Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05111/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05111-0/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 June 21, 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)

James C. Cox, appointed by the court, argued the cause for 

appellant. With him on the briefs were David W. DeBruin and 

Jessie K. Liu, appointed by the court.

David M. Bowie, pro se, filed briefs for appellant.

David A. Hyden, Assistant Attorney General, Office of the 

Attorney General for the District of Columbia, argued the cause 

for appellees. With him on the brief were Peter J. Nickles, 

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Attorney General, Todd S. Kim, Solicitor General, and Donna 

M. Murasky, Deputy Solicitor General.

 

R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an 

appearance.

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

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN.

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

former official of the District of Columbia Office of the 

Inspector General (“OIG”), was fired after five years on the job, 

purportedly for poor performance. Bowie brought this suit

against the District and officers of the OIG (“Defendants”) after 

he was fired, alleging that they conspired to deter his testimony

in a subordinate’s employment discrimination trial and 

ultimately fired him in retaliation for his refusal to help sabotage 

his fellow employee. The district court entered judgment in 

favor of Defendants on Bowie’s § 1985(2) conspiracy claim, a 

related claim under § 1986 for failure to prevent the conspiracy,

and his First Amendment retaliation claim. After a trial on 

Bowie’s Title VII retaliation claim, the jury found in favor of 

Defendants. We vacate the dismissal of Bowie’s §§ 1985(2) and 

1986 conspiracy claims, because the district court erroneously 

required an invidious, class-based motive for the alleged 

conspiracy and because the district court concluded, without 

support, that Title VII was the exclusive remedy for this type of 

retaliation. McCord v. Bailey, 636 F.2d 606, 614 (D.C. Cir. 

1980). We affirm in all other respects.

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I

Bowie was the Assistant Inspector General of the 

Investigations Division at the OIG from November 1997 until 

his termination in August 2002. Defendantssay Bowie was fired 

for performance problems. But Bowie says his termination was 

the culmination of a retaliatory conspiracy by his superiors to 

punish him for supporting Emanuel Johnson, a subordinate 

whom the OIG fired over Bowie’s dissent. 

Bowie’s professional relationship with Johnson dated back 

to the years they overlapped at the Federal Bureau of 

Investigation (“FBI”). (Bowie had worked for the FBI for 

twenty-four years before he joined the OIG.) Back in 1993, 

Bowie and Johnson had initiated a class action against the FBI, 

alleging a discriminatory failure to promote black agents. Bowie 

claims that in 1999, after Johnson followed him from the FBI to 

OIG’s Investigations Division, Bowie’s boss, Inspector General 

Charles C. Maddox, told Bowie that FBI Assistant Director 

Jimmy C. Carter had threatened not to “provide any assistance 

or cooperation with the [OIG] in investigative matters” if 

Johnson was involved. Bowie interpreted this as “a direct 

demand that Maddox fire Johnson” or “suffer a severed 

FBI/[OIG] relationship.” Bowie suspects Carter’s ultimatum 

was motivated by his anger at Johnson for filing several 

discrimination complaints—some against Carter himself—with 

the FBI’s Equal Employment Office.

Maddox met with OIG supervisors, including Bowie, on 

February 7, 2000, to discuss Johnson’s future with the office. 

Bowie says he warned Maddox that firing Johnson would 

violate office policy and federal law, and he recommended 

putting Johnson on a sixty-day Performance Improvement Plan 

(“PIP”) instead. After the meeting, Maddox ordered Bowie to 

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give Johnson notice that he could either resign or be fired. 

Bowie did so two days later on February 9, 2000, and Johnson 

was terminated effective March 1, 2000. See Johnson v. 

Maddox, 270 F. Supp. 2d 38, 43 (D.D.C. 2003), aff’d 117 F. 

App’x 769 (D.C. Cir. 2004).

Johnson filed a discrimination charge against OIG with the 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) on 

March 28, 2000. Deputy Attorney General Gail Davis, who was 

representing the District before the EEOC, drafted an affidavit 

for Bowie to sign that detailed Johnson’s “failure to perform his 

duties in a satisfactory manner” in three investigations. OIG 

General Counsel Karen Branson sent the draft to Bowie with 

instructions to sign it that day. Bowie refused, citing 

“misstatements of fact” and “language that would convey 

impressions that [he] would not agree with.”Branson then asked 

Bowie to submit an affidavit in his own words by the following 

day. Bowie’s substantially revised affidavit still noted problems 

with one investigative report Johnson had drafted and related his 

“sense that Mr. Johnson clearly did not yet understand the 

mechanics of how things are done in [the OIG] compared to his 

former employer.” But Bowie also opined that the harshest 

criticism leveled at Johnson was inconsonant with the views of 

Johnson’s immediate supervisors, who had praised him as a

“model investigator.” Bowie’s affidavit repeated his view that 

putting Johnson on a PIP would have been a better course of 

action than firing him. Bowie submitted his affidavit to Branson, 

but Davis decided not to file it with the OIG’s position statement

before the EEOC because “it included too much information that 

was not relevant to the issue at hand,” and which Bowie was 

unwilling to eliminate.

