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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206

ELECTRONIC CITATION: 2004 FED App. 0180P (6th Cir.)

File Name: 04a0180p.06

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

_________________

MICHAEL ANDERSON,

Plaintiff-Appellant/

Cross-Appellee,

v.

CITY OF LAVERGNE,

Defendant-Appellee/

Cross-Appellant,

HOWARD MORRIS,

Individually and in his official

capacity as Chief of Police of

the City of LaVergne,

Defendant.

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Nos. 02-6094/6248

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville.

No. 00-00313—Aleta A. Trauger, District Judge.

Argued: April 28, 2004

Decided and Filed: June 16, 2004 

2 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. Nos. 02-6094/6248

*

The Honorable S. Arthur Spiegel, Senior United States District

Judge for the Southern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.

Before: COLE and COOK, Circuit Judges; SPIEGEL,

Senior District Judge.*

_________________

COUNSEL

ARGUED: James L. Harris, Nashville, Tennessee, for

Appellant. David Randall Mantooth, LEITNER,

WILLIAMS, DOOLEY & NAPOLITAN, Nashville,

Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: James L. Harris,

Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. David Randall

Mantooth, LEITNER, WILLIAMS, DOOLEY &

NAPOLITAN, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

_________________

OPINION

_________________

COOK, Circuit Judge. Michael Anderson and the City of

LaVergne cross-appeal from the district court’s grant of

summary judgment in favor of Anderson, and a jury’s award

of damages, on Anderson’s claims brought under 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983 alleging the deprivation of his constitutionally

protected right of intimate association. Because reasonable

jurors could conclude only that the City’s policy forbidding

Anderson from dating a higher-ranking colleague rationally

furthered a legitimate governmental interest, we conclude that

the district court should have granted summary judgment for

the City rather than Anderson.

I

In 1999, Anderson, a police officer for the City of

LaVergne, began a romantic relationship with Lisa Lewis, an
Nos. 02-6094/6248 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. 3

administrative assistant for the police department. Three

months later, Chief of Police Howard Morris ordered

Anderson and Lewis to “cease all contact with each other”

outside of the workplace. Morris issued this order because he

believed that intra-office dating between employees of

different ranks (Lewis outranked Anderson) might lead to

sexual harassment claims against the department.

Despite Morris’s order, Anderson and Lewis continued

their relationship. When Lewis eventually told Anderson she

wanted to end the relationship, a disturbance of some sort

involving Anderson occurred at Lewis’s apartment. The

Davidson County police investigated but did not file any

charges. After the LaVergne Police Department’s Internal

Affairs Division completed its own investigation, Morris

terminated Anderson for failing to follow Morris’s order to

stop seeing Lewis outside of the office. Morris immediately

reconsidered, however, and offered Anderson the option of

resigning without the department placing any negative

information about the incident at Lewis’s apartment in his

employment record. Anderson accepted this offer, resigning

on July 29, 1999.

In April 2000, Anderson filed this suit against the City of

LaVergne and Morris (individually and in his official

capacity), alleging that Morris’s order violated Anderson’s

First and Fourteenth Amendment right of intimate

association, and seeking damages under § 1983. Defendants

moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the

motion with respect to the claims against Morris in his

individual capacity but sua sponte granted summary judgment

in favor of Anderson on his claims against the City and

Morris in his official capacity (the court later dismissed this

claim against Morris as redundant with the claim against the

City). The district court ruled that the policy prohibiting

intra-office dating was not rationally related to a legitimate

government interest because the interest the policy

advanced—avoiding sexual harassment claims—was not a

“police interest.” A jury awarded Anderson $10,283.86 in

4 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. Nos. 02-6094/6248

back pay and $5,500 in intangible damages. Both parties

appeal—the City seeking a reversal of the district court’s

denial of its motion for summary judgment, and Anderson

seeking a new trial on the amount of damages.

II

In granting summary judgment for Anderson, the district

court misapplied cases involving expressive speech claims to

Anderson’sintimate association claim. Moreover, the district

court erroneously concluded that the police department’s

policy lacked a rational relationship to a legitimate

government interest. Thus, even though the district court

articulated the correct standard—rational basis—for

reviewing the police department’s policy, it erred in its

application of that standard. We first explain why rational

basis review applies to Anderson’s intimateassociation claim,

and then discuss why the police department’s prohibition

against intra-office dating satisfies the rational basis test.

A. Intimate Association

The Constitution protects two distinct types of association:

(1) freedom of expressive association, protected by the First

Amendment, and (2) freedom of intimate association, a

privacy interest derived from the Due Process Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment but also related to the First

Amendment. See Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S.

609, 617-18 (1984); Akers v. McGinnis, 352 F.3d 1030, 1035

(6th Cir. 2003); Corrigan v. City of Newaygo, 55 F.3d 1211,

1214–15 (6th Cir. 1995). With respect to expressive

association, the Supreme Court “has recognized a right to

associate for the purpose of engaging in those activities

protected by the First Amendment—speech, assembly,

petition for the redress of grievances, and the exercise of

religion.” Roberts, 468 U.S. at 618. Concerning intimate

association, the Supreme Court “has concluded that choices

to enter into and maintain certain intimate human

relationships must be secured against undue intrusion by the
Nos. 02-6094/6248 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. 5

State because of the role of such relationships in safeguarding

the individual freedom that is central to our constitutional

scheme.” Id. at 617–18. 

