IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 13-60540

RODRICUS CARLTEZ HURST,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

LEE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Mississippi

Before STEWART, Chief Judge, and WIENER and COSTA, Circuit Judges.

CARL E. STEWART, Chief Judge:

Plaintiff-Appellant Rodricus Carltez Hurst filed suit in federal district 

court alleging that Defendant-Appellee Lee County, Mississippi – acting 

through its Sheriff – terminated Hurst’s employment in violation of his First 

Amendment right to free speech. The district court granted judgment as a 

matter of law in favor of Lee County. We affirm. 

I. FACTS & PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Hurst became employed as a corrections officer with the Lee County 

Sheriff’s Department (“the Department”) in 2008 under Sheriff Jim H. 

Johnson, who was first elected in 2003. Specifically, Hurst worked as a shift 

sergeant in Lee County Jail (“the Jail”) and supervised eight other correctional 

officers. The Jail provides jail space for several Lee County law enforcement 

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

August 21, 2014

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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No. 13-60540

agencies, including but not limited to the Tupelo, Mississippi Police 

Department. At the time, Sheriff Johnson’s media relations policy, which was 

included in the Department’s standard operating procedures, provided that 

only the Sheriff or his “designee” would be permitted to coordinate with the 

media with respect to crimes and investigations. Non-designees were 

permitted to reveal certain “public information” to the media which included 

the limited information entered on the Department’s docket book and website. 

According to the record, Hurst had spoken with members of the media 

numerous times during the course of his employment with the Jail. 

In 2012 on New Year’s Day, Hurst arrived at the jail to begin his shift 

and learned that Chad Bumphis, a Mississippi State University football 

player, had been arrested the night before by the Tupelo Police Department. 

That day, numerous media representatives telephoned the Jail seeking 

information about Bumphis’s arrest; Hurst fielded many of those calls. At one 

point during that day, Brad Locke, a sports writer for the Northeast Mississippi 

Daily Journal (NMDJ), travelled to the Jail and questioned Hurst about the 

incident that happened the night before involving Bumphis. Later that day, 

Locke published an article in the NMDJ in print and online about the arrest 

of Bumphis, attributing certain quotes in the articles to Hurst. One article 

quoted Hurst as saying that “[w]hen the fight broke out, they [i.e., the Tupelo 

Police Department] started taking people to jail.” 

Sheriff Johnson read the articles and directed that Hurst be interviewed 

by Department personnel with regard to the statements. Hurst acknowledged 

that he had talked to the reporter and wrote out a statement which provided 

in part: “I told the reporter from what I had heard a group fight had broke out 

and somehow he [Bumphis] got cut on the neck.” Upon reading Hurst’s written 

statement, Sheriff Johnson fired Hurst for violating the Department’s media 

relations policy. 

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Following his termination, Hurst applied for and was denied 

unemployment benefits by the Mississippi Department of Employment 

Security (“MDES”).1 The MDES determined that Hurst was discharged after 

wrongfully releasing information to the media without authorization from the 

Sheriff. Hurst appealed and an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) also held 

that Hurst had wrongfully released information to the media without 

authorization from the Sheriff in violation of the Department’s media relations 

policy. Hurst then brought suit in the United States District Court. Lee 

County filed a motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the findings 

of the MDES and the ALJ should have a preclusive effect on the district court 

proceedings. The district court denied the motion in part and granted the 

motion in part and held that “[t]he MDES factual determination is entitled to 

preclusive deference; however, the facts established by the ALJ are not 

dispositive [of] the question of whether Lee County Sheriff’s Department policy 

on communication with the media by employees is constitutionally valid under 

the First Amendment.” 

The case proceeded to jury trial and, at the close of Hurst’s case in chief, 

Lee County filed a Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law. FED. R. 

CIV. P. 50(a). Relying primarily on this court’s holding in Nixon v. City of 

Houston, 511 F.3d 494 (5th Cir. 2007), the district court ruled from the bench 

and granted the motion in favor of Lee County. The court’s ruling stated that: 

(1) Hurst spoke to the reporter as an employee of the Sheriff’s Department as 

part of his official job duties; and (2) any part of the speech Hurst engaged in 

with Mr. Locke that would not be considered part of his official job duties –

1 Also known as the Mississippi Employment Security Commission. See Miss. Code 

Ann. § 71-5-101.

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therefore speech engaged in as a private citizen – was nevertheless 

unprotected because it was not of “public concern.” Hurst appeals herein. 

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

“We review the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law de 

novo, applying the same legal standards as the district court.” Gonzalez v. 

Fresenius Med. Care N. Am., 689 F.3d 470, 474 (5th Cir. 2012). Judgment as 

a matter of law may be granted when “a party has been fully heard on an issue 

during a jury trial and the court finds that a reasonable jury would not have a 

legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find for the party on that issue.” FED. R. 

CIV. P. 50(a)(1). In reviewing the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter 

of law, we “consider all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the 

nonmovant, drawing all factual inferences in favor of the non-moving party, 

and leaving credibility determinations, the weighing of evidence, and the 

drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts to the jury.” Gonzalez, 689 F.3d 

at 474-75.

III. DISCUSSION

A. First Amendment Speech

Hurst’s first argument on appeal is that the district court erroneously 

granted Lee County’s Rule 50 motion because Hurst’s speech was not employee 

speech pursuant to his job duties and should have been considered citizen 

speech protected by the First Amendment. We disagree.

While government employees are not stripped of their First Amendment 

right to freedom of speech by virtue of their employment, this right is not 

without exception. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ. of Tp. High Sch. Dist. 205, Will 

Cnty., Ill., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968). A four-pronged test is used to determine 

whether the speech of a public employee is entitled to constitutional protection

from employer discipline. See Juarez v. Aguilar, 666 F.3d 325, 332 (5th Cir.

