part inquiry, we must grant the defendant qualified immunity.
In analyzing a public employee’s First Amendment retaliation claim, the
Supreme Court has instructed that we must first decide whether the speech at
issue touches on a matter of public concern and, if so, we must then proceed to
ask whether the employee’s interest in comm enting on the issue “outweighs” the
interest of the state as employer. See Dill v. City of Edmond, 155 F.3d 1193,
1201 (10th Cir. 1998) (citing Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1986)
and Connick v. M yers, 461 U.S. 138, 146 (1983)). “The problem in any case,” the
Supreme Court observed, “is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the
[employee], as citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the
interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public
services it performs through its employees.” Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568. How
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exactly we are to “weigh” and “balance” the radically incomm ensurate interests at
stake in Pickering’s second prong is a matter of great debate and little certainty. 2
The Supreme Court last Term in Garcetti did revisit Pickering’s first prong,
however, and added some clarity to the question when a public employee speaks
as a citizen rather than as an employee. Specifically, the Court held that when
public employees speak “pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not
speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not
insulate their communications from employer discipline.” Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at
1960. The rationale for this rule is that “[r]estricting speech that owes its
existence to a public employee’s professional responsibilities does not infringe
any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen. It simply
2
See, e.g., Rodric B. Schoen, Pickering Plus Thirty Years: Public
Employees and Free Speech, 30 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 5, 30-31 (1999) (“W hen the
Supreme Court commands that these [F]irst [A]mendment cases be resolved by
balancing competing interests, it is scarcely surprising that reasonable persons
will disagree with the ultimate balance struck in specific cases. However, until
the Court provides a different methodology, litigants, law yers, and lower courts
cannot avoid the uncertainty constitutional balancing inevitably produces when
applied to the ‘enormous variety of fact situations’ presented in cases w here
public employees are terminated from government em ployment for reason of their
spoken or w ritten expression. Lacking further guidance from the Supreme Court,
the federal courts of appeals have occasionally supplemented the Court’s
jurisprudence with their own refinements, nuances, emphases, and ‘rules’ to
simplify resolution of public employee-free speech cases”); D. Gordon Smith,
Comment, Beyond “Public Concern”: New Free Speech Standards for Public
Employees, 57 U. Chi. L. Rev. 249, 276 (1990) (proposing “objective rules that
approximate the results of [Pickering] balancing without the indeterminacy and
excessive expenditure of judicial resources inherent in balancing”); see also id. at
269-76.
-8-
reflects the exercise of employer control over what the employer itself has
comm issioned or created.” Id. 3 The question for us on Pickering’s first prong is
thus significantly modified, 4 and we are obliged to ask whether M s. Casey met her
burden by providing evidence that her expressions were made in her capacity as a
citizen and not pursuant to her “official duties.” 5
In this case, we are presented with three specific sets of communications
that M s. Casey cites as the bases for her First Amendment retaliation claims,
those regarding (i) the Head Start program, (ii) the New M exico Open M eetings
A ct, and (iii) miscellaneous other violations of state or federal law (e.g., hiring
3
Indeed, the Supreme Court noted that employers have a “heightened
interest[] in controlling speech made by an employee in his or her professional
capacity,” because supervisors have a need to “ensure that their employee’s
official communications are accurate, demonstrate sound judgment, and promote
the employer’s mission.” Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at 1960.
4
See, e.g., Frederick Schauer, The Supreme Court, 2005 Term – Foreword:
The Court’s Agenda – and the N ation’s, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 4, 35 (noting that
Garcetti “established a new rule governing a vast amount of low er court
litigation”); Supreme Court, 2005 Term – Leading Cases, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 273,
273-83 (2006) (discussing Garcetti); see also Erw in Chemerinsky, The Kennedy
Court: October Term 2005, 9 Green Bag 2d 335, 340 (2006) (during the Supreme
Court’s last Term, “the most significant [First Amendment decision] likely was
Garcetti”).
5
Besides encouraging lower courts to view the facts from a “practical”
perspective, the Court declined to provide guidance on how we are to go about
determining the appropriate scope of an employee’s official duties: “W e thus
have no occasion to articulate a comprehensive framew ork for defining the scope
of an employee’s duties in cases where there is room for serious debate.”
Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at 1961.
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employees without advertising vacancies or conducting a review process, and
improperly handling claims of misconduct by teachers and principals).
