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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 5, 2010 Decided March 1, 2011

No. 09-5388

MELODI NAVAB-SAFAVI,

APPELLEE

v.

JAMES K. GLASSMAN, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:08-cv-01225)

Robin M. Meriweather, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the

cause for appellants. With her on the briefs were Ronald C.

Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant

U.S. Attorney.

Richard A. Salzman argued the cause for appellee Melodi

Navab-Safavi. With him on the brief were Carolyn N. Lerner

and Douglas B. Huron.

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, GARLAND, Circuit Judge,

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SENTELLE.

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SENTELLE, Chief Judge: In July 2007, appellee Melodi

Navab-Safavi, then a contractor for the Persian News Network

of the Voice of America, appeared in a music video that

criticized the United States’ involvement in Iraq. Voice of

America, overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors,

terminated Navab-Safavi’s contract and Navab-Safavi thereafter

filed this action against the Board and several of its officials,

alleging violations of the First and Fifth Amendments. The

defendant officials moved to dismiss on several grounds,

including qualified immunity. The district court denied their

motions, and the defendant officials filed this interlocutory

appeal, contending that the district court erred in its ruling on

qualified immunity. For the reasons set out below, we conclude

that the district court did not err in denying defendants’ motions

for dismissal. We therefore affirm the district court’s order and

remand for further proceedings. 

I. Background

A. Factual Background

We note at the outset that we are reviewing the decision of

the district court on a motion to dismiss on the basis of qualified

immunity. At that stage of the proceedings, the district court

was of course required to assume the truth of all factual

allegations in the complaint. Vila v. Inter-Am. Investment Corp.,

570 F.3d 274, 278 (D.C. Cir. 2009). Like the district court, our

discussion will assume the truth of those allegations and will

reflect no conclusions upon their accuracy. 

At the time of the events under litigation, plaintiff Melodi

Navab-Safavi worked as a contractor with the Broadcasting

Board of Governors (“BBG” or “the Board”). The BBG is a

federal agency charged with overseeing all U.S. government and

government-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting

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services. The BBG oversees Voice of America (“VOA”), which

in turn oversees the Persian News Network (“PNN”), formerly

called the Persian Service. Navab-Safavi’s contract was to

provide services to the Persian Service, which produces

programs, features, and talk shows in the Farsi language. 

Navab-Safavi’s primary duties were to translate material into

Farsi for these productions and to provide “voice-over” services,

reading copy already approved by an editor. She also provided

technical support for the production of newscasts. All of NavabSafavi’s work was reviewed by a VOA editor or producer. 

According to a supervisor, she was “not a journalist.” She did

not create, but rather translated news and feature stories.

Although she narrarated some “History Channel” segments, she

never appeared on air as a VOA employee, and at her request the

VOA did not identify her by name on the air. Her only

appearance on a VOA telecast was as a guest performer with her

band Abjeez, a pop band that produces songs and music videos.

In early July 2007, Abjeez produced a music video called

DemoKracy. The video, which was before the district court by

incorporation in the pleadings, protests the United States’

involvement in Iraq and depicts casualties of the war, including

images of coffins of United States soldiers and of “brutal

injuries and deaths suffered by Iraq’s civilian population during

the war,” among them wounded children. The format of the

video portrays a television newsroom and two reporters, one of

whom is in the newsroom and one of whom is reporting from

the field. Navab-Safavi appears in the video as one of the

reporters. The video was posted on www.youtube.com and

other publicly available internet domains. It was not

commercially distributed or sold. VOA resources were not

involved in making the video and Navab-Safavi worked on the

video only during non-work hours. Appellee admits in her

complaint that the video attracted the attention of public

officials, including at least two United States Senators. 

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On July 18, 2007, defendant Mary Poggioli, an official

employed by the BBG’s Labor Relations Office, met with

Navab-Safavi’s husband, Saman Arbabi, who helped to produce

the DemoKracy video and was employed by the BBG. Poggioli

told Arbabi that the BBG had convened to discuss the video and

judged it to be anti-American. She said that the BBG thus saw

Arbabi as a liability and she pressured him to resign. 

