Opinion ID: 763587
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Nature of the Retaliation Claim

Text: 23 Section 1983, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, provides a remedy for constitutional violations committed by state actors. In this case, the alleged constitutional violation is in the form of a claim that government officials retaliated against the plaintiffs for exercising their constitutional rights. It is well established that government actions, which standing alone do not violate the Constitution, may nonetheless be constitutional torts if motivated in substantial part by a desire to punish an individual for exercise of a constitutional right. See, e.g., Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. 574, 118 S.Ct. 1584, 140 L.Ed.2d 759 (misdirection of personal belongings may state a claim of retaliation for exercise of First Amendment rights); Board of County Comm'rs, Wabaunsee County v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668, 116 S.Ct. 2342, 135 L.Ed.2d 843 (1996) (nonrenewal of plaintiff's government contract in retaliation for his exercise of free speech is actionable); Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972) ([I]f the government could deny a benefit to a person because of his constitutionally protected speech or associations, his exercise of those freedoms would in effect be penalized and inhibited.); Valot v. Southeast Local Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 107 F.3d 1220, 1225 (6th Cir.) ([A] claim of retaliation for exercise of the constitutional right of access is cognizable under § 1983.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 164, 139 L.Ed.2d 108 (1997); Zilich v. Longo, 34 F.3d 359, 365 (6th Cir.1994) (The law is well settled in this Circuit that retaliation under color of law for the exercise of First Amendment rights is unconstitutional ....), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1036, 115 S.Ct. 1400, 131 L.Ed.2d 288 (1995). Therefore, for these wrongs, too, § 1983 provides a remedy. 24 Before turning to the specifics of the retaliation claims of Bell and X, we begin rather broadly with a description of retaliation claims in general, and then of First Amendment retaliation claims in particular. Next, we outline factors unique to the prison setting, and last, we discuss the potential culpability of the named defendants, before we conclude by applying the test we have articulated to the facts of the case at bar in Part III.B.
25 Retaliation claims arise in any number of contexts. The essence of such a claim is that the plaintiff engaged in conduct protected by the Constitution or by statute, the defendant took an adverse action against the plaintiff, and this adverse action was taken (at least in part) because of the protected conduct. 3 There are variations on this theme in bodies of statutory law that allow retaliation claims (e.g., ADA, Title VII, NLRA, etc.), but the essential framework remains the same. See, e.g., Barnett v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 153 F.3d 338, 343 (6th Cir.1998) (Title VII retaliation claim); Walborn v. Erie County Care Facility, 150 F.3d 584, 588-89 (6th Cir.1998) (ADA retaliation claim); Wrenn v. Gould, 808 F.2d 493, 500-01 (6th Cir.1987) (Title VII retaliation claim) (citing cases). 26 Protected conduct in the statutory settings is, clearly, that conduct which the statute defines as protected: for example, the National Labor Relations Act protects certain kinds of collective action on the part of employees; Title VII protects individuals from racially (and other) discriminatory employment practices and explicitly disallows retaliation for actions taken in pursuit of those rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3; Wrenn, 808 F.2d at 500. Constitutional retaliation cases are similar in that certain provisions of the Constitution define individual rights with which the government generally cannot interfere--actions taken pursuant to those rights are protected by the Constitution. 27 We pause here to note the difference between constitutional retaliation cases arising under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and those arising under a more specific provision of the Constitution. Supreme Court precedent suggests that these two types of claims should not be conflated. In Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), the Supreme Court rejected various lower courts' reliance on substantive due process standards in evaluating claims of excessive use of governmental force where such claims were covered by explicit provisions in the Constitution, there the Fourth Amendment. See id. at 392, 109 S.Ct. 1865. Reasoning that the guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in [the substantive due process] area are scarce and open-ended, Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 272, 114 S.Ct. 807, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994) (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992)), the Court pointed to the Second Circuit's four-factor substantive due process test derived from the shocks the conscience concept as an illustration of what should not be used when an enumerated constitutional right is available as a source of protection. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 392-93, 109 S.Ct. 1865. Instead, [w]here a particular Amendment 'provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection' against a particular sort of government behavior, 'that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide for analyzing these claims.'  Albright, 510 U.S. at 273, 114 S.Ct. 807 (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865). 