Opinion ID: 775784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sexual Harassment Policy Claim

Text: 10 In considering the sexual harassment policy claim, we encounter an initial difficulty in understanding precisely what Vega contends this claim adds to his First Amendment academic freedom claim. He maintains, and there is no basis for any dispute, that he was terminated because of his conduct in permitting the clustering exercise to continue. 8 Vega's academic freedom claim asserts that the First Amendment prevented the Defendants from disciplining him for this conduct, and we have ruled above that, whether or not that claim is valid, the Defendants were objectively reasonable in believing that it did not. Since the Defendants have a qualified immunity defense from damages liability for a First Amendment academic freedom violation, it does not matter whether they not only thought that Vega's conduct exceeded the proper bounds of a teacher's classroom conduct but also thought that it violated the College's sexual harassment policy. The conduct remains activity for which they may terminate him without incurring damages liability. 11 This is not a case of dual motivation in which a plaintiff contends that adverse action was taken for an impermissible reason, e.g., exercising First Amendment rights by providing information to a radio station, and the defendant contends that the action was taken for a different, permissible reason, e.g., using obscene gestures to correct students. See Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 281-83 & n.1 (1977). In such circumstances, if the evidence shows that the impermissible reason was a motivating factor of the adverse action, the defendant is liable unless it can show that it would have taken the adverse action in the absence of the impermissible reason. Id. at 287. But where, as here, there is only one conduct of the discharged employee that motivates the adverse action, and a defendant has qualified immunity for taking such action, the immunity is not lost even if the defendant thinks that this same conduct also provides an additional reason for the adverse action. To take an extreme example, if a teacher ordered a female student to disrobe in front of a class and was fired because the school administrator reasonably concluded that such conduct was not related to a legitimate pedagogical purpose, the administrator would not lose qualified immunity just because of an additional belief that the teacher's conduct also violated the school's sexual harassment policy, no matter how impermissibly vague or overbroad that policy was. 9 12 Even if Vega could show that it is relevant that the Defendants were partially motivated by the additional belief that his conduct violated the College's sexual harassment policy, we are satisfied that it would have been objectively reasonable for them to believe in 1994 that enforcing the policy against Vega did not deny him any constitutional right. 10 In 1996, two years after Vega's termination, the Ninth Circuit held qualified immunity available to college administrators for disciplining a tenured professor for violating a sexual harassment policy that violated the First Amendment. Cohen, 92 F.3d at 973. The legal issues raised in this case are not readily discernible and the appropriate conclusion to each is not so clear that the officials should have known that their actions violated [the professor's] rights. Id.; see also diLeo v. Greenfield, 541 F.2d 949, 953 (2d Cir. 1976) (regulation permitting termination of teacher for other due and sufficient cause not unconstitutionally vague or overbroad as applied to teacher who made comments with sexual connotations to students). Moreover, in view of the vulgarities that Vega permitted to be expressed, no reasonable jury could fail to find that the Defendants would have terminated Vega solely because they considered his conduct beyond the bounds of proper classroom performance, even if the College had no sexual harassment policy.