Bowie claims Defendants started setting him up for 

termination after he expressed support for Johnson. Bowie had

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received top-notch performance reviews for his first three years 

at the OIG, but his standing in the office took a turn for the 

worse in 2000. Bowie says that on February 11, 2000, days after 

he objected to the plan to fire Johnson, Bowie’s superiors 

accused him of “not stepping up to the plate.” In February 

2001—about three months after Johnson filed a Title VII 

complaint in district court—Maddox removed Bowie from a 

high-profile investigation. In December 2001, Maddox elevated 

a former subordinate, Jerome Campane, to a newly created 

position, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations, one step

above Bowie. Around this same time, Bowie’s performance 

rating began to fall. In October 2001, his rating dropped from 

4.9 to 4.1 on a five-point scale; that is, from “significantly 

exceeds expectations” to “exceeds expectations.”

In May 2002—within a month after Bowie’s name appeared 

on Johnson’s witness list—a mid-year performance evaluation 

criticized Bowie’s management, the quality and quantity of his 

office’s Reports of Investigation (“ROIs”), and his 

overprotectiveness toward his subordinates. Defendants point 

out that a prior report, issued in December 1999 by the 

Inspections and Evaluations Division, had forecast some of 

these problems. According to the 2002 mid-year evaluation, 

Bowie had failed to remedy faults identified in an individual 

performance plan created for him sometime in 2001. Soon after

the mid-year performance evaluation issued, Maddox ordered 

the Inspections and Evaluations Division to reassess the 

Investigations Division because it had failed to begin internal 

preparations for a statutorily mandated peer review. Al Wright, 

the Assistant Inspector General for the Inspections and 

Evaluations Division had recommended the reinspection, 

suggesting it would provide “a roadmap of options . . . to make 

changes and lay the groundwork for [Campane’s] new 

management team.” Wright issued the reinspection report on 

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July 26, 2002, and it repeated the mid-year evaluation’s criticism

of Bowie. Bowie was fired less than three weeks later, on 

August 16, 2002.

Bowie filed suit in April 2003 against the District and OIG 

officials in their official and individual capacities.

1 Relevant to 

this appeal, Bowie alleged a conspiracy to deter him from 

testifying in support of Johnson under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1985(2) and

1986 (failure to prevent the conspiracy), infringement of his 

First Amendment freedom of speech under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 

and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 

42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. and the D.C. Human Rights Act, D.C. 

Code § 2-1401.01 et seq.

The district court dismissed Bowie’s conspiracy and First 

Amendment claims, and his retaliation claims proceeded to trial. 

The jury returned a verdict for Defendants, and the district court 

denied Bowie’s motions for judgment as a matter of law and for 

a new trial. Bowie timely appealed.

II

A

Bowie alleges Defendants “knowingly and willfully 

conspire[d]” to “obstruct[] [his] testimony before a Federal 

Court” in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2) and failed to prevent 

that conspiracy in violation of § 1986. The first clause of 

§ 1985(2) permits an action for damages when

 1 Bowie’s complaint also named Attorney General John Ashcroft, 

former FBI Assistant Director Jimmy C. Carter, and Mayor Anthony 

Williams. Bowie voluntarily dismissed the federal defendants, Dist. Ct. 

Docket No. 22, and the district court granted an unopposed motion to 

dismiss the mayor. Dist. Ct. Docket No. 32.

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two or more persons in any State or Territory[2

42 U.S.C. § 1985(2). The next section of the Civil Rights Act 

permits recovery against any “person who, having knowledge 

that any of the wrongs conspired to be done, and mentioned in 

[§ 1985], are about to be committed, and having power to 

prevent or aid in preventing the commission of the same, 

neglects or refuses so to do.” Id. § 1986. Recovery under § 1986 

depends on the existence of a conspiracy under § 1985.

]

conspire to deter, by force, intimidation, or 

threat, any party or witness in any court of the 

United States from attending such court, or from 

testifying to any matter pending therein, freely, 

fully, and truthfully, or to injure such party or 

witness in his person or property on account of 

his having so attended or testified.

The district court dismissed Bowie’s conspiracy claimsin a 

one-page order with a cryptic reference to the previous day’s 

court proceedings: “Upon review of plaintiff’s Amended 

Complaint and after discussion with counsel for the parties at 

the pretrial conference, it is obvious to the Court that there are 

no facts alleged that could sustain plaintiff’s claim under 42 

U.S.C. § 1985.” Dist. Ct. Docket No. 113. At the pretrial 

conference mentioned in the order, the district court had 

articulated two possible groundsfor dismissal, but each is based 

on a misunderstanding of the nature of Bowie’s conspiracy 

claims.