M iscellaneous Violations. In her brief addressing the impact of Garcetti,
M s. Casey thoughtfully concedes that any action based on this category of
statements is now barred as a matter of law. As M s. Casey puts it, these
statements fell within the scope of her duties as Superintendent because they were
aimed “solely to the School Board” to which she reported and her job admittedly
included “advis[ing] Defendants about the lawful and proper way to conduct
school business.” See Appellees’ Sur-Reply Brief at 7 n.4. W e agree with M s.
Casey and hold these statements no longer actionable after Garcetti for both of
the reasons she articulates.
Head Start. M s. Casey’s statements with respect to the Head Start program
themselves are of two types. The first, and the bulk of her comments, involve
statements directed to the School Board conveying concern about the D istrict’s
lack of compliance with federal regulations. In our view, these statements do not
form the basis for a colorable First Amendment retaliation claim after Garcetti for
reasons M s. Casey has already identified. That is, these comments were directed
only to her supervisors and, in each instance, M s. Casey sought to raise concerns
about the legality of the District’s operations. As before, because advising her
employer on “the lawful and proper way to conduct school business” was
admittedly part of her portfolio, we cannot help but conclude that M s. Casey
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made these statements pursuant to her official duties. See Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at
1959-61; see also M ills v. City of Evansville, 452 F.3d 646, 647-48 (7th Cir.
2006) (holding that an employee’s internal discussions advising superiors about
the employing institution’s policies are barred as a basis for a First Amendment
retaliation claim by Garcetti).
One remaining statement about the H ead Start program that might give rise
to a cause of action concerns M s. Casey’s instruction to M s. Padilla that the latter
should contact federal authorities and convey their mutual concerns about the
legality of the District’s Head Start operations. Here, M s. Casey did not advise
her employers but instead went very much around them. The question before us
is w hether, in doing so, M s. Casey used M s. Padilla as her agent to engage in
protected citizen whistleblowing, or whether M s. Casey acted pursuant to her
official duties in ordering a subordinate to report the D istrict’s regulatory
noncompliance to federal authorities.
Interestingly, the parties before us both made arguments in their principal
briefs filed before Garcetti that cut against the result they wish this Court to reach
after Garcetti. In their principal brief before Garcetti, the defendants argued that
M s. Casey acted ultra vires and in a disruptive manner by reporting the alleged
Head Start violations to the federal office. 6 For her part, M s. Casey argued in her
6
See Appellants’ Br. at 18 (arguing that M s. Casey caused disruption by
“remov[ing] herself from her advisory and policymaking role . . . [by advising the
(continued...)
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principal brief that she “became concerned that she had a duty as Head Start’s
executive director to report this wrong doing [sic] to federal authorities.”
Appellees’ Br. at 5, 39 (emphasis added). After Garcetti, the parties seemed to
swap positions to meet their respective litigation objectives. In their reply brief
filed after Garcetti, defendants point to the ostensibly “undisputed fact that [M s.
Casey’s] alleged ‘speech’ was engaged in as Superintendent or CEO of the Head
Start program, not as a citizen.” Appellants’ Reply Br. at 5-6. M s. Casey,
meanwhile, now asserts that in reporting the Head Start violations she was acting
solely in her capacity as a citizen, not as an employee. See Appellees’ Sur-Reply
Br. at 7-8.
The parties, of course, can hardly be blamed for shifting positions in their
briefs in response to new pronouncements of law. But the underlying discovery
facts cannot be so altered and they seem clear enough to us to establish that M s.
Casey was acting “pursuant to” her official duties. Black’s defines the relevant
term as meaning “[i]n compliance with; in accordance with.” Black’s Law
Dictionary 1272 (8th ed. 2004). And it is undisputed that M s. Casey was
designated by the Board as the CEO and person primarily responsible for the
sound administration of the District’s H ead Start program. In accepting this
assignment, M s. Casey necessarily assumed certain responsibilities, pleasant and
6
(...continued)
outside agencies of the allegedly illegal conduct], without first advising the B oard
which she served”); see also id. at 13-14, 18-20.
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unpleasant, and these included acting pursuant to, or in compliance with, certain
federal regulations. Rules issued by HHS expressly state that families w ith
children enrolled by Head Start grantees must meet specific income eligibility
requirements. See 45 C.F.R. § 1305.4 (2002). The regulations also indicate that
“[a] grantee’s failure to comply with [such eligibility] requirements . . . may
result in a denial of refunding or termination.” Id. at § 1305.10. Further, at the
time these events took place, individuals, like M s. Casey, with knowledge of
financial irregularities risked civil and criminal liability by remaining silent in the
face of such knowledge. 7 In deposition, M s. Casey effectively acknowledged
these facts, conceding that her responsibilities “as executive director” included a
duty to report the District’s noncompliance to federal authorities because she
“would be held legally responsible for having knowledge of something that was
wrong and not reporting that.” Appellants’ A pp. at 138 [51:25-52:3].
