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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

No. 14-7113 September Term, 2015

 FILED ON: JANUARY 13, 2016

ALFRED M. WINDER,

APPELLANT

v.

LOUIS ERSTE, INDIVIDUALLY, AND AS CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF THE DIVISION OF 

TRANSPORTATION, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:03-cv-02623)

 Before: ROGERS, TATEL, and SRINIVASAN, Circuit Judges.

J U D G M E N T

This appeal from the order of the United States District Court for the District of 

Columbia was presented to the court and briefed and argued by counsel. The court has accorded 

the issues full consideration and has determined that they do not warrant a published opinion. See

D.C. Cir. R. 36(d). It is

ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that the judgment of the District Court be affirmed.

Appellant Alfred Winder served as the General Manager of the District of Columbia 

Public School’s (DCPS) Transportation Division from August 1999 until April 3, 2003, when 

DCPS’s Chief Operating Officer, Louis Erste, fired him. Winder subsequently filed this suit

against the District, Erste, and others. Relevant here, he alleged that the District violated the D.C.

Whistleblower Protection Act, D.C. Code §§ 1-615.51 et seq. (2001), that the District and Erste

breached his employment contract, and that the two also violated his Fifth Amendment due 

process rights. The district court granted summary judgment in the defendants’ favor on each of 

these claims. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.

Winder first contends that he was fired in response to several disclosures he made about 

the District’s efforts to comply with court orders in Petties v. District of Columbia, No. 95-148 

(D.D.C. closed Dec. 19, 2012), a class action lawsuit related to the District’s failure to provide 

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adequate transportation for special education students. Although Winder asserted in the district 

court that he made countless disclosures over a number of years that ultimately led to his firing, 

on appeal he takes issue with the court’s disposition of only three of them—namely, his 

purported disclosures: (1) to Erste and others that Erste “diverted” $1.2 million from the 

transportation budget to programs that primarily served non-special education students; (2) to a 

D.C. City Council committee that Erste was to blame for a two-day “sick out,” during which 

approximately forty percent of the district’s bus drivers did not show up to work, because Erste 

discontinued a long-standing practice of paying drivers for accrued leave at the end of each 

calendar year; and (3) to Erste and the Inspector General’s Office that Erste and DCPS’s 

Operating Officer, Kennedy Khabo, filed false affidavits in the Petties case. Winder’s

characterizations of his disclosures, however, are not borne out by the record, and his brief fails

to point to sufficient evidence from which “a reasonable juror with knowledge of the essential 

facts known to and readily ascertainable by the employee” could conclude that these disclosures 

evidenced an “objectively serious governmental act of gross mismanagement, gross misuse or 

waste of public funds, abuse of authority, a material violation of local or federal law, or a 

substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.” Coleman v. District of Columbia, 

794 F.3d 49, 58 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks omitted); see D.C. Code § 1-

615.52(a)(6); Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A) (“The appellant’s brief must contain . . . citations to the 

authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies . . . .”).

With respect to the first, for instance, we agree with the district court that “Erste’s 

allocation of budgetary priorities within DCPS cannot reasonably be considered evidence of 

‘gross mismanagement.’” Winder v. Erste, 905 F. Supp. 2d 19, 36 (D.D.C. 2012). It appears that 

Winder merely disagreed with Erste about the amount of money that should be spent on 

transportation, and disclosures to that effect are not protected. See Zirkle v. District of Columbia, 

830 A.2d 1250, 1260 (D.C. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted) (“A purely subjective 

perspective of an employee is not sufficient even if shared by other employees. The WPA is not a 

weapon in arguments over policy or a shield for insubordinate conduct.”). Winder, for his part,

offers little more than conclusory assertions that a jury could find he had a reasonable basis to 

believe the reallocation violated the Petties orders. But he does not point to any evidence that the 

District was required to spend the $1.2 million on transportation, that the money was spent on 

anything improper, or that a lack of funds was the reason for the District’s inability to comply 

with the Petties orders. Indeed, it seems money was not the problem. See Appellees’ Br. 29 

(citing DCPS Schedule of the Division of Transportation Budgets, Expenditures & Variances, 

FY 1999 through FY 2003, and Winder Dep. 36:20–22, Aug. 3, 2005) (explaining that the 

District spent $12 million more than was budgeted for transportation, which amounted to over

$10,000 per special education student). For these reasons, Winder has also failed to show that he 

disclosed evidence of a gross misuse of public funds. See District of Columbia v. Poindexter, 104 

A.3d 848, 857 (D.C. 2014) (“Gross waste of public funds is a more than debatable expenditure 

that is significantly out of proportion to the benefit reasonably expected to accrue to the 

government.”).

With respect to his second alleged disclosure—i.e., that Erste was to blame for a two-day

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“sick out” in January 2003—Winder has failed to put forth sufficient evidence from which a 

reasonable juror could infer that he disclosed evidence of gross mismanagement or other 

government wrongdoing. Although the evidence suggests he told a D.C. City Council committee

that Erste was responsible for the “sick out” because he abruptly decided to stop paying drivers 

for accrued vacation leave, he could not have reasonably believed that such information alone 

was evidence of “gross mismanagement.” As the District explains in its brief, the District had no 

obligation to pay drivers for accrued leave. And although the policy change might have been illadvised, the change was not such a “serious error[] . . . that a conclusion the agency erred is not 

debatable among reasonable people.” Wilburn v. District of Columbia, 957 A.2d 921, 925 (D.C. 

2008). 