 2 The phrase “State or Territory” in this provision embraces the District 

of Columbia. See Georgetown Univ. Hosp. v. Sullivan, 934 F.2d 1280, 

1285 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (citing McCord v. Bailey, 636 F.2d 606, 617 

n.15 (D.C. Cir. 1980)).

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1

Our review of the transcript from the pretrial conference 

suggests the district court’s dismissal of Bowie’s § 1985 claim

relied first and foremost on his failure to produce evidence of 

class-based animus. Addressing that claim, the district court 

said, “[i]t can’t be a race question if Wright is also black.” Tr. of 

Pretrial Conference (May 10, 2007), at 9, reprinted at Joint 

Appendix (“J.A.”) 481; see id. at 10 (“If Wright is also black, 

then I don’t get what the 1985 claim could be.”). But Bowie’s 

claim of a conspiracy to deter his testimony does not require 

evidence of race discrimination. Lack of invidious motive is an 

inadequate basis for dismissing a claim under the first clause of 

§ 1985(2), because that clause “contain[s] no language requiring 

that the conspirators act with intent to deprive their victims of 

the equal protection of the laws.” Kush v. Rutledge, 460 U.S. 

719, 725 (1983).3

 3 The Supreme Court explained that

Therefore, to the extent the district court 

based its dismissal of Bowie’s § 1985(2) claim on the fact that

the sponsors of the 1871 bill added the ‘equal 

protection’ language [in the second clause of 

§ 1985(2) and the first two clauses of § 1985(3)] in 

response to objections that the ‘enormous sweep of 

the original language’ vastly extended federal 

authority and displaced state control over private 

conduct. That legislative background does not apply 

to the portions of the statute [like the first clause of 

§ 1985(2)] that prohibit interference with federal 

officers, federal courts, or federal elections.

Kush, 460 U.S. at 726. As in Kush, “the statutory language that 

provides the textual basis for the ‘class-based, invidiously 

discriminatory animus’ requirement simply does not appear in the 

portion of the statute that applies to this case.” Id.

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defendants were of the same race and gender as Bowie, the court 

erred.

2

At the same pretrial conference, the district court also 

suggested Bowie’s § 1985 claim was foreclosed because it 

“would be covered by Title [VII].” J.A. 482. The court reasoned

that as an at-will employee, Bowie had no right to continued 

employment, and therefore “the only right he has here would be 

to not be retaliated against[,] which is covered by Title [VII].” 

Id. 483. This rationale is based on another misconception about 

Bowie’s § 1985 claim—namely, that it is coterminous with 

Bowie’s Title VII claim of retaliatory termination for supporting 

Johnson. Cf. Ethnic Emps. of the Library of Cong. v. Boorstin, 

751 F.2d 1405, 1414–15 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (“[T]he district court 

properly dismissed those constitutional claims that simply 

restated claims of racial, ethnic or other discrimination 

cognizable under Title VII, or claims of retaliation for the 

invocation of Title VII rights.”). But Bowie’s § 1985(2) claim 

specifically alleged a conspiracy to deter him from testifying in 

support of Johnson in federal court. The corresponding right is 

created by § 1985(2), not Title VII. See Irizarry v. Quiros, 722 

F.2d 869, 872 (1st Cir. 1983); cf. Great Am. Fed. Sav. & Loan 

Ass’n v. Novotny, 442 U.S. 366, 378 (1979) (“[D]eprivation of a 

right created by Title VII cannot be the basis for a cause of 

action under § 1985(3).”). 

Defendants have not attempted to explain how Title VII 

preempts such a claim, and our research suggests it does not. See 

Serzysko v. Chase Manhattan Bank, 461 F.2d 699, 703 (2d Cir. 

1972) (“Our investigation of . . . Title VII . . . has failed to reveal 

any provision that might conceivably cover appellant’s . . . 

allegation of infringement of his right of access to the courts 

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[which] is suggestive of an action based upon 42 U.S.C. § 

1985(2) . . . .”). The dismissal of Bowie’s conspiracy claim 

under clause one of § 1985(2) cannot be sustained on the district 

court’s unsupported belief that “Title [VII] is [the] exclusive 

remedy for that type of retaliation.” J.A. 482.

3

Although the district court’s statements at the pretrial 

conference were limited to the two theories we have just 

rejected, Defendants rely on a third theory to defend the 

dismissal of Bowie’s conspiracy claim. Defendants argue they 

could not have engaged in a conspiracy because they are all 

employees of the same District agency, and a single corporate 

entity cannot conspire with itself. The intracorporate conspiracy 

doctrine, as it is called, originated in the antitrust context, see 

Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U.S. 752, 

769 (1984), and its application to civil rights conspiracies is an 

open question in this circuit.4

At least seven circuits have held the intracorporate 

conspiracy doctrine applies to civil rights conspiracies. See 

Grider v. City of Auburn, 618 F.3d 1240, 1261–62 (11th Cir. 

