[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 12-12968

________________________

D. C. Docket No. 1:10-cv-01301-RWS

MARIA GRESHAM,

Plaintiff -Appellant,

versus

CITY OF ATLANTA,

MAJOR PERDUE,

official capacity,

CHIEF GEORGE TURNER,

individual and official capacities,

Defendants-Appellees.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

_________________________

(October 17, 2013)

Before PRYOR and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges, and RESTANI, Judge.

∗

 ∗ Honorable Jane A. Restani, United States Court of International Trade Judge, sitting by 

designation.

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 1 of 6 
2

In this appeal, Plaintiff appeals the judgment of the district court granting 

summary judgment in favor of Defendants, the City of Atlanta and its police chief, 

dismissing Plaintiff’s § 1983 First Amendment suit. Plaintiff claimed that the

chief’s failure to promote her was in retaliation for a comment she posted on 

Facebook criticizing another law enforcement officer of the department, 

Investigator Barbara Floyd. Plaintiff’s Facebook comment criticized Floyd for 

interfering in an unethical manner with the investigation of a person Plaintiff had 

arrested for fraud and financial identity theft. Plaintiff’s Facebook page was “set to 

private,” but was available for viewing by an unknown number of Plaintiff’s 

“friends,” who of course could potentially distribute the comment more broadly. 

When alerted to the Facebook comment, the Department’s Office of Professional 

Standards opened an investigation of Plaintiff for her alleged violation of the 

Department’s work rule requiring that any criticism of a fellow officer “be directed 

only through official Department channels, to correct any deficiency, and . . . not be 

used to the disadvantage of the reputation or operation of the Department or any 

employees.” 

While the investigation was pending, promotions for which Plaintiff would 

have been eligible occurred, but Plaintiff was not promoted. Plaintiff argues that 

she was not promoted in retaliation for her First Amendment Facebook speech. 

Defendants, on the other hand, argue that Plaintiff was not eligible for promotion 

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 2 of 6 
3

because of the pending investigation; there was a policy not to consider candidates 

for promotion if they had disciplinary investigations pending against them.

The issue before us is whether a police officer can be disciplined for violating 

this work rule under these circumstances. The appropriate analysis is well 

established. Under the four-part Pickering1 analysis, the court must determine 

whether (1) Plaintiff’s speech involved a matter of public concern; (2) Plaintiff’s 

interest in speaking outweighed the government’s legitimate interest in efficient 

public service; and (3) the speech played a substantial part in the government’s 

challenged employment decision. If Plaintiff establishes the foregoing, then she 

would prevail unless Defendants prove that (4) they would have made the same 

employment decision even in the absence of the protected speech. The first two 

prongs of the analysis are questions of law, while the latter two are questions of 

fact. Like the district court, we assume, arguendo, that Plaintiff’s speech implicated 

a matter of public concern, and we turn to the second prong in which we balance 

the plaintiff’s interest in speaking against the government’s legitimate interest in the 

efficient operation of the police department. 

In conducting this balancing process, the law is well established that 

maintaining discipline and good working relationships amongst employees is a

legitimate governmental interest. See Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 388, 

 1 Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 88 S. Ct. 1731 (1968). 

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 3 of 6 
4

107 S. Ct. 2891, 2899 (1987) (recognizing that whether a plaintiff’s speech 

“impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among co-workers, [or] has a 

detrimental impact on close working relationships” is an important factor in the 

Pickering balance). Also, it is well established that a police department is a quasimilitary organization and that “comments concerning co-workers’ performance of 

their duties and superior officers’ integrity can directly interfere with the 

confidentiality, espirit de corps and efficient operation” of the department. Busby 

v. City of Orlando, 931 F.2d 764, 774 (11th Cir. 1991) (internal quotation marks 

omitted).

Plaintiff’s sole argument on appeal is that Defendants adduced no evidence at 

all of such disruption, and therefore the Pickering balance clearly tilts in her favor.2

 

Plaintiff’s argument lacks support both in the law and on the facts. The case law is 

clear that the government’s legitimate interest in avoiding disruption does not 

require proof of actual disruption. As the district court noted, the Supreme Court in 

Connick v. Myers expressly held: 

When close working relationships are essential to fulfilling public 

responsibilities, a wide degree of deference to the employer’s 

 2 Plaintiff also vaguely suggests that there was no violation of the work rule at all 

because Plaintiff made several attempts to seek redress within the Department for Floyd’s 

interference, but her efforts were unsuccessful. We agree with the district court that, 

notwithstanding this allegation by Plaintiff, she adduced no evidence in support thereof. 

Moreover, Plaintiff’s Facebook comment occurred only seven days after Floyd’s interference, 

which is insufficient time to conclude that pursuing the matter through channels as required by the 

work rule was futile. We readily conclude that Defendants were amply reasonable in their 

perception that an investigation of the apparent violation of the work rule was appropriate. 

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 4 of 6 
5

judgment is appropriate. Furthermore, we do not see the necessity for 

an employer to allow events to unfold to the extent that the disruption 

of the office and the destruction of working relationships is manifest 

before taking action. 

461 U.S. 138, 151-52, 103 S. Ct. 1684, 1692 (1983). Rather, we have held that “the 

reasonable possibility of adverse harm will generally be enough to invoke the full 

force of judicial solicitude for a police department’s internal morale and discipline.” 

Waters v. Chaffin, 684 F.2d 833, 839 (11th Cir. 1982). 

Plaintiff is also wrong on the facts. It is undisputed that Plaintiff violated the 

work rule requiring criticism of the Department or fellow officers to be directed 

only through Department channels. If the Department’s investigation thereof were 

deemed First Amendment retaliation, that would have a tendency to render such a 

rule unenforceable and would encourage employees to circumvent the 

Department’s investigation processes, thus impeding the Department’s 

investigations and ability to correct problems. In addition, common experience 

teaches that public accusations of unethical conduct against fellow officers would 

have a natural tendency to endanger the espirit de corps and good working 

relationships amongst the officers. Thus, we conclude that there is actual evidence 

in this record of a reasonable possibility of disruption of the legitimate interests of 

the Department. 

We also agree with the district court that these legitimate interests of the 

Department outweigh Plaintiff’s interest in speaking in this manner. In this regard, 

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 5 of 6 
6

we note that the context of Plaintiff’s speech is not one calculated to bring an issue 

of public concern to the attention of persons with authority to make corrections, nor 

was its context one of bringing the matter to the attention of the public to prompt 

public discussion to generate pressure for such changes. Rather, we agree with the 

district court that the context was more nearly one of Plaintiff’s venting her 

frustration with her superiors. Thus, we conclude that Plaintiff’s speech interest is 

not a strong one, a factor which the Supreme Court has indicated is appropriate to 

consider in the balancing process. See, e.g., Connick, 461 U.S. at 148, 154, 103 S. 

Ct. at 1691, 1693-94 (striking the Pickering balance in favor of the government 

after finding that the employee’s speech mainly reflected her own personal 

displeasure with the decisions of her superiors and that her speech interest therefore 

was not sufficiently strong to outweigh the government’s interests). Moreover, 

even if Plaintiff’s speech interests were somewhat stronger, we conclude that the 

Department’s interest is considerable, and that the balance clearly tilts in favor of 

the Department. 

Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is 

AFFIRMED. 

Case: 12-12968 Date Filed: 10/17/2013 Page: 6 of 6