2011). A plaintiff must establish that: (1) he “suffered an adverse employment 

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decision”; (2) his “speech involved a matter of public concern”; (3) his interest 

in speaking outweighed the governmental defendant’s “interest in promoting 

efficiency”; and (4) “the protected speech motivated the defendant’s conduct.”

Id. 

The Supreme Court noted in Garcetti v. Ceballos that, for an employee’s 

speech to qualify for First Amendment protection, he must be speaking “as a 

citizen on a matter of public concern.” 547 U.S. 410, 418 (2006). This court 

has characterized that requirement – that he be speaking as a citizen on a 

matter of public concern – as a “threshold layer” to the second prong of the 

retaliation test. See Davis v. McKinney, 518 F.3d 304, 312 (5th Cir. 2008). 

Garcetti further states 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.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421. In the 

past, we have acknowledged that Garcetti does “not explicate what it means to 

speak ‘pursuant to’ one’s ‘official duties.’” Williams v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 

480 F.3d 689, 692 (5th Cir. 2007) (quoting Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 424).

More recently, however, the Supreme Court expounded upon this issue 

in Lane v. Franks, 134 S. Ct. 2369, 2379 (2014). In Lane, the Court reasoned 

that “the mere fact that a citizen’s speech concerns information acquired by 

virtue of his public employment does not transform that speech into 

employee—rather than citizen—speech. The critical question under Garcetti

is whether the speech at issue is itself ordinarily within the scope of an 

employee’s duties, not whether it merely concerns those duties.” Id. The Court 

ultimately held in that case that the First Amendment “protects a public 

employee who provide[s] truthful sworn testimony, compelled by subpoena, 

outside the course of his ordinary job responsibilities.” Id. at 2374-75.

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When a court determines that an employee is not speaking as an 

employee, but rather as a citizen on a matter of public concern, “the possibility 

of a First Amendment claim arises.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 418. To then 

determine whether the employee’s speech is entitled to First Amendment 

protection, the court proceeds to the Pickering balancing test, which inquires 

as to whether the interest of the government employer “in promoting the 

efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees” outweighs 

the employee’s interests, as a citizen, “in commenting upon matters of public 

concern.” Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568. In performing this balancing test, the 

court looks at “whether the statement impairs discipline by superiors or 

harmony among co-workers, has a detrimental impact on close working 

relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary, or 

impedes the performance of the speaker’s duties or interferes with the regular 

operation of the enterprise.” Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 388 (1987). 

Here, Hurst was an officer who, according to the Department’s media 

relations policy, could have obtained authorization from his superiors to speak 

to the media about the event involving Bumphis that took place while Hurst

was off duty the night before.2 He chose, however, to make statements to the 

media without obtaining that authorization and was ultimately terminated for 

doing so. Hurst argues on appeal that his job duties were limited to 

supervising his subordinate officers and keeping the officers and inmates safe. 

However, Sheriff Johnson’s media relations policy states that employees like 

Hurst were authorized to field calls from the media - such as the numerous 

2 We note herein that the fact that Hurst first learned of Bumphis’s arrest upon 

arriving to begin his shift at the Jail is not dispositive of the question of whether his speech 

to the reporter about the arrest was employee speech. See Lane v. Franks, 134 S. Ct. 2369, 

2379 (2014) (stating that “the mere fact that a citizen’s speech concerns information acquired 

by virtue of his public employment does not transform that speech into employee—rather 

than citizen—speech.”).

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calls Hurst fielded on January 1, 2012 - and to provide certain limited 

information when doing so. If Hurst was not authorized as a designee to speak 

on a specific issue about an arrest, he was permitted to provide certain publicly 

available information to the media such as the name of the arrestee, the 

charge, the amount of the arrestee’s bond, and whether the Department had 

released the arrestee. Further, the Sheriff at his discretion could have 

authorized Hurst as his designee to make other statements to the media. 

Hurst did not obtain that authorization before making the statements at issue 

to the news reporter. 

Accordingly, we hold that Hurst’s statements to the news reporter, i.e., 

the speech at issue, was “ordinarily within the scope of [Hurst’s] duties” and 

did not “merely concern those duties.” Lane, 134 S. Ct. at 2379.3 Thus, Hurst 

was not speaking as a citizen for First Amendment purposes, and consequently

his communications were not constitutionally insulated from employer 

discipline. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421. Moreover, because we have held Hurst’s 

speech to be ordinarily within the scope of his duties and therefore not citizen 

speech protected by the First Amendment, we do not reach the issue of whether 

Hurst’s speech involved “a matter of public concern.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 418; 

Juarez, 666 F.3d at 332. 

B. Duty to Investigate

Hurst’s second argument on appeal is that the Rule 50 motion was 

erroneously granted because the Sheriff violated his duty to conduct a

reasonable investigation to determine whether Hurst had engaged in protected 

speech when speaking with the news reporter. See Waters v. Churchill, 511 

3 In another case involving a law enforcement official making an unauthorized 

comment to the media, we concluded that the statement was “not protected by the First 

Amendment because it was made pursuant to his official duties and during the course of 

performing his job.” Nixon v. City of Houston, 511 F.3d 494, 498 (5th Cir. 2007). 

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U.S. 661, 677-80 (1994). In light of our foregoing conclusion that Hurst’s 

speech to the news reporter was not protected First Amendment speech, we 

pretermit discussion of Hurst’s argument that Sheriff Johnson violated his 

duty to conduct a reasonable investigation under Waters prior to terminating 

Hurst’s employment. See id. 

IV. CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated herein, we affirm the judgment of the district 

court granted in favor of Defendant-Appellee Lee County, Mississippi.

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