### In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

____________________ No. 14

- 1217
R OBIN M EADE , Plaintiff

- Appellant ,

v.

M ORAINE V ALLEY C OMMUNITY C OLLEGE , Defendant

- Appellee

.

____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois , Eastern Division. No. 13 C 7950

— Samuel Der

- Yeghiayan , Judge

.

____________________
A RGUED S EPTEMBER 8, 2014

— D ECIDED O CTOBER 30 , 2014

____________________

Before W OOD , Chief Judge , and P OSNER and H AMILTON , Circuit Judges

. W OOD , Chief Judge

. In August 2013, Robin Meade wrote a letter to the League for Innovation in the Community Co llege about her employer, Moraine Valley Community Co llege. The letter was not complimentary. Meade, an adjunct faculty member at Moraine Valley, leveled multiple charges at the college regarding its poor treatment of adjuncts. These practices, she c harg ed, harmed Moraine Valley’s students.2 No. 14

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She signed the let ter in her capacity as president of the M oraine Valley Adjunct Faculty Organization , a union repr esenting the college’s adjunct faculty . Two days later, Moraine Valley fired Meade

. Its explanation for doing s o was unus ually frank: it sent her a written notice explicitly cit ing Meade’s letter as the reason for its action. A few weeks later , the college warned Meade that it would regard her further presence on campus as criminal trespass. Believing that Moraine Valley reta liated against her for exercising her right to freedom of speech and violated her due process rights , Meade sued the college in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Moraine Valley persuaded the district court to d ismiss for failure to state a cla im

. The court first conclud ed that Meade’s letter did not address matters of public interest and thus could not serve as the basis of a First Amendment retaliation claim. It rejected Meade’s due pr ocess claim for lack of a cognizable property interest in h er employment at the college. Both of these conclusions are i ncorrect, and so we must return this case to the district court for further proceedings.
I
Because this appeal comes to us from a dismiss al for fai lure to state a claim , we construe Meade’s compl aint in the light most favorable to her and draw all reasonable infe rences in her favor. Park v. Ind. Univ. Sch. of Dentistry , 692 F.3d 828, 830 (7th Cir. 2012). In August 2013 , Meade received a

one

- page document that set out the schedule of the courses she was assigned to teach that autumn at Moraine Valley , a community college in Palos Hills, Illinois . At the top of the document were the words “EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT”; it then listed three classes along with their start and endNo. 14

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dates (August 19 th rough December 20) , as well as Meade’s salary for the semester. At the bottom of the page, the words “employment agreement” appeared again, followed by two paragraphs of text. The text first noted that the agreement incorporated “[d]uly established and pub lished Board pol icy,” which was to be binding on the signing parties ( Meade and Moraine Valley’s dean )

. It then stated that the document was “not a full

- time employment contract” and added “Should the need for indicated service not materialize, this agreem ent automatically becomes null and void.” Finally, it said that the agreement could not “be considered a commi tment on the part of the College for a future assignment.” Shortly after receiving this document , Meade composed her letter to the League for Inno vation in the Community College (LICC)

. Under the letterhead of the Moraine Valley Adjunct Faculty Organization (MVAFO), which she headed, Meade began by referring to a r equest the college had made to Meade and other union leaders to write letter s supporti ng Moraine Valley’s reapplication for the LICC board. Meade explained in some detail why she did not wish to do so. She accused the college of treating adjunct faculty as “a dispos able resource” and “a separate, lower class of people.” As e vidence, Meade c ited the fact that the administration allocated more resources to full

- time faculty and staff, often leaving adjuncts “to fend for themselves.” She also noted that a djuncts were teaching 60% of Moraine Valley ’s classes, mea ning that student success rates depended more on adjunct i nstructor s than their full

- time equivalents. She criticized the college’s decision to prohibit adjuncts from working on an hourly basis. As a result, Meade wrote, adjuncts could not spend extra time tu toring students. This contri buted, she implied, to the problem of high failure rates in developme n-4 No. 14