The next day, on July 19, 2007, the BBG terminated NavabSafavi’s contract. After learning of her contract termination,

Navab-Safavi went to her office to pack her things, at which

point Sheila Gandji, Director of the PNN, told Navab-Safavi, “If

this had happened in another service, like the Mandarin service,

nothing would have happened. But since you are Iranian,

working at the Persian service during these sensitive political

times with Iran, this has become a disproportionate problem for

you.” After Navab-Savabi’s contract was terminated,

defendants hired other contractors to provide the same services

that Navab-Safavi had previously performed for the BBG.

On July 17, 2008, Navab-Safavi filed this lawsuit in the

United States District Court for the District of Columbia against

the BBG and several individuals who were officials at the BBG

at the time of her termination, alleging a violation of her First

Amendment free speech and Fifth Amendment equal protection

rights. All individual defendants moved to dismiss under

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) on the ground that they

were qualifiedly immune from suit, among other grounds. The

district court denied the motion in a memorandum opinion,

holding that the defendants had not established that they were

entitled to qualified immunity. Navab-Safavi v. Broad. Bd. of

Governors, 650 F. Supp. 2d 40, 53-65 (D.D.C. 2009). 

Defendants filed this interlocutory appeal, arguing that the

district court erred in denying the motion to dismiss based on

qualified immunity. 

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B. Legal Background

Appellant’s motion for dismissal is rooted in the wellestablished doctrine of qualified immunity. This doctrine

protects “government officials performing discretionary

functions” from civil consequences “insofar as their conduct

does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional

rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). We note at the

outset that we have jurisdiction to review this interlocutory

appeal on the issue of qualified immunity. Ordinarily, courts of

appeals, such as this one, have jurisdiction only over appeals

from “final decisions” of the district courts. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. 

However, there is a small class of interlocutory decisions which

carry sufficient finality to afford jurisdiction over an

interlocutory appeal. That exception to the usual finality rule

includes those cases “which finally determine claims of right

separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action,

too important to be denied review and too independent of the

cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred

until the whole case is adjudicated.” Cohen v. Beneficial Indus.

Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546 (1949). Qualified immunity

provides “an entitlement not to be forced to litigate the

consequences of official conduct.” Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S.

511, 527 (1985). Therefore, a denial of a motion for dismissal

on that ground constitutes a final decision that, if in error,

invades the defendant’s “entitlement not to stand trial or face the

other burdens of litigation.” Id. at 525, 530. Obviously, such a

breach of entitlement could not be effectively reviewed after

final judgment. Id. at 527. 

While appellants contended in the district court and

continue to contend before us that the allegations of the

complaint do not set forth a violation of appellee’s First

Amendment rights, they further contend that even if the

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complaint otherwise states a claim for relief, the appellants are

entitled to qualified immunity. Before we determine the

viability of the qualified immunity defense, we first note that our

interlocutory jurisdiction extends to the question of the

sufficiency of the allegations of the complaint as a necessary

antecedent to the qualified immunity question. See id. at 529-30

& n.10. We will first review the legal sufficiency of the

allegations of violations of appellee’s First Amendment rights,

after which we will proceed to determine directly the qualified

immunity question. We will then address her equal protection

claim under the Fifth Amendment.

II. The First Amendment Claim

Even at the motion stage, this question is not an easy one. 

It is true that individuals do not “relinquish the First Amendment

rights they would otherwise enjoy as citizens” when they accept

employment with the government. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ.,

391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968). It would also seem fairly evident that

if the government took retaliatory action against a private citizen

for the production of a video similar to the one before the court,

that person’s First Amendment rights would be violated. 