2010); Hartline v. Gallo, 546 F.3d 95, 99 n.3 (2d Cir. 2008); 

Amadasu v. Christ Hosp., 514 F.3d 504, 507 (6th Cir. 2008); 

Benningfield v. City of Houston, 157 F.3d 369, 378 (5th Cir.

1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1065 (1999); Hartman v. Bd. of 

 4 Amicus curiae, arguing on behalf of Bowie, points to one case in 

which we affirmed a damages award under § 1985(3), even though one 

of the relevant conspiracies involved only FBI agents. See Hobson v. 

Wilson, 737 F.2d 1, 13 (D.C. Cir. 1984). But we did not mention the 

intracorporate conspiracy doctrine in that case. We have yet to pick 

sides in the circuit split regarding the doctrine’s applicability to civil 

rights cases in general and the first clause of § 1985(2) in particular.

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Trustees of Cmty. Coll. Dist. No. 508, 4 F.3d 465, 469–71 (7th 

Cir. 1993); Richmond v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Minnesota, 

957 F.2d 595, 598 (8th Cir. 1992); Buschi v. Kirven, 775 F.2d 

1240, 1252–53 (4th Cir. 1985). But see Dussouy v. Gulf Coast 

Inv. Corp., 660 F.2d 594, 603 (5th Cir. 1981) (questioning the 

doctrine in dicta). Of those, four courts have applied the doctrine 

to bar the specific cause of action at issue here—a claim brought 

under the first clause of § 1985(2) for conspiracy to deter 

attendance at or testimony in a federal court. Meyers v. Starke, 

420 F.3d 738, 742 (8th Cir. 2005); Wright v. Ill. Dep’t of 

Children & Family Servs., 40 F.3d 1492, 1507–09 (7th Cir. 

1994); Doherty v. Am. Motors Corp., 728 F.2d 334, 339–40 (6th 

Cir. 1984); Herrmann v. Moore, 576 F.2d 453, 459 (2d Cir. 

1978). But another court has explicitly excepted such claims 

from the doctrine’s reach. McAndrew v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 

206 F.3d 1031, 1035–41 (11th Cir. 2000). And some of the 

same courts that apply the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine in 

the civil rights context have recognized other exceptions that 

Bowie argues would allow his § 1985(2) claim to proceed. In 

some jurisdictions, for example, the doctrine does not apply 

where the civil rights conspiracy consists of “a series of 

discriminatory acts,” Volk v. Coler, 845 F.2d 1422, 1435 (7th 

Cir. 1988); cf. Baker v. Stuart Broad. Co., 505 F.2d 181, 183 

(8th Cir. 1974) (applying the doctrine where “the challenged 

conduct is essentially a single act of discrimination by a single 

business entity”); Dombrowski v. Dowling, 459 F.2d 190, 196 

(7th Cir. 1972) (same), or where the corporate agents’ actions 

were either unauthorized or motivated by “an independent 

personal stake in achieving the corporation’s illegal objective,” 

Buschi, 775 F.2d at 1252; see Benningfield, 157 F.3d at 378 

(noting a “possible exception . . . where corporate employees act 

for their own personal purposes”).

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In contrast with the majority rule, two circuits have held the 

intracorporate conspiracy doctrine does not preclude liability for 

a civil rights conspiracy by the individual officers and 

employees of a single corporate entity. See Brever v. Rickwell 

Int’l Corp., 40 F.3d 1119, 1127 (10th Cir. 1994); Novotny v. 

Great Am. Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n, 584 F.2d 1235, 1256–59 & 

n.121 (3d Cir. 1978) (en banc), vacated on other grounds, 442 

U.S. 366 (1979); cf. Robison v. Canterbury Vill., Inc., 848 F.2d 

424, 430–31 (3d Cir. 1988) (applying the doctrine to affirm the 

dismissal of a § 1985(3) claim against a corporation and its 

president “in his corporate capacity”). A third court declined to 

apply the doctrine on the narrower ground that the conspiracy 

“went beyond ‘a single act’ of discrimination,” but expressed 

skepticism about the doctrine’s place in any civil rights case. 

Stathos v. Bowden, 728 F.2d 15, 20–21 (1st Cir. 1984) (Breyer, 

J.). But see Rice v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll., 663 

F.2d 336, 338 (1st Cir. 1981) (affirming the dismissal of a claim 

against “the President and Fellows of Harvard College, which is 

a single corporate entity and, therefore, unable to conspire with 

itself in violation of § 1985(3)”).