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tal classes at the college. Elsewhere in the letter, Meade wrote that the college was underpaying adjuncts, denying them access to health care, and denying them certain classes without e xplanation . All of this, Meade told LICC, “has cr eated a chilling effect which affects adjunct performance and erodes the confidence the idyllic atmosphere and beautiful buildings and grounds strive to project.” Meade sent her letter to LICC on August 20, 2013. On August 22, she received a notice of job termination from A ndrew Duren, Moraine Valley’s executive vice president. D uren told Meade that LICC had sent a copy of her letter to the college, and the college did not like what it saw. T he letter was “re plete with misrepresentations and falsehoods , ” D uren wrote, along with “irresponsible rhetoric” that was “di sruptive and not consistent with the best interests of the Co llege.” Duren added that t he letter was not responsible adv ocacy on behalf of Meade’s u nion, but rather “a personal a ttempt to falsely discredit” the college and undermine its r elationship with LICC. Because this behavior did not coincide with the college’s best interests, Duren wrote, Meade ’s job there was terminated effective immediately. A little over two weeks later

— the record is silent about what happened in the inter im

— Meade received an e mail from the chief of Moraine Valley ’ s police force announcing that any future visits she made to the college campus would be considered criminal
tres pass. Meade responded to these events by suing Moraine Va lley. Her complaint set out three theories, two of which co ncern us here. (The district court dismissed without preju dice a third claim un der Illinois law; Meade has not appealed from that ruling. ) F irst, Meade alleged that her firing andNo. 14

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banishment from campus were in retaliation for her exercise of her First Amendment right to free speech (applicable to the state through the Fourteenth Amendment)

. Second, she contended that her employment contract f or Fall 2013 crea ted a property interest, which Moraine Valley revoked wit hout due process. As we noted earlier, t he district court gran ted Moraine Valley’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and Meade now appeals.
II
We review a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) de novo

. Batson v. Live Nation Entm’t , 746 F.3d 827, 830 (7th Cir. 2014). Meade begins her appeal with her retaliation claim, and so do we. Meade’s ability to pr ess this claim depends on whether the speech that prompted her termination was co nstitutionally protected

. Garcetti v. Ceballos , 547 U.S. 410, 418 (2006). The first part of that inquiry, and the one the district

cour t found dispositive , asks whether Meade’ s speech rela ted to a matter of public concern. Id. A teacher such as Meade cannot be fired for exercising her right of free speech on such
matters. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ. o f Twp. High Sch. Dist. 205, Will Cnty. , 391 U.S. 563, 574 (1968). If, however, M eade’s overall point in writing the letter was to express a purely personal grievance, then the First Amendment will not help her. Kristofek v. Vill. of Orland Hills , 712 F.3d 979, 98 6 (7th Cir. 2013) ; see also Connick v. Myers , 461 U.S. 138, 147 (1983)

. T he Supreme Court has defined “ public concern ” to mean “legi timate news interest,” or “a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public at the time of publication.” City of San Diego v. Roe , 543 U.S. 77, 83

– 84 (2004) ( per cur iam ). In deciding whether Meade’s letter fits this description ,6 No. 14

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we consider its content , its form, and the context in which it was writ ten

. Connick , 461 U.S. at 147

– 48. Of these three co nsiderations, content is the most important

. Chaklos v. Stevens , 560 F.3d 705, 714 (7th Cir. 2009 ). We also must take care not
to place undue weight on M eade’s apparent motive in wri ting her letter , in particular whether it was per sonal or not

. R ather, we look at “the overall objective or point ” of the letter to determine whether it discussed matters of public concern. K ristofek , 712 F.3d at 985. ( One side note: a lthough Garcetti held that a public employee’s statements made pursuant to her official duties cannot provide the basis for a retaliation claim, see 547 U.S. at 421, Moraine Valley concedes that Meade had no employer

- imposed duty to write her letter.) Applying these standards, we have no trouble conclu ding that Meade’s letter discussed several matters of p ublic

concern. In fact, the letter contained almost no content pe rsonal to Meade

. Although she inform ed LICC that she had turned down Moraine Valley’s request to support its reappl ication as an LICC board member, she said nothing about her own experiences or gripes. Rather, she emphasized that she was writing as the head of a union whose members were concerned about the way the college treated them as a group. The letter’s multiple references to the difficulties fa cing all Moraine Valley’s adjuncts remove it from the realm of the purely personal. And Meade is not alone in expre ssing concern about the treatment of adjuncts . Colleges and un iversities across the country are targets of increasing coverage and criticism regarding their use of adjunct faculty