7
See, e.g., Program Fraud and Civil Remedies Act of 1986, 31 U.S.C.
§ 3802 (any person who submits or causes to be submitted a claim that the person
knows is false is subject to a civil penalty); Criminal False Claims Act, 18 U.S.C.
§ 287 (any person who presents to an agency a claim with knowledge of its falsity
shall be imprisoned and fined). Recently, HHS coalesced the various federal
statutes, and its own regulations, aimed at deterring fraud into a comprehensive
Grant Policy Statement. See U .S. Department of Health & Human Services, H H S
Grant Policy Statement, I-7 (Oct. 1, 2006),
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/HHS_G PS_O ct_2006.doc (last visited Dec. 26,
2006) (“Anyone who becomes aware of the existence (or apparent existence) of
fraud, waste, or abuse related to HHS grants or use of grant funds should report
this information to HHS.”).
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Buttressing the conclusion that M s. Casey acted in accordance with, if not
compelled by, her office, she also stated in sworn testimony that her order to M s.
Padilla was aimed at “fix[ing] the problem before it got worse.” Id. at 147
[112:18-112:20]. That is, M s. Casey merely wanted “to get direction from
somebody . . . and find out what to do” in reporting the D istrict’s irregularities.
Id. at 141 [65:20-65:21]. None of this suggests ultra vires conduct but rather an
individual striving diligently to fulfill a federal regulatory obligation directly
bearing on her by virtue of the office she held. It is also notable that M s. Casey
acted not on her own in this matter, but thought it sufficiently a part of her job
duties to report the District’s financial irregularities to HHS that she deemed it
appropriate to order a subordinate, M s. Padilla, to contact Head Start officials;
nor did the latter blanch at M s. Casey’s direction or give any other intimation that
she thought she or M s. Casey might be acting beyond the scope of their
employment.
W hile w e feel obliged after Garcetti to conclude that M s. Casey’s actions
were taken pursuant to her official position, we do not mean to suggest that every
agent who disregards a principal’s instructions not to disclose information is
barred from suit by Garcetti. To the contrary, we are confronted in this case with
a rather narrower and subtler set of facts in which the plaintiff’s job, as the chief
overseer of Head Start for the District, included the sound administration of
federal funds; federal law directed the disclosure of any irregularities in the use of
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such funds; the plaintiff conceded that her job duties required her to report to
federal authorities; and she acted in a manner consistent with this admission. See
M cGee v. Public W ater Supply, 471 F.3d 918, 921 (8th Cir. 2006) (the court
rejected plaintiff-supervisor’s argument that he acted outside the scope of his job
duties by voicing concerns about a project after he was removed from it and after
being told by superiors “not to concern himself” with another project because,
inter alia, “the projects clearly fell w ithin [his] overall supervisory duties”).
Similarly, we do not mean to suggest M s. Casey’s speech regarding the Head
Start program did not relate to a matter of public concern. Far from it. As we
have held many times, speech reporting the illicit or improper activities of a
government entity or its agents is obviously a matter of great public import. 8 W e
simply hold that M s. Casey’s speech, such as it was, is more akin to that of a
senior executive acting pursuant to official duties than to that of an ordinary
citizen speaking on his or her own time; accordingly, M s. Casey cannot meet her
burden here and avoid the heavy barrier erected by the Supreme Court in Garcetti
to the satisfaction of Pickering’s first prong.
Other cases to emerge after Garcetti confirm our conclusion. In Green v.
Board of County Com missioners, No. 05-6297, __ F.3d __ (10th Cir. 2007), we
recently faced a case involving a county drug lab employee who ignored her
8
See, e.g., Schalk v. Gallemore, 906 F.2d 491, 495 (10th Cir. 1990);
Considine v. Bd. of County Com m’rs, 910 F.2d 695, 699-700 (10th Cir. 1990);
Conaway v. Smith, 853 F.2d 789, 796 (10th Cir. 1988).