Finally, the Ninth Circuit has managed to avoid deciding 

whether the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine applies in the 

civil rights context, see Mustafa v. Clark County Sch. Dist., 157 

F.3d 1169, 1181 (9th Cir. 1998), but has declined to extend the

doctrine to criminal cases, see United States v. Hughes Aircraft 

Co., 20 F.3d 974, 979 (9th Cir. 1994).

The parties and amicus curiae tacitly agree the

intracorporate conspiracy doctrine was the controlling rationale

for the district court’s decision, but the record does not support 

that assumption. The court’s order itself is devoid of 

explanation; although Defendants consistently argued there 

could be no conspiracy under § 1985 where all of them worked 

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for the same agency, the pretrial conference transcript gives us 

no reason to believe the district court was persuaded by that 

argument. The court’s only reference to the intracorporate 

conspiracy doctrine occurred in a prior order dismissing Bowie’s

§ 1985 claim on that ground. Dist. Ct. Docket No. 57, at 10 

(“Since all of the people in the alleged conspiracy were acting 

within the scope of their employment for the District of 

Columbia, they could not have legally conspired because of the 

intracorporate conspiracy doctrine.”). But the district court 

subsequently reversed itself, reinstating Bowie’s § 1985 claim 

against District officials only and thereby implicitly rejecting the 

intracorporate conspiracy doctrine. Dist. Ct. Docket No. 82, at 8. 

Defendants have pointed to nothing, other than their own 

arguments before the district court, to indicate the court 

dismissed Bowie’s conspiracy claim on that ground a second 

time.

Mindful of “the general rule . . . that a federal appellate 

court does not consider an issue not passed upon below,” 

Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 120 (1976), we decline to 

decide the validity of Defendants’ intracorporate conspiracy 

defense in the absence of a relevant decision by the district 

court. We may, of course, affirm the district court’s dismissal 

“for any reason properly raised by the parties.” Aktieselskabet 

AF 21 Nov. 2001 v. Fame Jeans Inc., 525 F.3d 8, 17 (D.C. Cir. 

2008). But Defendants’ invocation of the intracorporate 

conspiracy doctrine raises several questions of first impression 

in this circuit that would benefit from the trial court’s 

consideration—whether the doctrine applies at all in the civil 

rights context; whether in particular it makes sense to attribute 

the acts of an agency’s employees to the agency itself when what 

is alleged is a conspiracy to deter testimony in federal court; and 

whether any other relevant exception applies. In appropriate 

circumstances, we may consider a novel legal question in the 

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first instance without the benefit of the district court’s initial 

view. See Empagran S.A. v. F. Hoffman-Laroche, Ltd., 388 F.3d 

337, 345 (D.C. Cir. 2004); Defenders of Wildlife, Inc. v. 

Endangered Species Scientific Auth., 659 F.2d 168, 179 (D.C. 

Cir. 1981). But “this court’s ‘normal rule’ is to avoid such 

consideration.” Liberty Prop. Trust v. Republic Props. Corp., 

577 F.3d 335, 341 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (quoting District of 

Columbia v. Air Fla., Inc., 750 F.2d 1077, 1085 (D.C. Cir. 

1984)). Because the district court suggested no viable rationale

for its order, we vacate the dismissal of Bowie’s conspiracy 

claims under §§ 1985(2) and 1986.

4

Bowie sought to thwart the intracorporate conspiracy 

defense by adding federal officers and lawyers from the 

District’s Office of the Attorney General to his roster of OIG 

defendants, but the district court rebuffed that effort as futile. 

We affirm the district court’s denial of Bowie’s motion to 

reinstate Jimmy Carter and to add Gail Davis and Teresa Quon 

as defendants. According to Bowie’s proposed amendments to 

his complaint, the adverse employment actions designed to

control or silence Bowie’s testimony pertain only to the OIG 

Defendants, not Carter. Dist. Ct. Docket No. 45-2, at 22–45. 

Carter’s alleged participation in, and knowledge about, the 

purported conspiracy ended with Johnson’s termination, i.e., 

before any conspiracy relating to Bowie’s testimony is alleged to 

have started. Id. at 14–22. “[T]here are two substantive 

limitations on a defendant’s responsibility for acts undertaken by 

co-conspirators: Those acts must be ‘in furtherance of’ the same 

conspiracy to which the defendant has agreed, and they must be 

reasonably foreseeable to the defendant.” United States v. 

Childress, 58 F.3d 693, 722 (D.C. Cir. 1995); see also United 

States v. Saro, 24 F.3d 283, 288 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (“The extent 

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of a defendant’s vicarious liability under conspiracy law is 

always determined by the scope of his agreement with his coconspirators. Mere foreseeability is not enough.”). Because 

Bowie does not allege Carter was privy to any conspiracy to 

deter Bowie’s testimony, Carter could not have been held liable 

under § 1985(2).