. See, e.g ., Sydni Dunn, Colleges Are Slashing Adjuncts’ Hours to Skirt New R ules on Health

- Insurance Eligibility , C HRON

. OF H IGHER E DUC

. (Apr. 22, 2013), http://chronicle.com/article/Coll eges

Curb

- Adjuncts

- Hours/138653 ; Rachel L. Swarns, CrowdedNo. 14

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Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty , N.Y. Times, Jan. 20, 2014, at A11 ; Lewis Wallace, Adjunct Professors D emand Inclusion in Health Care Refor ms , WBEZ N EWS (Mar. 11, 2013), http://www.wbez.org/news/adjunct

- professors

demand

- inclusion

- health

- care

- reforms

- 106034

. (All websites cited in this opinion were last visited Oct. 2 9 , 2014

. ) Meade’s attempt to link the treatment of adjunct faculty
to student performance underscores the public dimension of her comments. She twice remarked on the effect of ill trea tment of adjuncts on student performance and provided ev idence for this acc usation by reporti ng the percentage of cla sses that adjuncts teach at Moraine Valley . She then observed that adjuncts’ inability to teach and work on an hourly basis ha d compromised their ability to tutor students (at least for compensation, we assume)

. It is difficult to see how any part of this discussion could be considered purely personal to Meade, or o f zero interest to the public. T he people who a ttend Moraine Valley, along with their families and others who live in the area, no doubt want to know if th is practice poses a threat to student performance

. The district court did not understand the letter this way, apparently because Meade herself taught as an adjunct and thus would be affected by any changes in policy. But such an approach disregards Picke ring, 391 U.S. at 571

– 72 , in which the Supreme Court noted that public employees as a class may often be the best informed on matters of public concern related to their jobs. More generally, the district court failed
to consider the broader nature of Meade’s comments. It crit icized Meade’s discussion of student interests as cursory

— a flaw that undermined the public quality of the comments, it thought. Ye t we have never held that speech that is partly8 No. 14

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about a matter of pub lic interest but also touches on private concerns is without constitutional protection. Indeed, we held the opposite in Craig v. Rich Twp. High Sch. Dist. 227 , 736 F.3d 1110 (7th Cir. 2013) . There, a high school guidance counselor’s book of relationship ad vice contained provoc ative, racy sections that would not in isolation be considered of interest to the public . But we concluded that the book as a whole c overed topics of public concern insofar as it explored the dynamics of adult relation ship s ; an array o f recent art icles showed that the public was indeed interested in the to pic . Meade’s letter presents an even stronger case for prote ction . Even if the district court were correct that Meade’s re ferences to student success were cursory, the remainder of her letter still discussed the treatment of adjuncts, which ea sily qualifies as a topic of public interest. As we said in Craig , a topic of public concern need not “relate to an issue of e xceptional significance” or “address a topic of great societal importan ce.” Id. at 1116. Moraine Valley’s arguments to the contrary focus in part on Meade’s motive in writing the letter , but that is beside the point . As we already have explained , a person’s motive is not dispositive in the analysis of whether a communication di scusses issues of public concern. In a case such as this one, where the content of the letter touches on multiple topics in which the public would be interested, the writer’s motive (whatever it may be

— recall that this case is before us on a motion to dismiss and the record contains little beyond the letter itself ) is useful only to the extent that it may shed light on ambiguous statements. Moraine Valley also argues that Meade’s letter warrants no protection because it was sent privately. But the colle ge cites no authority for such an u nqualified proposition. Worse, it fails to acknowledge thatNo. 14

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Meade was transmitting her criticisms to an organization (the LICC) that includes 800 member institutions and 160 corporate partners . See About the League , L EAGU E FOR I NNOVATION IN THE C OMMUNITY C OLLEGE , http:// www. league.org/league/abo ut/about_main.htm

