melissa rushing in this whistleblowing in freedom of speech case rushing versus mississippi department of child protection services and it took three minutes of the outset to highlight three quotes that i think are important in the case the st is from a newspaper article the quote is high turner of a rates within hancock county in d c p s are contributing factor to the count to the county's high foster care this is quoted in our reply of page twenty one dollars so this is from a newspaper article it's a local elected official talking about the findings of a peer investigation that's the legislative committee the title of the article is another hancock you court official resigns the th and six months in so that the background for this article is that there had been just years and years of litigation in mississippi about competency at c p s and the specific issue of high turnover among social workers and the lack of a sufficient social workers to do the work so you know in a typical case where there's a personnel issue it might not be of public concern but when you're dealing with a specific case this specific agency the specific context what might normally be a minor personal issue becomes a matter of public concern you have newspaper articles written when someone when when you know a functionary retires or resigns this is the nd issue the nd quote i want to highlight is a quote from stepped deposition in the quote is my purpose was to have the best c p s workers here in this county to do what was in the best interest of the children and sought the record at that's on the record at page five a one youth court supervision is the st line of defense against an incompetent c p s that's why the judge opposed the promotion of social work supervisor corey to doall who later committed fraud against c p s and then was fired for criminally neglecting her own children that's why the judge kicked the head social worker dana spears out of the county that's why the judge blasted and pam cross his words that's why the judge that the record where in the email she says she was blasted at four hundred and twenty eight in the record where they say she wasn't criticized under oath in iraq to a response at six hundred and seventy eight so this is the reason the judge relied on rushing to communications with that judge are themselves protected speech yes when there are a number of communications that miss rushing had with the judge and with the guardian ad litum with the intention of informing the court what was happening and it's our position in the argument below that these conversations with the judge telling the judge what was was happening at him seat at c p s that these are protected speech but it is just informing the court and not the broader public why isn't that part of her duties as as an employee who would interact quite a bit with at or so her duties in interacting with the court involve informing the court about cases talking to the court about specific situations with children but her duties don't involve talking to the court about  the disagreements among her coworkers or fraud committed by a coworker that something management is supposed to be doing and they worked well enough literally our case was enough to be listed in the job description i mean let's say someone in a prosecutor's office goes to a judge and says i think my column i'm really concerned i think my colleagues are concealing evidence you'd say that speaking as a citizen and not as as a prosecutor when i did it if they did they were out of the newspaper speaking as as a citizen i get that but but in going to a judge who you appear in front of you think why why is that why isn't that part of your duties so there is there's a case from the i don't remember the name of it but there is a case in which up and officer is an informant to the f b i and that was not part of his duties working in that sheriff's office sorry i'm going to look that case up but there are there's more than one case involving law enforcement and in in one case where someone was a confidential informant to the f b i they were i think it was will it but i don't to i'm not i'm not certain off the cuff but i want to turn to your hypothetical involving the prosecutor so i can answer your question so the prosecutor there is a case anderson involving a law clerk which i think is similar to your hypothetical involving the prosecutor and in andersen there is actually two versions of andersen in the st version i think it was on the and in an andersen the court concluded that just because you reported misconduct by your supervisor in that case it was a judge to the ethics commission and you were duty bound as an attorney to do that that doesn't mean it was part of your ordinary job responsibilities and found that it wasn't part of his ordinary job responsibilities at that stage later though evidence showed that among the other things that he was passed as part of his job responsibilities one of them was to comply with the judicial canons of ethics and that canon of ethics which and again the key point here is not that he was bound by that as an attorney but that he agreed to be bound by that that was one of his listed job listed job duties and here actually the testimony from the commissioner is that miss rushing job was not to report these things to the court and that's why she was getting in trouble for it and i think you'll find in their brief that the appellant's be a pelleas i'm sorry m d c p s takes the position that it was not part of her job to be talking to the court about this and that's why they could get her in trouble for it because she was doing what she wasn't supposed to be doing as part of her job if the rd quote i wanted to to mention here is a quote from the two managers and in these emails between the two managers bryant and cross the quote is she will not have information to share with the court close quote and the point there was they were discussing why they wanted to remove her from the county why they wanted to take away supervisory job responsibilities they wanted to keep her from giving information to the court and so i think that the the district court here found there wasn't sufficient evidence of motive i think that's clearly incorrect the evidence here i think if you look every time they bring up anything this rushing does wrong they're also bringing up her communications with the court so it's i think a big court actually admitted this and saying that it's clear from the e mails and text messages they thought miss rushing was sharing too much information with the court and again i think you know if miss rushing was an auditor and her job was to ferret out misconduct or if she was a you know a p r person or if she was the manager if she was a regional director maybe these conversations would be part of her job because she needs to keep the court informed but what happened is the court didn't feel that she was fit that she was getting good information from the people who were supposed to be giving it to her so she was going to someone based rushing who clearly that was not part of her job and trying to get this information and it's for a public purpose it's clearly for a public purpose so that's that that's the three quotes i wanted to just cover at the beginning or almost almost towards the end you want half way through let me just to clarify what what are the precise