However, “the State has interests as an employer in regulating

the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those

it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the

citizenry in general.” Id. Therefore, in cases, such as the

present one, involving government restrictions on the free

speech rights of its employees (here, contractor), we apply a

balancing process dictated by the Supreme Court in Pickering v.

Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968). See also Bd. of Cty.

Comm’rs v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668, 673 (1996) (extending

Pickering’s applicability to include government contractors as

well as employees “adjusted to weigh the government’s interest

as contractor rather than employer”). 

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We summarized the Pickering balancing process in

O’Donnell v. Barry, 148 F.3d 1126 (D.C. Cir. 1998), as follows:

A public official seeking to make out a claim of retaliation

in violation of her First Amendment rights must meet a

four-factor test. First, the public employee must have been

speaking on a matter of public concern. If the speech is not

of public concern, it is unnecessary to scrutinize the basis

for the adverse action absent the most unusual

circumstances. Second, the court must consider whether

the governmental interest in promoting the efficiency of the

public services it performs through its employees without

disruption, outweighs the employee’s interest, as a citizen,

in commenting upon matters of public concern, and the

interest of potential audiences in hearing what the employee

has to say. Third, the employee must show that her speech

was a substantial or motivating factor in prompting the

retaliatory or punitive act of which she complains. And

finally, the employer should have an opportunity to show

by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have

reached the same decision even in the absence of the

protected conduct. 

Id. at 1133 (quotations and citations omitted).

The first two of the four questions set forth above are

questions of law for the court to resolve. Id. No one disputes

that the appellee’s video addresses a matter of public concern. 

Likewise, it is undisputed that her participation was a but-for

cause of the BBG’s decision to terminate her contract. 

However, appellants continue to contend, as they did in the

district court, that the Board’s interest in promoting the

efficiency of its provision of public services, and more

specifically, in providing the level and sort of service dictated by

statute, outweighs appellee’s interest in speaking through the

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video and the public’s interest in hearing that speech. 

In support of this weighty interest, appellants point to 22

U.S.C. §§ 1464a and 6202, which together set forth the duties

and responsibilities of the Board and the VOA. In its

authorization of the BBG, Congress made findings that the

“long-term interests of the United States are served by

communicating directly with the peoples of the world by

television. To be effective, the Broadcasting Board of

Governors must win the attention and respect of viewers.” 22

U.S.C. § 1464a(b). In furtherance of the interests recognized in

those legislative findings, Congress set forth principles to

govern television broadcasts presented by Board-governed

entities. These principles dictate that, inter alia, the VOA “will

serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of

news,” 22 U.S.C. § 6202(c)(1); that its “news will be accurate,

objective, and comprehensive,” id.; and that it will “present the

policies of the United States clearly and effectively” and provide

“responsible discussions and opinion on these policies,” §

6202(c)(3). See also 22 U.S.C. § 1464a(b)(1) (requiring the

BBG to follow the principles that it will “serve as a consistently

reliable and authoritative source of news” and produce news that

is “accurate and objective”). Furthermore, all international

broadcasting that VOA and the BBG produce must be

“consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the

United States,” 22 U.S.C. § 6202(a)(1), and “in accordance with

the highest professional standards of broadcast journalism,” 22

U.S.C. § 6202(a)(5). 

Briefly put, appellants maintain that Navab-Safavi’s

appearance in the DemoKracy music video had the potential to

damage the government’s strong interest in presenting through

an organ with the highest journalistic credibility a clear message

of United States policy. By participating in the DemoKracy

video, Navab-Safavi took a public position on one of the

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subjects of VOA’s broadcasting, the United States’ involvement

in Iraq. She thereby raised two potential threats to VOA’s

journalistic credibility: first, that she would cause VOA to

produce biased work and second, that, even if she did not, the

public could perceive VOA’s broadcasting to be biased because

of her editorial role in the agency. If VOA’s credibility were

compromised in this way, appellants argue, this could hinder the

BBG’s ability to advance foreign policy. Highlighting that

foreign policy is an area in which the government has

traditionally received special deference, appellants conclude that

they were justified in terminating Navab-Safavi’s contract,

despite her interest in making the video and the public’s interest

in viewing it.