As for Davis and Quon, Bowie alleges, at best, that they

interfered with his attempt to offer testimony before the EEOC. 

Dist. Ct. Docket No. 45-2, at 28, 50–51. But § 1985(2) creates a 

cause of action against one who deters the plaintiff from 

attending or testifying in “any court of the United States.” 42 

U.S.C. § 1985(2). We have never interpreted that phrase to 

include an administrative agency like the EEOC, and other 

courts have explicitly foreclosed such a broad reading of the 

statute. See Seeley v. Bhd. of Painters, Decorators and Paper 

Hangers of Am., 308 F.2d 52, 58 (5th Cir. 1962); Graves v. 

United States, 961 F. Supp. 314, 319 (D.D.C. 1997); see also

McAndrew, 206 F.3d at 1039–40 & n.10 (contrasting § 1985(2) 

with the broader scope of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b), which 

criminalizes interference with testimony “in any official 

proceeding,” including one before a federal agency). 

Finally, Bowie does not state a claim under § 1986 as to 

Carter, Davis, or Quon, as he alleges neither that they had 

knowledge of the alleged conspiratorial acts against Bowie, nor 

that they would have had the power to prevent them. See 42 

U.S.C. § 1986. Because adding these defendants to Bowie’s 

complaint would have been futile, the district court did not 

abuse its discretion in denying his motion for leave to amend.

See Nat’l Wrestling Coaches Ass’n v. Dep’t of Educ., 366 F.3d 

930, 945 (D.C. Cir. 2004).5

 5 We also affirm the denial of leave to amend as to Quon on the 

alternative ground that Bowie waived this argument in the district 

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B

Bowie appeals the district court’s grant of summary 

judgment for Defendants on the First Amendment retaliation 

claim he brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Bowie claims he was 

terminated in retaliation for refusing to sign the affidavit drafted 

for him in response to Johnson’s EEOC charge and for drafting 

his own affidavit which implicitly criticized Maddox’s decision 

to terminate Johnson.

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. . . . 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.”

Navab-Safavi v. Glassman, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 3868, 8–9 

(D.C. Cir. Mar. 1, 2011) (quoting Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391

U.S. 563, 568 (1968)). To balance these competing interests in 

First Amendment retaliation claims by government employees, 

we apply a four-factor test:

First, the public employee must have spoken as a 

citizen on a matter of public concern. Second, 

the court must consider whether the 

governmental interest in promoting the 

efficiency of the public services it performs 

through its employees outweighs the employee’s 

 

court. See Dist. Ct. Docket No. 64-1, at 10–11 (“Plaintiff agrees that 

Teresa Quon should be dismissed as a defendant to this litigation as 

her role differs substantially from that of Gail Davis.”).

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interest, as a citizen, in commenting upon 

matters of public concern. Third, the employee 

must show that [his] speech was a substantial or 

motivating factor in prompting the retaliatory or 

punitive act. Finally, the employee must refute 

the government employer’s showing, if made, 

that it would have reached the same decision in 

the absence of the protected speech.

Wilburn v. Robinson, 480 F.3d 1140, 1149 (D.C. Cir. 2007) 

(quotation marks, citations, and alterations omitted).

The district court dismissed Bowie’s First Amendment 

claim on the first of these prongs, holding that “[s]peech 

regarding ‘individual personnel disputes and grievances’ is not 

relevant to the public’s evaluation of governmental agencies’ 

performance.” Bowie v. Gonzales, 433 F. Supp. 2d 24, 33 

(D.D.C. 2006) (quoting Murray v. Gardner, 741 F.2d 434, 438 

(D.C. Cir. 1984)). Bowie points out that we have since 

“reject[ed] the proposition that a personnel matter per se cannot 

be a matter of public concern.” LeFande v. District of Columbia, 

613 F.3d 1155, 1161 (D.C. Cir. 2010). He argues that his speech 

was on a matter of public concern because he composed his 

affidavit for the purpose of submitting it to the EEOC. See

Johnston v. Harris County Flood Control Dist., 869 F.2d 1565, 

1578 (5th Cir. 1989) (“When an employee testifies before an 

official government adjudicatory or fact-finding body[,] he 

speaks in a context that is inherently of public concern.”). 

We need not decide whether an affidavit prepared for an

EEOC proceeding is necessarily speech on a matter of public 

concern, because Bowie’s claim fails for another reason. 

“[W]hen 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 

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insulate their communications from employer discipline.” 

Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 421 (2006). Even if the draft 

affidavit and Bowie’s revision of it were “on a matter of public 

concern,” Wilburn, 480 F.3d at 1149, he was not speaking “as a 

citizen,” id., when he refused to sign the former or when he 

composed the latter. In both instances, Bowie was acting 

“pursuant to [his] official duties” as an employee of OIG. 

Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421.