communications and i have there's basically three incidents what are the it is a little confusing because there's three incidences of retaliation that we address but then there's the broader context of these communications which are going on and the three incidences of retaliation the st one is  the the counseling that was issued and the written documentation says that that was specifically because she talked to the guardian ad litum about the about the voucher being about her issues that's number one i've got that one what's what's the next protected speech in your view so there's also the call to action letter which i referred to in my brief and they're the disagreement is about whether there is sufficient evidence that the call to action letter was recognized as being sent by miss russian and again she testified she wrote her name on the envelope and the letter was discussed at the very same time as her transfer and so that when it's kind of most closely related to the transfer from her river to hancock i mean can you can you pinpoint the evidence in the record that that  knew that she authored that letter before the transfer so i think there's i think there's two things to look at that are particularly persuasive in that regard the st is that the same meeting where they talk about this letter when this letter st comes up is the meeting when they make that this isn't a transfer the nd point i think that connects the two is that if you look at the letter and you compare it to a and e mail that miss rushing had sent to mr bryant earlier they're almost i mean in many places they're almost word for word the same and they clearly deal with the same issues so it's reasonable for a jury to infer from that that she was able to put two and two together and that she's lying about it now i mean people rarely when they're aware that what they're doing is illegal they rarely go out and write it down in an e mail or something you have to use circumstantial evidence to prove motive and that's discussed on september th and on september th that's all that they also the day they made the decision to transfer which was communicated on october nd so within either instantaneously or within a five day period depending on how you it i wanted to get back to discussing the protected speech because i don't i don't think it is limited to just those two instances you know there were a series of conversations if you look reported that they had recommended child visitation with a father who had a pending indictment for sexual abuse and then the judge met with them and and crosswords blasted them for it in my view that's protected activity as well so that's from april and and this this prior protected activity lead up to the e mails in june where they're discussing how they want to potentially move her out of the county and they want her to not have information to share with the judge i'm trying to let me find that case that i was referring to i believe it's how all that involved  i think if you want to look at the most analogous case it's probably the south beach versus town of edna case and that's a case where the the secretary were to the school district and she's called by the media and she says yeah the superintendent is leaving and give some information about the conditions and it's a similar case because you have a backdrop of interest from the media and the public about the issue you have someone who's up as has nothing to do i think this information and you have providing the information which is alleged by the employer to be a breach of confidentiality rules so i think that's probably the closest analogue for the current case and i see my time is is up so i'd like to reserve the remaining time for rebuttal all right you have reserve four minutes for a six just before the transfer the plaintiff who was on her own called duty that night ignored a call from the hospital which reported that a thirteen year old child had been raped by a family member of the play it should have gone there immediately he had made arrangements to protect the child the player did nothing after getting a phone call and the the thirteen year old girl was released back into the very family or she had for twenty four of your brief you mention there is not a lot of paperwork surrounding this russian is discharged and you call that unusual herself and so there was no need there was not investigation because miss brown was the decision maker and she was the one to whom all the plaintiff lot there was there was just no there was no need for paperwork and this and that's why that's a very s i noticed in your in your answer you played as a defense qualified immunity you didn't you didn't move for summary judgment on the ground right and so i think you are oh sweet about this earlier but i didn't have a chance to look it up  he found it was yes your honor so i want to address just a couple of things st the the press reports and hancock county so hancock county and pro river county are directly adjacent they're run by the same regional director pam cross the region is the two counties that's the region and actually miss rushing was transferred to hancock county from pearl river me so these big connections record i didn't is it yes i want to address that so the article not in the record but the court can take judicial notice of it because this article is a public a public publicly printed and it was i don't think these people articles that can be done but anyway let me ask another question opposing counsel said that the september th a call to arms letter that there is no evidence that it was discussed in a few days later said there was where in the record can you show us it was discussed in putting aside to action letter was discussed i discussed it in my brief on reply on page twenty seven and we cited the cross affidavit at four hundred and seventy eight in the record the cross deposition transcript at five hundred and twenty nine in the record and also crosses copy of the letter itself at six hundred and twenty eight dollars and on the copy of the letter she wrote that she received it from mr bryant and in the affidavit in depositions she describes when and how she received it so that's how very clear as mr sanders noted earlier the none of the you know issues with the thirteen year old or the other performance issues that they raised were a stated reason for terminations or even in the picture they were they disclaimed those completely the nd point now want to make about those is you can see every time they bring up any performance issues with miss rushing and the e mails they're also talking about her speech with the court that's just they go hand in hand they never seem to bring up one without the other and i think that's very indicative of what's motivating them here really i mean they they can look and they can talk about these performance issues in this cross might want to use them to persuade her supervisor to do something but really they wanted to just keep her quiet and keep her from talking to the judge and that's not a lawful  factor or in trying to terminate her i don't want to let my time expire without talking about the two state law claims which are the whistleblower protection act and  the impression i'm waiting anything i know so you don't you don't leave anything all right well thank you counsel this case is submitted and you can you can be excused