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supervisors and scheduled confirmatory drug tests when she suspected earlier
tests had generated “false positives.” See id., slip op. at 2-3. Even though her
conduct was “not explicitly required as part of her day-to-day job
responsibilities,” and was condemned by her superiors, we nonetheless held that
her First Amendment claim was barred by Garcetti because her actions were
generally “the type of activities she was paid to do.” Id. at 13. M uch the same
can be said here. W hile M s. Casey disregarded her superiors’ direction to
suppress her findings about the Head Start program, her decision to report the
District’s noncompliance to federal authorities was nonetheless in accordance
with (and perhaps even an indispensable part of) her job as the senior official
responsible for the sound administration of the federally funded program she
administered.
A recent Eleventh Circuit decision, Battle v. Board of Regents, 468 F.3d
755 (11th Cir. 2006) (per curiam), further illuminates this point. There, the court
held that a relatively low-level university employee who reported improprieties in
a supervisor’s handling of federal financial aid funds was acting within the scope
of her duties because, as a financial aid worker, the plaintiff had a duty under
federal guidelines to report any suspected fraud associated with federal financial
aid funding. Id. at 761-62. It seems to us that the responsibility to deal with
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known misconduct can be no less emphatic when the employee at issue is a CEO
or Superintendent and similar disclosure obligations exist. 9
Open M eetings Act. M s. Casey first reported her concerns about the
Board’s failure to comply with the N ew M exico O pen M eetings Act to the B oard
itself; when that proved unavailing, M s. Casey personally took the issue to the
New M exico Attorney General. See Appellants’ A pp. at 133 ¶ 16, 161-63. W ith
respect to M s. Casey’s statements directed to the Board, it seems to us significant
that they were made solely to her superiors and M s. Casey, as Superintendent, had
a duty to provide candid advice and counsel to the Board, much as any corporate
CEO might to his or her board of directors. This, in our view , suffices to
preclude a claim under Garcetti. See Green, __ F.3d __, slip op. at 13
(dismissing claim under Garcetti even though employee’s conduct was not
required as a part of her job because it was generally of the type of conduct she
was paid to do); M ills, 452 F.3d at 648 (precluding claim under Garcetti where
police officer advised senior managers that her immediate superior had made a
bad decision, despite the fact that the officer had no duty to make such a report).
9
M s. Casey also spoke to the FBI about the irregularities in the D istrict’s
Head Start program sometime in M ay 2003. See Appellants’ App. at 146 [111:11-
111:18]. But M s. Casey has failed to meet her burden as the party opposing
summary judgment to point us to evidence that this interaction took place prior to
the adverse employment actions against her on April 10 or M ay 8, such that it
could give rise to liability on the part of defendants.
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The statements made to the N ew M exico A ttorney General, however, are
another kettle of fish. In the first place, M s. Casey was not seeking to fulfill her
responsibility of advising the B oard when she w ent to the A ttorney General’s
office. Just the opposite: she had lost faith that the Board would listen to her
advice so she took her grievance elsewhere. Of course, M s. Casey also took her
complaints about the Head Start program to outside authorities. But, very much
unlike the administration of the Head Start program that the Board committed to
her care and pursuant to which she had independent responsibilities to the federal
government, we have no evidence in the summary judgment record before us
suggesting that the Board or any other legal authority ever assigned M s. Casey
responsibility for the Board’s meeting practices. Rather, the evidence before us
suggests that the Board members alone were responsible for making certain their
meetings complied with New M exico law at the time. 10 Accordingly, we conclude
that M s. Casey’s conduct fell sufficiently outside the scope of her office to
survive even the force of the Supreme Court’s decision in Garcetti. 11
10
See Office of the Attorney General, State of New M exico, Op. No. 90-
26, 1990 W L 509596, at *1 (Dec. 20, 1990) (noting that based on the statute in
effect until April 4, 2003, local school boards had the sole authority to “adopt
regulations pertaining to the administration of all powers or duties of the board,”
including matters related to the manner in w hich board meetings were conducted).
11
Our decision on this score naturally concerns only the summary
judgment record before us. Defendants remain free to try to establish at trial that
it was within the scope of M s. Casey’s office to file her complaint with the New
M exico Attorney General. We express no opinion, one way or the other, on their
(continued...)