The personal relationship at issue in this case does not

involve constitutionally protected expressive activity, and

Anderson does not assert that the City denied his right to

expressive association. Instead, this case involves the City’s

alleged intrusion into Anderson’s personal relationship with

Lewis in violation of his right of intimate association. 

The Supreme Court has explained that the right to intimate

association “receives protection as a fundamental element of

personal liberty.” Id. at 618. The kinds of personal

associations entitled to constitutional protection are

characterized by “relative smallness, a high degree of

selectivity in decisions to begin and maintain the affiliation,

and seclusion from others in critical aspects of the

relationship.” Id. at 620. In Board of Directors of Rotary

International v. Rotary Club of Duarte, the Court emphasized

that although the “precise boundaries” of the intimate

association right were unclear, constitutional protection was

not restricted to relationships among family members. 481

U.S. 537, 545 (1987). Instead, the Constitution “protects

those relationships . . . that presuppose ‘deep attachments and

commitments to the necessarily few other individuals with

whom one shares not only a special community of thoughts,

experiences, and beliefs but also distinctly personal aspects of

one’s life.’” Id. (quoting Roberts, 468 U.S. at 619–20).

Therefore, in addition to marriage, courts have recognized

both personal friendships and non-marital romantic

relationships as the types of “highly personal relationships”

within the ambit of intimate associations contemplated by

Roberts. See, e.g., Akers, 352 F.3d 1039–40 (“Personal

friendship is protected as an intimate association.”).

Given these precedents, we find, at least for summary

judgment purposes, that Anderson’s relationship with Lewis

was an “intimate association.” Construing the facts in a light

6 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. Nos. 02-6094/6248

most favorable to Anderson, he and Lewis lived together at

some point, were romantically and sexually involved, and

Anderson was monogamous in the relationship. The

relationship therefore involved an attachment to an individual

with whom Anderson shared the “distinctly personal aspects

of [his] life.” Roberts, 468 U.S. at 620.

But the relationship’s status as an “intimate association”

does not end our inquiry. We must next consider whether the

City’s policy prohibiting intra-office dating constituted a

“direct and substantial interference” with Anderson’s intimate

associations. Akers, 352 F.3d at 1040. A “direct and

substantial interference” with intimate associations is subject

to strict scrutiny, while lesser interferences are subject to

rational basis review. Id. As explained in Akers, this court

has developed a general rule that we will find “direct and

substantial” burdens on intimate associations “only where a

large portion of those affected by the rule are absolutely or

largely prevented from [forming intimate associations], or

where those affected by the rule are absolutely or largely

prevented from [forming intimate associations] with a large

portion of the otherwise eligible population of [people with

whom they could form intimate associations].” Id. Because

Anderson continued to enjoy the ability to form intimate

associations with anyone other than fellow police department

employees of differing rank, the department’s policy is

subject to rational basis review. 

B. Rational Basis Review

Contrary to the district court’s conclusion, the City’s policy

is rationally related to a legitimate government interest. The

City barred dating relationships between police department

employees of different ranks to promote its interest in

avoiding sexual harassment suits. Such preventive policies

are common among government employers. For example,

this court has upheld policies prohibiting marriage among

municipal employees, Vaughn v. Lawrenceburg Power Sys.,

269 F.3d 703, 712 (6th Cir. 2001), and requiring the transfer
Nos. 02-6094/6248 Anderson v. LaVergne, et al. 7

of one spouse if two employees of the same school marry,

Montgomery v. Carr, 101 F.3d 1117, 1130–31 (6th Cir.

1996).

Moreover, the district court’s proposition that the City’s

rational interest could only be one relating to the substance of

police work (such as security or investigation) lacks legal

support. The case law clearly recognizes that to be rational,

the basis for an employment policy need not relate to the

specific, substantive purpose of the organization but may

concerngeneral employment practices, because such practices

are critical to the organization’s overall functioning. See, e.g.,

Wright v. MetroHealth Med. Ctr., 58 F.3d 1130, 1137–38 (6th

Cir. 1995) (upholding policy requiring transfer of one spouse

as rationally related to legitimate government interests of

avoiding potential conflicts in the workplace and preventing

deterioration of workplace morale); Parks v. City of Warner

Robins, Georgia, 43 F.3d 609, 615 (11th Cir. 1995)

(upholding policy requiring resignation of one spouse as

means of “avoiding conflicts of interests between workrelated and family-related obligations; reducing favoritism or

even the appearance of favoritism; preventing familyconflicts

from affecting the workplace; and, by limiting inter-office

dating, decreasing the likelihood of sexual harassment in the

workplace”). Thus, the district court erred in concluding that

the police department’s policy was not reasonably related to

a legitimate government interest. Because its policy satisfies

the rational basis standard, the City did not violate

Anderson’s constitutional rights. The City therefore was

entitled to summary judgment on Anderson’s claims under

§ 1983.

III

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

grant of summary judgment in favor of Anderson, vacate the

damages and attorney’s fee awards, and remand with

instructions to enter judgment for the City on all claims.