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 the 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 

the 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. Government employers, like their privatesector counterparts, necessarily exert control over their 

employees’ speech in the course of operating an agency. “[T]he 

First Amendment does not prohibit managerial discipline based 

on an employee’s expressions made pursuant to official 

responsibilities.” Wilburn, 480 F.3d at 1150 (quoting Garcetti, 

547 U.S. at 424). We therefore affirm the district court’s grant of

summary judgment on Bowie’s First Amendment claim.

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C

Finally, Bowie attacks the jury verdict on his Title VII and 

D.C. Human Rights Act claims by appealing the district court’s 

evidentiary decisions. “[W]e review a trial court’s evidentiary 

rulings for abuse of discretion and even if we find error, we will 

not reverse an otherwise valid judgment unless appellant 

demonstrates that such error affected [his] substantial rights.” 

United States ex rel. Miller v. Bill Harbert Int’l Constr., Inc., 

608 F.3d 871, 911 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (alterations and quotation 

marks omitted) (quoting Whitbeck v. Vital Signs, Inc., 159 F.3d 

1369, 1372 (D.C. Cir. 1998)). We find no abuse of discretion in 

the evidentiary rulings Bowie challenges.

1

The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding 

testimony from Alfred Miller, a Deputy Assistant Inspector 

General in the Investigations Division. Miller was allowed to 

testify about the number of ROIs the Investigations Division 

produced during Bowie’s tenure. But when Defendants objected 

to Miller’s testimony about ROI production volume after 

Bowie’s termination, the district court sustained the objection on 

relevance grounds. Bowie argues the post-termination statistics 

were relevant because they would have revealed as pretext one 

of the stated reasons for Bowie’s termination—his purportedly 

inadequate ROI production.

The relevance of post-termination evidence in a Title VII 

case depends on the nature of the evidence, the purpose for 

which it is offered, and the context in which it arises. In some 

circumstances, post-termination data is relevant to the 

employer’s state of mind before termination. See Greene v. 

Safeway Stores, Inc., 98 F.3d 554, 561 (10th Cir. 1996) 

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(permitting plaintiff to introduce evidence that other employees 

in the protected age class were replaced, because “evidence 

concerning the make-up of the employment force and events 

which occurred after plaintiff’s termination were entirely 

relevant to the question of whether or not age was one of the 

determinative reasons for plaintiff’s termination”), cited in Hall

v. Giant Food, Inc., 175 F.3d 1074, 1080 (D.C. Cir. 1999). In 

other circumstances, post-termination data is irrelevant to pretermination events and motives. See Warren v. Prejean, 301 

F.3d 893, 905 (8th Cir. 2002) (affirming the exclusion of 

testimony about information that was not previously available to 

the employer and was therefore “irrelevant as to the information 

known to [the employer] at the time of the termination”). This is 

an inquiry best suited to the district court, and our review is 

appropriately deferential.

Although, sitting as a trial court, we may have allowed

Miller to testify, we cannot say the district court’s decision to 

exclude testimony about ROI production following Bowie’s 

termination was an abuse of discretion. Defendants could not 

possibly have known for certain how ROI production would 

change after Bowie left the OIG. At the time they made the 

decision to fire Bowie, the only available ROI data was the data 

from his own tenure. Under Bowie, the Investigations Division 

issued 22 reports in 1998, 26 in 1999, 87 in 2000, 46 in 2001, 

and 25 in 2002. Bowie was allowed to, and did, try to explain 

the reasons for the sharp decline between 2000 and 2002. 

Evidence that even fewer ROIs were issued by the succeeding 

Assistant Inspector General, without more, would not have been 

probative of Defendants’ state of mind when they fired Bowie. 

The district court did not abuse its discretion in deciding the 

specific post-termination evidence in this case was irrelevant to 

the purpose for which it was admitted—proving pretext. See, 

e.g., Green v. City of St. Louis, 507 F.3d 662, 669 (8th Cir. 

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2007) (“The district court did not purport to state a rule that 

post-termination statements are never relevant to state of mind at 

the time of termination; instead, the court assessed the evidence 

as presented to it and concluded that the statements here were 

only relevant to later events. There was no abuse of 

discretion.”).

2

At Defendants’ request, and over Bowie’s objection, the 

district court informed the jury that Johnson had lost his Title 

VII case. See Johnson, 270 F. Supp. 2d 38. Under Rule 403 of 

the Federal Rules of Evidence, the district court may exclude 

relevant evidence “if its probative value is substantially 

outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the 

issues, or misleading the jury.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. “We review 

the district court’s Rule 403 determinations with great 

deference, reversing only for grave abuse of discretion.” 

Stevenson v. D.C. Metro. Police Dep’t, 248 F.3d 1187, 1191 

(D.C. Cir. 2001).