Winder’s brief can also arguably be read to suggest that he disclosed to the City Council 

committee that Erste failed or refused to take any action to prevent a work stoppage, despite

Winder having repeatedly warned him that the change in policy would lead to labor problems. If 

true, such disclosure may have warranted protection under the Act. The District was, after all,

under a court order to improve driver attendance, and a high-level official’s failure to take any 

action to avert a “sick out” or to ensure the District’s continued ability to provide adequate 

transportation in the event of a “sick out” could qualify as evidence of an objectively serious 

error. Yet even assuming Winder’s brief can be read to make this argument, it fails to identify

evidence to support a finding that he disclosed this information to the City Council committee.

Finally, although Winder told Erste and the Inspector General’s Office that Erste and 

Khabo filed false and misleading affidavits in connection with the Petties litigation, the 

statements Winder says were false and misleading are so subjective that they almost defy proof 

of having been false, and he could not have reasonably believed he was disclosing evidence of a 

violation of the law or other government misconduct. To take just one example, he claims Erste 

falsely averred that “improving the transportation system ha[d] become the top priority of the 

agency, and [that Erste was] committed to working hands-on with others at DCPS and other 

relevant agencies to meet that goal.” Winder Decl. ¶ 41 (2013) (internal quotation marks 

omitted). Although Winder may have genuinely and fervently believed this statement was untrue, 

the Act is not intended to protect disclosures about mere differences of opinion. See Zirkle, 830 

A.2d at 1260. Because he offers nothing from which a reasonable jury could conclude that he had 

a reasonable basis to believe he was disclosing the filing of false affidavits, this aspect of his 

whistleblower claim fails as well.

One final note on Winder’s whistleblower claims is in order. In the background section of 

his brief, Winder mentions a meeting at which Erste purportedly asked him to sign a false 

declaration in connection with the Petties case and Winder refused. See Appellant’s Br. 12. Later,

in the argument section, Winder makes a cursory suggestion that Erste also violated the DCWPA by retaliating against him for refusing to comply with an illegal order. See id. at 18, 33. 

The DC-WPA would certainly protect an employee against such behavior. See D.C. Code § 1-

615.53(a) (“A supervisor shall not take, or threaten to take, a prohibited personnel action or 

otherwise retaliate against an employee . . . because of an employee’s refusal to comply with an 

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illegal order.”). Winder’s cursory treatment of this point, however, is insufficient to raise it on 

appeal, see Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless v. Barry, 107 F.3d 32, 39 (D.C. Cir. 

1997), and, in any event, Winder has failed to direct the court to any evidence that Erste knew he 

was asking Winder to lie in a declaration.

Turning to Winder’s breach of contract claim, he argues he had a one-year employment 

contract beginning July 22, 2002, and that the District and Erste breached it when they fired him

roughly four months shy of its expiration date. The district court found that Winder did not have 

an enforceable contract because under municipal regulations pertaining to procurement and 

negotiated service contracts, Erste had no authority to execute the contract, and it is well 

established that “a contracting official cannot obligate the District to a contract in excess of his or 

her actual authority.” Winder v. Erste, 60 F. Supp. 3d 43, 48 (D.D.C. 2014) (quoting District of 

Columbia v. Greene, 806 A.2d 216, 222 (D.C. 2002)). On appeal, Winder contends that those 

regulations are irrelevant because he was appointed under the Career Service provisions. If 

Winder was, however, part of the Career Service, he must have been a temporary appointee, see

D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 6, § 899.1 (2002) (defining a temporary appointment as “[a]n appointment 

with a specific time limitation of one (1) year or less”), and temporary appointees may be 

“separated without notice prior to the expiration date of the appointment,” id. § 826.5. Erste thus 

lacked the authority under the Career Service provisions to bind the District to a one-year term 

contract, and Winder could be fired at will.

Last, Winder contends that Erste and the District violated his due process rights by firing

him without a hearing. As the preceding analysis shows, Winder did not have a protected

property interest in his contract. See Orange v. District of Columbia, 59 F.3d 1267, 1274 (D.C. 

Cir. 1995). Yet even if that were not so, his due process claims would still fail. Erste is entitled to 

qualified immunity because his actions in firing Winder without a hearing did not violate “clearly 

established . . . rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” See Pearson v. 

Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009). In particular, Winder’s right to continued employment for 

the full year was far from clear—the vacancy notice for Winder’s position indicated that he 

would serve at will; Erste had asked DCPS’s General Counsel and its Human Resources Office 

what steps were necessary to fire Winder and both indicated he could be fired at will; and, as the 

past twelve years of litigation have demonstrated, Winder’s employment status was difficult to 

discern. Erste is therefore shielded from liability. See id. (“The protection of qualified immunity

applies regardless of whether the government official’s error is a mistake of law, a mistake of 

fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). 

Winder has, moreover, failed to show that the District could be held liable for any 

conceivable due process violation. Although he contends that Erste was a final policymaker 

whose decisions could subject the District to liability under Monell v. Department of Social 

Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), he has failed to show that Erste had authority to set employment 

policy for the District. See Singletary v. District of Columbia, 766 F.3d 66, 73 (D.C. Cir. 2014).

Pursuant to D.C. Circuit Rule 36, this disposition will not be published. The Clerk is 

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directed to withhold issuance of the mandate herein until seven days after resolution of any 

timely petition for rehearing or petition for rehearing en banc. See Fed. R. App. P. 41(b); D.C. 

Cir. Rule 41.

Per Curiam

FOR THE COURT:

Mark J. Langer, Clerk

BY: /s/

 Ken Meadows

Deputy Clerk

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