It is clear by now that under Pickering, its precedents and

progeny, the district court correctly ruled that appellee’s

allegations do state a claim for relief. Continuing to take the

allegations of the complaint in the light most favorable to the

plaintiff, it is indisputable that she spoke on a matter of public

concern and received retaliatory consequence for that exercise

of her First Amendment rights. It is further inarguable that the

government has presented a weighty interest in support of its

authority to take action against that exercise. It is our duty, then,

to determine whether the district court erred in holding that

plaintiff had stated a claim for relief, and finally, to determine

whether the court erred in not affording the protection of

qualified immunity to the appellants against the litigation of

such claim. We hold that at least at the pleading stage, the

district court correctly ruled that the complaint survived the

motion. 

Taking the allegations of plaintiff’s complaint to be true and

construing them in the light most favorable to her, as the district

court and this court are required to do, her interest in her First

Amendment rights was weighed against little government

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interest in the protection of its journalistic integrity or reputation

for such integrity in the Pickering balance. Construing the

complaint in the light most favorable to appellee, she exercised

no editorial judgment, did not appear on camera, and never

purported to speak on behalf of the Board or the United States. 

It is not likely that the Board would argue that, for example, a

janitor or messenger could be discharged for making an antiAmerican video. In contrast, it might well be that an on-the-air

editorialist for VOA or a top executive could be discharged for

the same conduct. On the allegations of the complaint, the

district court did not err in concluding that appellee fell on the

side nearer the role of the janitor than the editorialist or the

executive. Will this same view prevail after full discovery and

perhaps augmentation by affidavits at the summary judgment

stage, or at trial? That remains to be seen. What must be

determined now is whether the district court correctly kept the

appellants in the litigation until that determination.

As is apparent in the very terminology employed, qualified

immunity is not absolute. It protects government officials in

civil litigation arising from their official conduct “insofar as

their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or

constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have

known.” Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818. In other words, the

immunity protects public officials from civil consequences for

their official acts unless the contours of the constitutional right

that they are accused of violating are “sufficiently clear that a

reasonable official would understand that what he is doing

violates that right.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640

(1987). Appellants argue that appellee has not alleged the

violation of such a clearly established right. As they put it,

“neither Mrs. Navab-Safavi nor the District Court has identified

a single case in which a Court has held that a contractor’s or

employee’s interests in criticizing U.S. foreign policy outweigh

the broadcaster’s interest in protecting its reputation for

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impartial and credible journalism, and maintaining the trust of

its audience.” While undoubtedly true, that is not sufficient. 

Even though “in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness

[of the officer’s conduct] must be apparent,” id., there is no need

that “the very action in question [have] previously been held

unlawful,” Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 615 (1999). It cannot

be gainsaid that a person expressing her viewpoint is exercising

an established constitutional right. While in this case it may

ultimately be established that the governmental interest involved

was sufficient to outweigh that right and allow the officials to

take action, it is not sufficiently established at this stage to have

required the district court to uphold the assertion of qualified

immunity and dismiss the action. 

 

Having established that the complaint set forth a violation

of right requiring a Pickering balancing against the appellants’

assertion of qualified immunity, we now face a question similar

to that determined by the Fifth Circuit in Kinney v. Weaver, 367

F.3d 337 (5th Cir. 2004): That is, given the function of qualified

immunity in protecting government officials against not only

civil liability, but the burden of litigation, did its assertion by the

appellants require the district court to terminate the litigation at

the motion stage without further resolution of the factual

questions underlying the determination of the Pickering

balance? Upon review of the record, we conclude as did the

district court that it is not possible to determine at this stage as

a matter of law that Navab-Safavi has not alleged a violation of

clearly established law. All the district court had before it and

all we have of record is the Board’s assertion that its interest in

performing its governmental functions and carrying out its

statutory mandates was sufficiently implicated by plaintiff’s

conduct to warrant the protection of qualified immunity. As

another of our fellow circuits has held, “qualified immunity

cannot be based on a ‘simple assertion by [appellants] without

supporting evidence’ of the adverse effect of the speech on [the

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governmental function].” Shockency v. Ramsey Cnty., 493 F.3d 