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The question still remains w hether, at Pickering’s second prong, the
defendants have amassed evidence that M s. Casey’s activities w ere sufficiently
disruptive to eliminate the First Amendment’s protection of her speech. W hile
there is no easy formula for “weighing” an employee’s First Amendment speech
against an employer’s interest in an efficient and disciplined work environment,
see supra note 2, one of our recent cases, Weaver v. Chavez, 458 F.3d 1096 (10th
Cir. 2006), provides a useful yardstick for comparison. There we held that a city
attorney’s pattern of making complaints about alleged patronage hires, going so
far as contacting a prospective attorney’s prior employer to inquire as to his
qualifications, were not protected by the First Amendment because they were
disruptive to the morale of the office, as well as to the proper functioning of the
hiring process. See id. at 1103. By contrast, we have no record evidence
suggesting that M s. Casey’s statement to the Attorney General’s office threatened
any of the w ork of her office, the morale of the Board, or even the B oard’s
substantive decisions; instead, it sought only compliance with a sunshine law
requiring notice and opportunity for public comment.
Even if M s. Casey had a protected First A mendment right in speaking with
the Attorney General’s office, defendants suggest it is causally beside the point.
As they describe it, the Board acted to demote her and discontinue her
11
(...continued)
ability to do so.
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employment prior to becoming aware of any conversation between M s. Casey and
the New M exico Attorney General’s office. It is undisputed, however, that on
M arch 25, 2003 – well before M s. Casey’s demotion on April 10, 2003 – the
Attorney General’s office wrote to M r. Adams, the Board President, outlining the
particulars of M s. Casey’s complaint, enclosing a copy of the complaint, and
requesting a response. Defendants respond that they did not receive the letter
until A pril 11, 2003, a single day after M s. Casey’s April 10 demotion. See
Appellants’ App. at 87. But defendants do not explain why it took so long for
them to receive the letter and thus leave open the possibility that a jury might not
credit their claim. In any event, while it is clear M s. Casey was demoted in April,
the summary judgment record is muddled on the issue whether the Board decided
not to reappoint M s. Casey on April 10 or on M ay 8. See supra pp. 5-6.
Accordingly, at least based on the facts in the record now before us, a jury could
conclude that M s. Casey’s complaint to the New M exico Attorney General caused
the Board to pursue at least one of the adverse employment actions taken against
her.
Finding that M s. Casey’s right to be free from retaliatory employment
action based on her protected First Amendment activities was potentially violated,
we must still ask whether the right M s. Casey asserts w as clearly established in
law such that it put defendants on notice of the impropriety of their alleged
retaliation. See Medina, 252 F.3d at 1128; supra p. 7 (discussing the qualified
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immunity doctrine). This we have little difficulty in doing. It has long been
established law in this circuit that when a public employee speaks as a citizen on
matters of public concern to outside entities despite the absence of any job-related
reason to do so, the employer may not take retaliatory action. See Paradis v.
M ontrose M em’l Hosp., 157 F.3d 815, 818-19 (10th Cir. 1998) (holding that the
law in this area has been clearly established at least since our 1990 decision in
Schalk); see also Considine, 910 F.2d at 700 (establishing, as of 1990, that where
an employee communicates “his concerns directly to persons outside the normal
chain of command” and the employee’s job does not involve doing so, the speech
is protected by the First Amendment). 12
***
The advice M s. Casey directed to the Board, as her supervisor, is no longer
viable as a basis for a First Amendment retaliation claim after Garcetti. M s.
Casey’s indirect report to federal Head Start officials likewise implicated
12
The district court denied summary judgment on M s. Casey’s First
Amendment retaliation claim without differentiating among the various
defendants. However, one wrinkle makes that course potentially problematic.
M s. Casey sues not just individuals but also the District itself. In order to state a
claim against a government entity under Section 1983, however, a plaintiff must
demonstrate the existence of a policy or custom precipitating the plaintiff’s
injury. See Bd. of County Comm’rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 403-04 (1997)
(citing M onell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978)).
Because the district court apparently has not yet considered whether M s. Casey’s
complaint satisfies this requirement with respect to her claim against the District
and the issue was not briefed before this Court, we decline to decide the issue at
this time, and express no views on the matter, but suggest attention to it on
remand.
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responsibilities she held by virtue of her administration of a federally funded
program and thus cannot supply the basis for a First Amendment claim. But we
find different in character M s. Casey’s statements to the New M exico Attorney
General regarding alleged violations of the Open M eetings Act, violations that
she had no apparent duty to cure or report and which were not subject to her
control. W e hold that, even after Garcetti, a claim based on these statements
remains legally viable, and we remand the matter for further proceedings
consistent w ith this opinion. SO ORDERED.
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