Opinion ID: 1038229
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Speech as a Private Citizen

Text: In Garcetti, the Supreme Court narrowed the First Amendment protections for public employees. 547 U.S. 410. The Court added an additional requirement to the Pickering 5 In addressing the “public concern” prong of Eng, we clarified that “[i]t is not determinative that [a plaintiff] did not air his concerns publicly.” Anthoine v. N. Cent. Cntys. Consortium, 605 F.3d 740, 749 (9th Cir. 2010); see also Givhan v. W. Line Consol. Sch. Dist., 439 U.S. 410, 415–16 (1979) (noting that “[n]either the [First] Amendment itself nor our decisions indicate that this freedom is lost to the public employee who arranges to communicate privately with his employer rather than to spread his views before the public”). 16 DAHLIA V. RODRIGUEZ balancing test, holding that the First Amendment does not protect employee speech when that speech is “pursuant to . . . official duties.” Id. at 421. This requirement is captured by the second prong of our test set forth in Eng, 552 F.3d at 1070. Whether Dahlia’s speech is protected by the First Amendment is rooted in the Court’s analysis in Garcetti. In Garcetti, plaintiff Ceballos was a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County assigned as a calendar deputy during the relevant period. 547 U.S. at 413. A defense attorney contacted Ceballos and asked him to investigate inaccuracies in a critical police affidavit. Id. “According to Ceballos, it was not unusual for defense attorneys to ask calendar deputies to investigate aspects of pending cases.” Id. at 414. After investigating the alleged inaccuracies, “Ceballos determined the affidavit contained serious misrepresentations,” which he reported to his supervisor. Id. He “followed up by preparing a disposition memorandum” and an additional memo to his supervisor. Id. After a heated meeting attended by Ceballos, his supervisor and the affiant, the supervisor decided to proceed with the prosecution. Id. Ceballos brought a § 1983 First Amendment retaliation claim challenging the imposition of adverse employment actions in the aftermath of these events. Id. at 415. In rejecting Ceballos’ claim, the Court held that, “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.” Id. at 421. The Court said that “[t]he controlling factor in Ceballos’ case is that his expressions were made pursuant to his duties as a calendar deputy.” Id. Importantly, the Court noted that “the DAHLIA V. RODRIGUEZ 17 parties in this case do not dispute that Ceballos wrote his disposition memo pursuant to his employment duties. We thus have no occasion to articulate a comprehensive framework for defining the scope of an employee’s duties in cases where there is room for serious debate.” Id. at 424.6 The Court further explained that various easy heuristics are insufficient for determining whether an employee spoke pursuant to his professional duties. The Court said that it was “not dispositive” that “Ceballos expressed his views inside his office, rather than publicly. . . . Employees in some cases may receive First Amendment protection for expressions 6 Although it was not essential to finding that Ceballos acted pursuant to his professional duties in preparing the memorandum to his supervisor, the Court offered further explanation: [T]he fact that Ceballos spoke as a prosecutor fulfilling a responsibility to advise his supervisor about how best to proceed with a pending case [] distinguishes Ceballos’ case from those in which the First Amendment provides protection against discipline. . . . Ceballos wrote his disposition memo because that is part of what he, as a calendar deputy, was employed to do. . . . Ceballos did not act as a citizen when he went about conducting his daily professional activities, such as supervising attorneys, investigating charges, and preparing filings. In the same way he did not speak as a citizen by writing a memo that addressed the proper disposition of a pending criminal case. When he went to work and performed the tasks he was paid to perform, Ceballos acted as a government employee. The fact that his duties sometimes required him to speak or write does not mean his supervisors were prohibited from evaluating his performance. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421–22 (paragraph breaks omitted). 18 DAHLIA V. RODRIGUEZ made at work.” Id. at 420. It was also “nondispositive” that “[t]he memo concerned the subject matter of Ceballos’ employment. . . . The First Amendment protects some expressions related to the speaker’s job.” Id. at 421. Additionally, the Court rejected “the suggestion that employers can restrict employees’ rights by creating excessively broad job descriptions. Id. at 424. The Court concluded: The proper inquiry is a practical one. Formal job descriptions often bear little resemblance to the duties an employee actually is expected to perform, and the listing of a given task in an employee’s written job description is neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate that conducting the task is within the scope of the employee’s professional duties for First Amendment purposes. Id. at 424–25 (citation omitted).7 7