. That is hardly confidential. And quite obviously, the letter got around; d espite its ostensibly private nature, Moraine Valley had a copy and fired Meade within two days of her sending it.
The content of Meade’s letter places it squarely among matters that are of public concern. The district court thus erred in concluding that her speech was not constitu tionally protected. Because it resolved the case at that poi nt, the court did not address the other two i ssues her case raises : whether the speech was a substantial or motivating factor in the reta liatory action, and whether the defendant can show that it would have taken the same action without the existence of th e protected speech. See Chaklos , 560 F.3d at 711. We think it best for the district court to have the first look at those issues on remand.
III Our conclusion is similar with regard to Meade’s proc edural due process claim . In her complaint, Meade alleged that Moraine Valley should not have fired her without providing her with notice and an opportunity to contest the decision

. Meade has to satisfy three requirements in order to show that Moraine Valley violated her right to due process

. The first, and the only one that concerns us here , is demo nstration of a cognizable property interest. (The other two r equirements are that the defendant deprived her of that inte rest and that it did so in a way that violated due process standards. Price v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Chicago , 755 F.3d 605,10 No. 14

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607 (7th Cir. 2014). ) To demonstrate a cognizable property interest in her job at Moraine Valley , Meade must be able to show that she had some legitimate expectation of continued employment at the college . That expectation ca n arise through contractual language limiting the college’s discr etion to fire her . See Kodish v. Oakbrook Terrace Fire Prot. Dist. , 604 F.3d 490, 494 (7th Cir. 2010) ; see also Perry v. Sindermann , 408 U.S. 593, 601 (1972) (a plaintiff can show an expectat ion of entitlement to employment through “mutually explicit understandings” between employee and employer)

. State law (here, that of Illinois) defines the extent of Meade’s property inter est in her continued employment. Redd v. Nolan , 663 F.3d 287, 296 (7t h Cir. 20 11)

. Meade’s one

- page employment agreement is a spare document. It has two components: first, a listing of classes, with dates, course numbers, and Meade’s pay for the seme ster; and second, four sentences of legalistic language that set forth a s eries of caveats

. At no point does the agreement state that Meade’s employment could be terminated only for
cause, nor does it say that her employment was at

- will and terminable at any time. The latter would have been unnece ssary, in light of Illinois ’s we ll

- settled rule that “the terms of employment must provide that termination will only be for cause or otherwise evince mutually explicit understandings of continued employment” in order for there to be a prope rty interest in employment. Cromwell v. City of Momence , 713 F.3d 361, 364 (7th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omi tted)

. Meade’s agreement, however, contained language that “otherwise evinces ” such a mutual understanding. The course numbers and corresponding dates define what work Meade w as to do for Moraine Valley, during what specific period, and for what pay.No. 14

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We long ago observed that “[a] term of employment set by contract has been recognized as a property interest which the state cannot extinguish without conforming to the di ctates of proc edural due process .” Hostrop v. Bd. of Junior Coll. Dist. No. 515 , 471 F.2d 488, 494 (7th Cir. 1972). In Illinois, there is an exception to the presumption that employment is
at

- will for work that is of a specified , fixed duration. See, e.g ., Mitchell v. J ewel Food Stores , 568 N.E.2d 827, 835 ( Ill. 1990) (“It is still the general rule, that an employment relationship without a fixed duration is terminable at will by either pa rty.” (internal quotation marks omitted)) ; Johnson v. George J. Ball, Inc. , 617 N.E .2d 1355, 1358 ( Ill. App. 1993) (“ In general, an employment contract is terminable at will by either party unless the contract itself specifies a different durational
term

. ”) ( citing Duldulao v. St. Mary of Nazareth Hosp. Ctr

. , 505 N.E.2d 314, 317 ( Ill. 19 87) )

. The course schedule on Meade’ s employment agreement provided specific starting and en ding dates for her teaching responsibilities and told her what she would be paid for doing so

. T his was sufficient to pr ovide Meade with an expectation of employment at Moraine Valley during the specified time , and t hus a cognizable property interest in working at the college during that per iod. (Notably, the employment agreement cautioned that she had no guarantee of future employment; thus, she could not have compla ined under the Due Process Clause if the college had simply announced that it was not going to renew her contract for the spring semester.) In concluding otherwise, t he district court did not ad equately take into account Illinois’s rule that employment with a fixed duration provides an exception to the at

- will presumption . I t sought instead to distinguish the facts of Hostrop from Meade’s while ignoring our recognition there12 No. 14

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that “[a] person is deprived of property if the government extinguishes his legi timate claim of entitlement to his job,” 471 F.3d at 494, and that “[a] term of employment set by co ntract has been recognized as a property interest which the state cannot extinguish without conforming to the dictates of procedural due process

