Opinion ID: 618676
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Protocol Violations

Text: Defendants conceded below that Nagle's report of abuse in Virginia raised a matter of public concern, but the district court concluded that the report was not protected when uttered because it undisputedly violated reasonable protocols. Order at 13. We doubt that this question could be decided as a matter of law on the present record, which indicates that Nagle may well have followed school procedures by reporting to her principal the verbal abuse that she had overheard. Some time laterafter Moore had already left Nagle's schoolNagle informed both Child Protective Services and the state police of what she had personally overheard and what others had told her. It is not clear from the record that Nagle's conduct in these circumstances violated any protocols. This lack of factual clarity does not matter, because the district court's reasoning finds no support in Second Circuit or Supreme Court case law, which has never conditioned First Amendment protection on adherence to employer protocols. An employee's failure to follow protocols may give rise to an alternative, non-retaliatory ground for an adverse employment action. And as such, it could be the basis of a successful causation defense. That possibility, which is discussed infra, is very different from the lower court's holding that failure to abide by rules deprived the speech of First Amendment protections. Here, as it did also with respect to obsolescence, see infra subsection B.2.b., the district court confused a question of causation with the very different question of whether speech is protected. In sum, neither the record nor the law permitted the district court to find that Nagle's Virginia speech lost its First Amendment protection because of protocol violations. Defendants conceded below that Nagle's report of abuse would have been protected when uttered but for the alleged protocol violation. We therefore need only consider defendants' remaining argument that the report lost its First Amendment protection due to obsolescence.