28 In various instances since Graham, this circuit (mainly in unpublished opinions) has subjected prisoners claiming retaliation in violation of an enumerated constitutional right to a heightened requirement that the retaliatory act shock the conscience. See McLaurin v. Cole, 115 F.3d 408, 411 (6th Cir.1997). All of these opinions cite Cale v. Johnson, 861 F.2d 943, 950 (6th Cir.1988), for requiring prisoners to make this heightened showing. Yet, reliance on Cale for such a proposition is inappropriate and inaccurate. While the Sixth Circuit in Cale used an egregious abuse of governmental power test and noted that the retaliation was in response to Cale's exercise of his First Amendment rights, it clearly explained that the inmate's claim was based on his general substantive due process rights and not on the First Amendment. See id. at 945. To the extent that our prior decisions have imposed the shocks the conscience test when prisoners claim retaliation in violation of an enumerated constitutional right, they are in conflict with the Supreme Court's decisions in Graham and its progeny and are no longer the law of this Circuit. 4 29 Here, the First Amendment properly covers the retaliation claims of X and Bell, as we explain below, and so we turn to that framework for guidance.
30 Defendants argue that because the free speech rights of public employees are protected from retaliatory action only if they involve matters of public concern, see Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983), the same must be true of prisoners, lest they have greater First Amendment rights than public employees. The difficulty with this argument is the ambiguity of the term First Amendment rights. First Amendment law is particularly context-driven. Not only does the Amendment protect a rather broad expanse of rights, 5 but even within one category, such as speech, there are multiple levels of protection for different types of speech. Core political speech is most jealously guarded, commercial speech is subject to lesser protection, and obscene speech is left completely unprotected by the First Amendment. Prisoners certainly do not have greater free speech rights than public employees, but the First Amendment interest that is of central importance to prisoners is their right to access the courts, grounded in the Petition Clause, and discussed in Part III.A.3., below. 31 Because the bulk of First Amendment retaliation claims arise in the public employment setting, it is helpful to draw upon this case law to analyze First Amendment retaliation claims. Although the elements of a First Amendment retaliation claim remain constant, the underlying concepts that they signify will vary with the setting--whether activity is protected or an action is adverse will depend on context. An example will make the point: whether a plaintiff's speech is protected depends on where he is. Standing in a city park (the classic public forum) at a rally, a citizen is free to say almost anything without interference from the government; any restriction on his speech must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest. Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293, 104 S.Ct. 3065, 82 L.Ed.2d 221 (1984). Standing in his office at a state agency, an employee is free to speak up about matters of public concern; his government employer enjoy[s] wide latitude in limiting other speech to enable the office to function properly and efficiently. Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). Standing in his cell in a prison, an inmate is quite limited in what he can say; his government jailor can impose speech-limiting regulations that are reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). The fact that certain conduct of the plaintiff must be protected in order to state a claim does not change with the setting--what changes is the type of conduct deemed protected in that particular setting. 32 An overview of the evolution of the public concern limitation in the public employment setting will provide a useful example as to why context matters. Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968), developed a balancing test for application in First Amendment retaliation cases. After sending a letter to a local paper critical of the Board of Education, the plaintiff teacher was fired. The Supreme Court acknowledged that the school system had interests as an employer that might require greater regulation of speech than a state generally requires of its citizens, but was particularly solicitous of [t]he public interest in having free and unhindered debate on matters of public importance--the core value of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Id. at 573, 88 S.Ct. 1731. The Court wished to eliminate any lingering notion that public employment could be conditioned on the relinquishment of this type of core First Amendment right, and instead attempted to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. Id. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731. With its decision in Pickering, the Court was continuing a line of cases that invalidated statutes and actions [that] sought to suppress the rights of public employees to participate in public affairs. Connick, 461 U.S. at 144-45, 103 S.Ct. 1684. Its effect was to broaden, not limit, the rights of public employees. 