NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 24a0160n.06

Case No. 23-3804

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

EDWARD LYONS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

TECUMSEH LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN 

DISTRICT OF OHIO

OPINION

Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; GRIFFIN and READLER, Circuit Judges.

SUTTON, Chief Judge. The First Amendment covers a lot of things. But it does not 

insulate a public school teacher from discipline—a multi-day suspension—for a physical 

encounter with a thirteen-year-old student. The district court rejected the teacher’s First 

Amendment retaliation claim as a matter of law. We affirm.

I.

Edward Lyons has taught middle school in Ohio’s Tecumseh Local School District since 

1995. His first twenty-six years passed without incident. But an increase in student misbehavior

began to bother him. He “observed this trend firsthand,” including “instances of students acting 

out towards teachers and administrators without consequence.” R.9 at 3.

On February 25, 2020, he attended an open school board meeting to register these concerns

on behalf of his union. As the speeches ran long, he made just a “brief [comment], simply 
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confirming to the Board president he was aligned with the other speakers and had signed up to 

speak on” “the growing student misconduct problem and the District’s failure to address it.” Id.

About twenty months later, on November 5, 2021, Lyons decided to teach a student a lesson

for not seeking permission before trying to leave class to use the restroom. He told the seventh 

grader to return to his seat. The student ignored him and continued to walk out. Lyons blocked 

the door with his body. Over the next ten minutes, the student physically struggled with Lyons

before finally requesting his consent to leave.

Unbeknownst to Lyons, another student recorded the standoff. The video caught the eye 

of local news and of the Tecumseh Local School District Superintendent, Paula Crew. A week

later, Crew served Lyons with a notice of disciplinary charges and a predisciplinary hearing. After

the hearing, the school district suspended him for five days without pay. An arbitrator reduced the 

suspension to three days with pay.

Lyons claimed that this discipline amounted to retaliation for his brief comment at the 

school board meeting more than twenty months earlier. He sued Crew and the school district, 

alleging violations of his free speech rights under the First Amendment and the Ohio Constitution. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the 

pleadings. Lyons appeals the federal claim.

II.

To establish a claim of retaliation under the First (and Fourteenth) Amendments, Lyons

must show (1) that he engaged in constitutionally protected conduct, (2) that the school district 

sanctioned him in a way that would deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his rights,

and (3) that a causal connection exists between his speech and the discipline. See Evans-Marshall 

v. Bd. of Educ. of Tipp City Exempted Vill. Sch. Dist. II, 624 F.3d 332, 337 (6th Cir. 2010). We give 
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fresh review to the district court’s decision to grant judgment on the pleadings. In doing so, we 

accept Lyons’s allegations as true, draw all reasonable inferences in his favor, and ask whether the 

allegations state a plausible claim for relief. See Hudson v. City of Highland Park, 943 F.3d 792, 

798 (6th Cir. 2019). The district court found it necessary only to address Lyons’s failure to 

establish causation, and so do we.

To establish causation, the constitutionally protected speech must prompt the adverse 

employment action. See Cunningham v. Blackwell, 41 F.4th 530, 542 (6th Cir. 2022). There is 

nothing retaliatory about disciplining an employee when the discipline has nothing to do with the 

prior speech. See Sensabaugh v. Halliburton, 937 F.3d 621, 629–30 (6th Cir. 2019). Close 

proximity in time between the conduct and action may aid this showing, though it is not dispositive. 

See Vereecke v. Huron Valley Sch. Dist., 609 F.3d 392, 400–01 (6th Cir. 2010) (collecting cases). 

A lengthy gap between an employee’s protected activity and the retaliatory action, by contrast,

cuts against a claim of causation. See Jackson v. Leighton, 168 F.3d 903, 912 (6th Cir. 1999).

Measured by these considerations, Lyons has not shown causation. Lyons’s brief comment

at the school board meeting merely aligned him with other speakers. By his own telling, his

“reputation as an excellent teacher” remained intact and he was not “subjected to any written 

discipline” following the meeting. R.13 at 7; R.9 at 3. His complaint does not identify any 

discipline (or other potentially adverse actions) against him between the time of the school board 

meeting and the physical confrontation with the student. It took more than twenty months for any 

discipline to occur, and that happened only after Lyons did something—a physical confrontation 

with a student covered on video—that, at a minimum, would generate an investigation in any 

school district. This marked gap in time between his brief statement and the discipline by itself 

suggests an absence of causation. Clark Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. Breeden, 532 U.S. 268, 274 (2001) 
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(per curiam) (reasoning that an adverse action occurring twenty months after the conduct

“suggests, by itself, no causality at all”). Confirming the point is the unmistakable reality—

unmistakable because it was caught on video—that his discipline followed immediately after his 

confrontation with the student. Any other approach to this uncontradicted sequence of events gives 

free-speech retaliation claims a bad name. On these pleadings, Lyons has not plausibly alleged 

causation.

In trying to rebut this conclusion, Lyons fails to connect the dots between his speech and 

his discipline. He never mentions any adverse actions taken against other teachers who spoke in 

more detail at the meeting. He never mentions any instance in which the school district or the 

superintendent mentioned his presence at the meeting. He never mentions any other potentially 

adverse actions against him during the twenty months after the school board meeting and before 

the physical confrontation. The most he says is that the school district lacked the opportunity to 

discipline him during the school years leading up to the incident. But that simply is not the case. 

Whether it is the school board or the superintendent, they all had authority to impose adverse 

actions against him had they wished during those twenty months. They did not, at least until he 

physically confronted his seventh-grade student. In the final analysis, “a free speech retaliation 

claim still requires retaliation.” Frieder v. Morehead State Univ., 770 F.3d 428, 430 (6th Cir. 

2014). But he has not plausibly alleged that here.

We affirm.