Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05111/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05111-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 6, 2010 Decided August 31, 2011

No. 08-5111

DAVID M. BOWIE,

APPELLANT

v.

CHARLES C. MADDOX, INSPECTOR GENERAL, IN HIS OFFICIAL 

AND INDIVIDUAL CAPACITIES, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:03-cv-00948)

On Petition for Rehearing

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, BROWN, Circuit Judge, 

and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

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BROWN, Circuit Judge: David M. Bowie, a former 

official of the District of Columbia Office of the Inspector 

General (“OIG”), says he was fired in retaliation for 

exercising his First Amendment rights. Bowie refused to sign 

an affidavit his employer drafted for him in response to a 

former subordinate’s employment discrimination claim; 

instead, Bowie re-wrote the affidavit in a manner critical of 

OIG’s decision to terminate the subordinate. We affirmed the 

district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of OIG on 

Bowie’s First Amendment retaliation claim, because Bowie’s

speech was “pursuant to his official duties.” Bowie v. 

Maddox, 642 F.3d 1122, 1134 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (alteration 

omitted) (quoting Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 421 

(2006)). Bowie petitioned for rehearing.

In Garcetti, the Supreme Court affirmed that “[s]o long 

as employees are speaking as citizens about matters of public 

concern, they must face only those speech restrictions that are 

necessary for their employers to operate efficiently and 

effectively.” 547 U.S. at 419. But the Court also held “that 

when public employees make statements 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.” Id.

at 421. Applying that holding to the facts, the Court 

concluded that Ceballos, a deputy district attorney “did not 

speak as a citizen by writing a memo [to his supervisors] that 

addressed the proper disposition of a pending criminal case.” 

Id. at 422. Instead, “[w]hen he went to work and performed 

the tasks he was paid to perform, Ceballos acted as a 

government employee.” Id. Therefore, his First Amendment

retaliation claim failed. 

In Bowie’s petition for rehearing, he denies that Garcetti 

bars his claim. He argues that even if the relevant speech was 

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ordered by his government employer,1

 1 Bowie argues in the alternative that his speech was not 

pursuant to official duties. This argument fails for reasons we have 

already explained:

it is protected by the 

First Amendment because it is analogous to the speech of 

Bowie’s efforts to produce an affidavit were 

undertaken at the direction of his employer and in 

his capacity as Assistant Inspector General for 

Investigations and Johnson’s superior. The first 

version of the affidavit was drafted for OIG’s 

convenience by a Deputy Attorney General as 

counsel for OIG, and it was given to Bowie for his 

signature by . . . OIG’s general counsel. Bowie 

revised the affidavit on a timetable approved by the 

general counsel, and then submitted it to her for 

submission with . . . OIG’s position statement in 

the EEOC. Bowie does not allege Defendants 

stymied any personal effort to submit his affidavit 

to the EEOC or to Johnson directly. Indeed, Bowie 

made no such effort. His affidavit, like the draft he 

refused to sign, identified him in the first paragraph 

and signature block as ‘Assistant Inspector General 

for Investigations.’ All the speech underlying 

Bowie’s First Amendment claim occurred in his 

official capacity.

Bowie, 642 F.3d at 1134. 

In his petition, Bowie points out that the EEOC has 

administrative subpoena power. Petition at 7; see 42 U.S.C. 

§ 2000e-9; 29 U.S.C. § 161. But Bowie has never alleged that the 

EEOC subpoenaed his testimony individually or that he tried to 

submit his affidavit to the EEOC as a private citizen. See Petition at 

14 (“Neither Johnson nor the EEOC ever asked Bowie directly for 

the affidavit.”). Instead, Bowie acknowledges it was OIG that, in 

response to an EEOC request addressed to OIG’s personnel 

director, “sought . . . to have Bowie sign [OIG’s] version” of the 

affidavit. Petition at 13. Because the EEOC never subpoenaed 

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private citizens who submit testimony to the EEOC. Petition 

at 8–9. The Garcetti Court did observe that “[w]hen a public 

employee speaks pursuant to employment responsibilities . . . 

there is no relevant analogue to speech by citizens who are 

not government employees.” 547 U.S. at 424 (emphasis 

added). But this statement does not mean that whenever

speech has a civilian analogue it is protected by the First 

Amendment. The Court made clear that only when public 

employees “make public statements outside the course of 

performing their official duties” do they “retain some 

possibility of First Amendment protection.” Id. at 423. Only 

then is the analogy to private speech “relevant.” Id. at 424.

Bowie’s argument to the contrary finds support in a 

Second Circuit opinion that issued the day after he filed his 

petition for rehearing. Jackler v. Byrne, No. 10-0859, 2011 

U.S. App. LEXIS 15265 (2d Cir. Jul. 22, 2011). The plaintiff 

in Jackler was a probationary police officer who, pursuant to 

instructions from a superior, filed a report documenting a 

fellow officer’s use of excessive physical force. Id. at *7. The 

chief of police and two administrative officers pressured 

Jackler to withdraw his report and file a false one. Id. at *8–9. 