33 The cases following Pickering continued in this mold: Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972), involved the failure to rehire a teacher who had testified before the state legislature to the dislike of the Board of Regents; Mount Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977), involved the failure to rehire a teacher who had relayed an internal memo to a local radio station. Mount Healthy, however, began to curtail the broadening trend. It held that the teacher could not establish a constitutional violation justifying remedial action if the school could prove that it would have taken the same action in the absence of the protected conduct. And in Connick, the Supreme Court found that very little of a questionnaire circulated by an assistant district attorney involved matters of public concern; it was mostly a personal grievance about internal office policy. Thus, the Pickering balancing test came out in favor of the government in Connick. The employer's concerns that the survey would disrupt the office, undermine his authority, and destroy close working relationships was deemed enough to outweigh the attenuated free speech concerns at issue. Connick, 461 U.S. at 154, 103 S.Ct. 1684. The Court emphasized that [t]his [public concern] language, reiterated in all of Pickering's progeny, reflects both the historical evolvement of the rights of public employees, and the common sense realization that government offices could not function if every employment decision became a constitutional matter. Id. at 143, 103 S.Ct. 1684 (internal footnotes omitted). 34 With the advent of the public concern limitation in these cases, however, plaintiffs began to plead more artfully. If speech had to be on a matter of public concern to come within the protections of the First Amendment, perhaps assembly or petitions did not. Some of the cases cited by defendants, which are drawn almost exclusively from the public employment context, speak in terms of general First Amendment rights; others specifically refer to free speech rights; still others combine claims of free speech with petition or assembly claims. Because the analytic tools for adjudicating First Amendment retaliation claims under the Free Speech Clause have been so extensively developed, courts in this and other circuits have tended to import fully that reasoning when litigants have characterized their claims as arising under another First Amendment clause. 6 This overlay is an understandable response to the attempts of public employees to manipulate First Amendment doctrine in their favor. Most often, the speech or petition at issue is a work-related grievance to the government employer. The story of the public concern limitation is a story about the free speech of public employees. But of course, First Amendment retaliation cases are not limited to that setting.
35 First Amendment rights, like many other rights, are circumscribed in the prison setting. In Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), for example, the Supreme Court held that a prison regulation [that] impinges on inmates' constitutional rights ... is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. Similarly, Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974), holds that a prison inmate retains those First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system. Thus, review of such regulations offers a considerable degree of deference to the prison authorities, while still retaining ultimate judicial authority to evaluate the constitutional reasonableness of the regulation. See Turner, 482 U.S. at 89-91, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (rejecting strict scrutiny and applying a four-factor reasonableness test to prison regulations). The role of the judiciary requires weighing the interests of the prison as an institution (in such matters as security and effective operation) with the constitutional rights retained by the inmates. 36 Just what are the First Amendment rights retained by prisoners? Plaintiffs here allege a First Amendment retaliation claim. Specifically, they each claim to have been punished for exercising their constitutionally protected right to access the courts, partially grounded in the First Amendment's protection of the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. U.S. CONST. amend. I. It is well established that prisoners have a constitutional right of access to the courts. See, e.g., Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996); Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 821-24, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977) (listing case law supporting the right); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 577-80, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974) (extending Johnson, infra, to cover prisoner assistance in civil rights actions); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 488-90, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969) (striking down prison prohibition against inmates aiding one another with applications for habeas corpus); Ex parte Hull, 312 U.S. 546, 549, 61 S.Ct. 640, 85 L.Ed. 1034 (1941) (striking a prison regulation that essentially screened all prisoner habeas applications); Berryman v. Rieger, 150 F.3d 561, 567 (6th Cir.1998) (It has long been recognized that the lawful resort to the courts is part of the First Amendment right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.); John L. v. Adams, 969 F.2d 228, 231-32 (6th Cir.1992) (listing sources for the right, including the First Amendment). 37 This is not a generalized right to litigate but a carefully-bounded right, as Justice Scalia makes clear in Lewis v. Casey: 38 Bounds does not guarantee inmates the wherewithal to transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims. The tools it requires to be provided are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally, and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement. Impairment of any other litigating capacity is simply one of the incidental (and perfectly constitutional) consequences of conviction and incarceration. 