. ” Id. T he d istrict court also pointed
to our acknowledgment in Cromwell of the at

- will presum ption for employment in Illinois. But we were not dealing in Cromwell with employment of fixed length

. The employee in that case relied not on a contract as the source of his expect ation of continued employment but on municipal disciplinary regulations. See Cromwell , 713 F.3d at 362

– 63. W e also rei terated in Cromwell that terms of employment can create a property interest if they “evince mutually explicit unde rstandings of continued employment

. ” Id. at 364. In this case, that mutual understanding is present in Meade’s specified duration of employ ment. There was also a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between Meade’s union and Moraine Valley. Although it did not feature in the district court’s decision, the parties devote

s ome attention on appeal to the question whether the CBA extinguish ed any property interest she may have had in her employment. Th e CBA was an exhibit to the college’s motion to dismiss . We may consult i t because Meade did not object to its consideration. It provides that MVAFO members are
at

- will employees and that Moraine Valley can terminate them at its discretion. Moraine Valley argues that Meade was subject to the CBA, which deemed her an at

- will emp loyee and thus left her without a property interest in her emplo yment at the college. But Meade had a more specific agre ement with the college, and her personal e mployment agre ement says nothing about the CBA. It does incorporateNo. 14

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“[d]uly established and pu blished Board policy,” but there is

no thing to suggest that this general language included the CBA. We cannot assume, adversely to Meade, that it did. The relation between the CBA and Meade’s own emplo yment agreement is not clear from the pleadings, and so we cannot conclude at this stage that the CBA blocks Meade’s claim

. The sam e is true of other language in Meade’s emplo yment agreement. Although Meade agreed that she was not a full

- time employee and that she was not entitled to fringe benefits, doing so did not automatically make her an at

- will employee . Nor did the agreement’s provision permitting the college to declare the agreement null and void should the need for Meade’s services “not ma terialize ” have that effect. This passage might mean , for exampl e, that Moraine Valley was permitted to cancel the agreement only if an adequate number of students fail ed to register for Meade’s classes. It does not provide a basis to dismiss Meade’s complaint for failure to state a claim. The same is true of the agreement’s language providing that it was not a commitment for a f uture assignment; Meade is arguing only that she had a pro perty interest in her assignment to work for the Fall 2013 s emester. On a final note, Meade argues in her opening brief that Moraine Valley stigmatized her by accusing her of dishone sty in the le tter terminating her employment. This stigma, s he argues, impinged upon her liberty interests and was defam atory per se . The college points out that Meade did not me ntion stigmatization in her complaint , and on that basis it a rgues that it c ould not have been on notice that she intended to raise it. Se e Joyce v. Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc. , 538 F.3d 797,14 No. 14

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801

– 02 (7th Cir. 2008) (plaintiff “may not amend the co mplaint on appeal to state a new claim” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Yet Meade did assert that she suffered harm to her reputation. This the ory, however, runs squarely into the Supreme Court’s decision in Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693 (1976), which holds that a generalized interest in reput ation is neither “liberty” nor “property” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 712. Meade conte nds that we should follow Second Circuit law to the effect that damaging information in a public employee’s personnel file will almost certainly be released to future employers

. See Valmonte v. Bane , 18 F.3d 992, 1000 (2d Cir. 1994). That rule is contrary to our circuit’s requirement that a plaintiff show publication of the stigmatizing information. See, e.g. , Palka v. Shelton , 623 F.3d 447, 454

- 55 (7th Cir. 2010). Thus, even taking into account the fact that complaints need not plead legal the ories, see Mc Donald v. Household Int ’l , Inc. , 425 F.3d 424, 427

– 28 (7th Cir. 2005), Meade has failed to allege a deprivation of a protected liberty interest.
IV
A lthough Meade may not pursue a due process claim based on the deprivation of a liberty interest, she has p lea ded enough to go forward on the theory that the college d eprived her of a protected property interest. She has also sta ted a claim for retaliation in violation of her First Amen dment rights. We therefore R EVERSE the district court’s dec ision granting Moraine Valley’s motion to dismiss for fail ure to state a claim and R EMAND for further proceedings co nsistent with this opinion.