When Jackler refused, he was fired. Id. at *9–10. The court

 

Bowie’s individual testimony, and Bowie never composed or 

submitted any such testimony except as instructed by his employer, 

the only speech at issue was pursuant to his official duties. “[T]he 

government as employer is free to control the content of ‘speech 

that owes its existence to a public employee’s professional 

responsibilities.’” Winder v. Erste, 566 F.3d 209, 215 (D.C. Cir. 

2009) (quoting Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421). Contra Fairley v. 

Andrews, 578 F.3d 518, 525 (7th Cir. 2009) (“Even if offering 

(adverse) testimony is a job duty, courts rather than employers are 

entitled to supervise the process. A government cannot tell its 

employees what to say in court, nor can it prevent them from 

testifying against it.” (citation omitted)).

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concluded Jackler’s refusal to “obey [his employer’s]

instructions . . . is not beyond the scope of the First 

Amendment.” Id. at *17.

The Second Circuit reasoned that Jackler’s disobedience 

was analogous to a private citizen’s lawful refusal to rescind a 

true accusation, to make a false one, and to file a false police 

report, and that Jackler’s conduct was therefore protected by 

the First Amendment. Id. at *36, 38–39. Thus, the court 

elided the question whether Jackler spoke as a citizen into its 

identification of a civilian analogue for the relevant speech. 

Because Jackler’s speech was analogous to that of a private 

citizen, the court deduced that he “was not simply doing his 

job in refusing to obey those orders.” Id. at *39 (emphasis 

added). The Second Circuit did not dispute the district court’s 

observation that Jackler “refused to withdraw or alter his 

truthful report in the belief that the proper execution of his 

duties as a police officer required no less.” Id. at *14 (quoting 

Jackler v. Byrne, 708 F. Supp. 2d 319, 325 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)). 

Indeed, the Second Circuit agreed that “a police officer has a 

duty not to substitute a falsehood for the truth.’” Id. at *37. 

Even so, the court held Jackler’s attempt to fulfill that 

professional responsibility by disobeying an order to the 

contrary was protected speech, because private citizens also 

have a duty not to file false statements. Id. at *37–38.

The Second Circuit gets Garcetti backwards. The critical 

question under Garcetti is not whether the speech at issue has 

a civilian analogue, but whether it was performed “pursuant 

to . . . official duties.” 547 U.S. at 421; cf. Winder v. Erste, 

566 F.3d 209, 215 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (“[A]lthough testimony 

before a city council might otherwise be just the sort of 

citizen speech protected by the First Amendment, the 

uncommonly close relationship between [the plaintiff’s] 

duties and his advocacy before the council precludes 

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protection.”). A test that allows a First Amendment retaliation 

claim to proceed whenever the government employee can

identify a civilian analogue for his speech is about as useful

as a mosquito net made of chicken wire: All official speech, 

viewed at a sufficient level of abstraction, has a civilian 

analogue. Certainly the district attorney’s memo in Garcetti

was analogous in some sense to private speech—for example, 

testimony or argumentation on the same subject by the 

criminal defendant it concerned. Critically, though, 

Ceballos’s memo was composed as part of his government 

job, and the Supreme Court unambiguously “reject[ed] . . . the 

notion that the First Amendment shields from discipline the 

expressions employees make pursuant to their professional 

duties.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 426. 

The Second Circuit concluded that, because the police 

department “could not, consistent with the First Amendment, 

have forced [a civilian] to withdraw his complaint,” Jackler

“was entitled to the same constitutional protection” in 

disobeying the orders of his government employer. Jackler, 

2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 15265 at *37. This begs the question. 

Under Garcetti, the rules are different for government 

employees speaking in their official capacities. An utterance 

made “pursuant to employment responsibilities” is 

unprotected even if the same utterance would be protected 

were the employee to communicate it “as a citizen.” Garcetti, 

547 U.S. at 423, 424. As all of the dissenting justices 

recognized, Garcetti “categorically” denies recovery under 

the First Amendment to plaintiffs who spoke “pursuant to . . . 

official duties.” Id. at 430 (Souter, J., dissenting); see also id.

at 446 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (“In a word, the majority says, 

‘never.’”); id. at 426 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“The proper 

answer to the question . . . is ‘Sometimes,’ not ‘Never.’”).

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Under the circumstances, it is not difficult to sympathize 

with the Second Circuit’s dubious interpretation of Garcetti. 

The police chief’s instruction to Jackler and the actions he 

ordered Jackler to take were clearly illegal. See Jackler, 2011 

U.S. App. LEXIS 15265 at *30–34. But the illegality of a 

government employer’s order does not necessarily mean the 

employee has a cause of action under the First Amendment

when he contravenes that order. See Winder, 566 F.3d at 216 

(“Some remedy, such as a properly preserved claim under the 

whistleblower protection laws, may have been available to 

[the plaintiff]. But . . . the First Amendment does not provide 

that remedy.”).

Because Bowie spoke as a government employee, the 

district court rightly granted summary judgment in favor of 

Bowie’s employer on his First Amendment retaliation claim. 

Therefore, the petition for rehearing is

Denied.

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