39 Lewis, 518 U.S. at 355, 116 S.Ct. 2174. Thus, a prisoner's right to access the courts extends to direct appeals, habeas corpus applications, and civil rights claims only. The importance of this right to incarcerated individuals is evident and can hardly be overstated: 40 The right to file for legal redress in the courts is as valuable to a prisoner as to any other citizen. Indeed, for the prisoner it is more valuable. Inasmuch as one convicted of a serious crime and imprisoned usually is divested of the franchise, the right to file a court action stands ... as his most fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights. 41 Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 15, 112 S.Ct. 995, 117 L.Ed.2d 156 (1992) (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment). 42 That inmates have a well-established constitutional right to access the courts, based in part on the First Amendment, is clear. Less clear are the contours of free speech rights in the prison setting. No circuit has held that the Connick public concern limitation applies to prisoners' speech; conversely, no circuit has held that it does not. The defendants' reliance on Brookins v. Kolb, 990 F.2d 308 (7th Cir.1993), for the proposition is misplaced. The prisoner in that case was disciplined for misusing his authority and violating the rules of the Paralegal Base Committee (PBC) on which he sat. The PBC assisted inmates with their legal research and documents, and Brookins sent a letter on PBC letterhead to prison officials recommending the use of a lie-detector test in another inmate's case and stating that the PBC would pay for the use. He was removed from the committee for violating the rules requiring pre-approval of all committee correspondence and of all fund requests. He claimed retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment rights under the Petition and Free Speech clauses. The court characterized his claim as one in violation of his associational rights, which it found to be quite limited in the prison context, and determined that he had not shown the prison's response to be unrelated to legitimate penological objectives. The court found that he did not state a claim under the Petition Clause, as the letter was about another prisoner's case. The court also dispensed with his free speech claim, finding the contents of the letter unprotected. Although the court mentioned that the letter was not on a matter of public concern, Brookins is more appropriately characterized as a prison employee in this situation, representing the committee in an inmate grievance proceeding. It is a step removed from his speech as an inmate. In any case, Brookins certainly does not implicate Connick as a limitation on a prisoner's right to access the courts. 43 Because it is not at issue in this case, we make no determination about the appropriateness of explicitly applying the public concern limitation to speech by prisoners, whose free speech rights are uncontrovertedly limited by virtue of their incarceration. We hold only that there is no authority for subjecting a prisoner's constitutional right to access the courts, an aspect of the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances, to the public concern limitation described in Connick v. Myers. Nor would such a holding make sense as a policy matter. The right to access the courts is already limited to particularized causes of action--direct appeal, collateral attack, and § 1983 civil rights actions. These actions are always on a matter of personal concern to the prisoner, who can only achieve standing if he alleges a personal injury fairly traceable to a redressable wrong committed against him. 7 A public concern limitation would eliminate all prisoner suits protected by the right to access the courts; clearly, a judicial gloss on the First Amendment Free Speech Clause derived from the public employment setting is not an appropriate vehicle for annulling elaborate bodies of statutory law such as the habeas corpus statutes. 8 44 The Pickering balancing test, described in the preceding section, has been applied in a variety of First Amendment settings. See, e.g., Umbehr, 518 U.S. at 678, 116 S.Ct. 2342 (The tests that we have established in our government employment cases must be judicially administered with sensitivity to governmental needs, but First Amendment rights must not be neglected.... We therefore see no reason to believe that proper application of the Pickering balancing test cannot accommodate the differences between employees and independent contractors.). It can as easily be applied in the prison context, accommodating the difference between the government as employer and as jailor, as well as the difference between the free speech rights of a public employee and an inmate's right to access the courts. Certainly the government's interests as an employer are not identical to its interests as a jailor. Safety and order are a high priority in the prison setting, while they are assumed in the typical government office, where the ability, for example, to make hiring or contracting decisions with some degree of flexibility may be more important. A prisoner's First Amendment rights are not more extensive than those of a government employee; in fact, under most clauses of the First Amendment, they are much more strictly limited. However, a prisoner's right to access the courts is clearly established under a long line of Supreme Court precedent, and is for him, in fact, preservative of all rights. Given the distinctive rights of the two types of plaintiffs, the separate interests of the two types of government entities, and the dissimilar nature of the relationship between the plaintiff and the government in these two settings, any honest attempt to perform the balancing prescribed by the Supreme Court in Pickering cannot unhesitatingly import reasoning from the public employment setting into the prison setting. Again, context matters.