Amicus argues that the outcome of Johnson’s case was 

irrelevant to whether Defendants retaliated against Bowie for 

supporting Johnson and that its admission risked confusing the 

issues and prejudicing Bowie because the jury might have 

equated the merits of his Title VII case with Johnson’s failed 

claim.6

 6 We have no qualms about addressing an argument raised by courtappointed amicus curiae and not by the pro se party on whose behalf 

he was appointed to present arguments. It is precisely because an 

untrained pro se party may be unable to identify and articulate the 

potentially meritorious arguments in his case that we sometimes 

exercise our discretion to appoint amici. See D.C. Cir. Rule 29 (“The 

rules stated below apply with respect to the brief for an amicus curiae 

Defendants respond that taking judicial notice of the 

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judgment in Johnson’s case “decrease[d] the chance that the jury 

would improperly speculate on the outcome and the merits of 

Johnson’s (and Bowie’s) complaints,” Appellees’ Br. 21, and 

that Bowie could have offered a jury instruction to limit any 

prejudicial side effects. We acknowledge the risks inherent in

informing the jury about the outcome of the very case Bowie 

claims he was fired for supporting. Cf. Johnson v. Colt Indus. 

Operating Corp., 797 F.2d 1530, 1534 (10th Cir. 1986) (“[T]he 

admission of a judicial opinion as substantive evidence presents 

obvious dangers. The most significant possible problem posed 

by the admission of a judicial opinion is that the jury might be 

confused as to the proper weight to give such evidence. It is 

possible that a jury might be confused into believing that the 

opinion’s findings are somehow binding in the case at bar.”). 

But we cannot conclude any prejudice Bowie may have suffered 

was the fault of the district court. The court invited Bowie to 

submit a limiting instruction, and Bowie failed to do so. Under 

these circumstances, we conclude the district court did not abuse 

its discretion. See United States v. Edwards, 388 F.3d 896, 902–

03 (D.C. Cir. 2004).

3

In discovery, Bowie requested all Investigative Reports in 

Defendants’ possession, including drafts that Defendants 

contemplated using “to show ‘poor work performance’ by 

Plaintiff.” Bowie moved to compel, complaining Defendants 

had disclosed cover sheets without the corresponding “reports, 

 

not appointed by the court. A brief for an amicus curiae appointed by 

the court is governed by the provisions of Circuit Rule 28 [pertaining 

to briefs for appellants, inter alia].”); cf. Edison Elec. Inst. v. OSHA, 

849 F.2d 611, 625 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (citing the predecessor to Rule 29 

in declining to address an issue raised exclusively by a non-courtappointed amicus).

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drafts, [and] tracking sheet[s] to show where the report was at a 

given time.” The court denied the motion to compel in relevant 

part, pointing out that the relevant disclosure request had asked 

for only those reports and drafts that Defendants contemplated 

using—it had not mentioned tracking documents. “We review 

district court rulings on discovery matters solely for abuse of 

discretion,” reversing only if the party challenging the decision 

can show it was “clearly unreasonable, arbitrary, or fanciful.”

Charter Oil Co. v. Am. Emp’rs’ Ins. Co., 69 F.3d 1160, 1171 

(D.C. Cir. 1995). We find no such abuse of discretion in the 

district court’s partial denial of Bowie’s motion to compel. On 

appeal, Bowie points to a letter he wrote to Defendants’ counsel 

in which he complained of Defendants’ failure to produce 

“routing slips” pertinent to a different disclosure request. We 

assume, for the sake of argument, that “routing slip” and 

“tracking document” are synonyms. But Bowie’s motion to 

compel, which lists eight other disclosure requests by number 

and describes them in detail, does not mention that one.

Finally, Bowie points to no specific document that 

Defendants used against him in court yet failed to disclose in 

advance. Since the relevant disclosure request specified only 

documents that Defendants contemplated using to prove his 

poor work performance, Bowie’s argument that Defendants 

failed to supplement their disclosure is without merit. See Fed. 

R. Civ. P. 26(e).

III

For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court’s 

order dismissing Bowie’s conspiracy claims under 42 U.S.C. 

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§§ 1985(2) and 1986 and remand for further proceedings 

consistent with this opinion. We affirm in all other respects.7

So ordered.

 7 Bowie asks us to reinstate his wrongful termination claim under 42 

U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983 and D.C. law, and his D.C. Whistleblower 

Protection Act claim, but neither his brief nor the brief submitted on 

his behalf by court-appointed amicus curiae attempts a legal argument 

in support of those claims. We need not address claims that are barely 

mentioned in a party’s brief. See United States ex rel. Miller v. Bill 

Harbert Int’l Constr., Inc., 608 F.3d 871, 879 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (“A 

litigant does not properly raise an issue by addressing it in a cursory 

fashion with only bare-bones arguments.” (quoting Cement Kiln 

Recycling Coal. v. EPA, 255 F.3d 855, 869 (D.C. Cir. 2001))).

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