941, 949-50 (8th Cir. 2007) (quoting with modification

Grantham v. Trickey, 21 F.3d 289, 295 n.4 (8th Cir. 1994)). We

agree. We face the same circumstance here. Granted, the

Eighth Circuit in Shockency was reviewing a summary judgment

decision, while we review a 12(b)(6) ruling. Ordinarily,

evidentiary demands do not become evident until the summary

judgment stage. However, where the interests underlying the

Pickering balancing are as fact-dependent as those in this case,

the district court appeared to correctly determine that this

decision could not be made at the 12(b)(6) stage and should

properly await some evidentiary development. We do not

suggest that the determination can never be made on

allegations—the relative weight of governmental interest and

established constitutional rights on other facts may often be

quite evident from the pleadings—but only that it cannot be

done on the record before the court in this case.

Neither the district court nor this court has evidence in the

record that appellee’s conduct interfered with the performance

of the governmental function, including the carrying out of the

statutory mandates. We have only allegations, and the

allegations of the parties are in conflict. At summary judgment

or at trial, these conflicts may be resolved on an evidentiary

record. At the stage of the motion to dismiss, they cannot. We

must take the allegations in the light most favorable to the

plaintiff. She stated a claim for violation of her First

Amendment rights. The Board asserts its qualified immunity,

but we are unable to determine without an evidentiary record

whether any act it committed in defense of those functions

constituted a violation of clearly established rights, or even in

general terms, where the Pickering balancing tips. 

We therefore conclude that the district court did not err in

denying the motion to dismiss, and we remand the claim for

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further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

III. The Fifth Amendment Claim

As to the alleged Fifth Amendment claim, a similar analysis

applies. The sufficiency of the allegations of the complaint is

perhaps not as clear as was the case with the First Amendment

claim. It is true that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth

Amendment forbids the federal government from denying equal

protection of the laws. See, e.g., Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S.

228 (1979); Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U.S. 88 (1976). 

If the retaliatory action against appellee was based upon her

ethnicity or national origin, then she has stated a claim. The

question then becomes: Has she adequately alleged such a

claim? Arguably, she has not. She has not in precise terms

alleged that her contract would not have been terminated had she

not been Iranian. She has alleged only that one supervisor, not

alleged to be a decisionmaker, told her that had she not been “an

Iranian, working at the Persian Service during these sensitive

political times,” nothing would have happened. It is thus not

apparent that even the single supervisor was stating that her

ethnicity or national origin, as opposed to the service in which

she worked, was the basis of the termination. However, taking

the allegation in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, her

complaint is susceptible to the interpretation that her contract

was terminated “because of” her ethnicity or national origin. 

Whether this is more than a mere allegation can be tested at

further stages of the litigation when an evidentiary record will

support a definitive resolution of the open questions. 

We further note that in addition to the weakness of this

claim on the “because of” element, the complaint alleges no acts

by the individual appellants. We recall that in actions against

public officials for violation of constitutional rights, “officials

may not be held liable for the unconstitutional conduct of their

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subordinates under a theory of respondeat superior.” Ashcroft

v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1948 (2009). We suggest that on

remand, if the case is to proceed against the individual

appellants, as opposed to the Board of Governors, the district

court may wish to permit amendment to the complaint or

reconsider the individual appellants’ motions to dismiss. With

that proviso, we affirm the district court’s order denying the

motion under Rule 12(b)(6) and remand for further proceedings. 

Conclusion

For the reasons set forth above, the order of the district

court is 

Affirmed.

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