45 Thus far, we have been speaking about the defendants as a group. An examination of their potential culpability as individuals may be useful at this point. Because Defendant Karazim allegedly told X that he was going to make sure that plaintiff [was] moved off the floor, J.A. at 16 (Complaint p 15), indicating to X that he played some part in the decision to move X on base, Karazim is properly a defendant to X's retaliation claim, and possibly to his Eighth Amendment claim (see discussion, infra, Part III.C.). Defendant Blatter avers that Deputy Tamminga--not a defendant to this action--ordered that X be moved and that Blatter showed X a letter to this effect. If true, defendants Graham, Bildner, and Blatter may have been merely executing their superior's orders when they placed X in the cell on base. Although the district court believed this absolved these defendants of liability, we do not agree. Reliance on a superior's orders does not in itself dissipate all liability. Raysor v. Port Auth., 768 F.2d 34, 38 (2d Cir.1985) (holding police officer liable for false arrest under § 1983 even though arrest was made at superior's order), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1027, 106 S.Ct. 1227, 89 L.Ed.2d 337 (1986); Villanueva v. George, 659 F.2d 851, 854 (8th Cir.1981) (en banc) (rejecting prison officers' argument that since they did not have the authority to alter the [prisoner's security] classification, any consequence of that status cannot be their responsibility); Forsyth v. Kleindienst, 599 F.2d 1203, 1216-17 (3d Cir.1979) (rejecting FBI agents' argument that they were merely following the orders of their superior and should not be put to the test of either disobeying authority or being subject to liability because if they knew or should have known that their actions were violating the plaintiffs' constitutional rights, then they will not be allowed to hide behind the cloak of institutional loyalty), cert. denied, 453 U.S. 913, 101 S.Ct. 3147, 69 L.Ed.2d 997 (1981). This result accords with longstanding general and specific tort principles. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF AGENCY § 343 cmt. d (1958) ([D]eputy sheriffs who take part in an unlawful arrest ... are subject to liability together with those for whom they act, except where their good faith creates a privilege in them to act.) (citation omitted). 46 We are mindful that in many situations prison guards must act quickly, with little time to ponder the legality of their actions. Such urgent circumstances are not present in this case and, when they arise in the future, are properly part of a defense of qualified immunity and, where applicable, questions of intent. See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 641, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). If plaintiffs' allegations are true, each individual defendant may have knowingly participated in actions beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. 47 Plaintiff X also claims that defendants Bildner, Blatter, and Graham not only refused to give him cleaning supplies so that he could clean his allegedly filthy cell but also refused to allow a prison porter to give him the standard cleaning supplies. This allegation may indicate knowledge on the part of the defendants of the unsanitary conditions facing X, potentially an important part of the Eighth Amendment claim, discussed below. 48