Opinion ID: 775498
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does Cockrel's Speech Touch on a Matter of Public Concern?

Text: 51 In determining whether Cockrel's speech touched on a matter of public concern, we turn to Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 (1983), the Supreme Court's most instructive case on this issue. In Connick, the Court stated that matters of public concern are those that can be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community[.] Id. at 146. There is no question that the issue of industrial hemp is a matter of great political and social concern to many citizens of Kentucky, and we believe that Cockrel's presentations clearly come within the Supreme Court's understanding of speech touching on matters of public concern. 52 In support of this conclusion, we first turn to the district court's opinion, which unequivocally stated that the issue of industrial hemp is politically charged and of great concern to certain citizens. J.A. at 36 (Dist. Ct. Mem. Op.). Second, in the past year alone, industrial hemp advocacy in Kentucky has made news on several occasions, revealing the significant extent to which industrial hemp has become an important and publicly debated issue in the State. In October, presidential candidate Ralph Nader, in a campaign stop in Kentucky, spoke out in favor of the legalization of industrial hemp and of the benefits it would have for small family farmers. Al Cross, Nader Blasts Foes in Visit to Louisville, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), Oct. 12, 2000, at A1. In December, after the Drug Enforcement Agency confiscated industrial hemp being grown on the Pine Ridge, South Dakota Indian Reservation, members of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Association, including former Kentucky governor Louie B. Nunn, traveled to South Dakota and, in a ceremony at the base of Mount Rushmore, delivered legally imported industrial hemp to the tribe as a sign of its solidarity. David Melmer, Kentucky Hemp Farmers Aid Pine Ridge, S.D., Indians After Crop Destruction, Knight-Ridder Trib. Bus. News, Dec. 11, 2000. These examples only scratch the surface of the extent to which industrial hemp has become an issue of contentious political and economic debate in Kentucky. 53 While discussion of industrial hemp plainly meets the broad concept of public concern as defined by the Supreme Court, some courts have focused on other portions of the Supreme Court's Connick decision in concluding that a teacher's classroom speech does not touch on matters of public concern. See Boring v. Buncombe County Bd. of Educ., 136 F.3d 364, 368-69 (4th Cir.) (en banc), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 813 (1998); Kirkland v. Northside Indep. Sch. Dist., 890 F.2d 794, 797-99 (5th Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 496 U.S. 926 (1990). These cases pay particular attention to the following portion of the Connick Court's holding: 54 [W]hen a public employee speaks not as a citizen upon matters of public concern, but instead as an employee upon matters only of personal interest, absent the most unusual circumstances, a federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review the wisdom of a personnel decision taken by a public agency allegedly in reaction to the employee's behavior. 55 Connick, 461 U.S. at 147. Based upon this language, the Fourth and Fifth Circuits have determined that a teacher, in choosing what he will teach his students, is not speaking as a citizen, but rather as an employee on matters of private interest. Boring, 136 F.3d at 368-69; Kirkland, 890 F.2d at 800. 56 We believe that the Fourth and Fifth Circuits have extended the holding of Connick beyond what the Supreme Court intended. Under the courts' analyses in Boring and Kirkland, a teacher, regardless of what he decides to include in his curriculum, is speaking as an employee on a private matter. Boring, 136 F.3d at 368-69; Kirkland, 890 F.2d at 800. This essentially gives a teacher no right to freedom of speech when teaching students in a classroom, for the very act of teaching is what the employee is paid to do. Thus, when teaching, even if about an upcoming presidential election or the importance of our Bill of Rights, the Fourth and Fifth Circuits' reasoning would leave such speech without constitutional protection, for the teacher is speaking as an employee, and not as a citizen. 57 The facts in Connick indicate that the Fourth and Fifth Circuits have read the Supreme Court's language too broadly. InConnick, an assistant district attorney, following a disagreement with a supervisor, prepared a questionnaire seeking the opinions of her co-workers on issues such as office transfer policy, office morale, the need for a grievance committee, the level of confidence in supervisors, and whether employees felt pressured to work in political campaigns. Connick, 461 U.S. at 141. Connick was later fired for circulating the questionnaire on the grounds of insubordination. Id. The Court held that, while many of the questions simply reflected the plaintiff's efforts to gather information to use against her supervisors in her private employment dispute, Myers's question regarding the pressure to work on political campaigns did touch on a matter of public concern. Id. at 149. Thus, the Court held that, even though Myers was speaking as an employee out of her private interest in combating her supervisors' decision to transfer her, the fact that one of her questions dealt with the fundamental constitutional right not to be coerced into campaigning for a political candidate was enough to make this particular issue touch on a matter of public concern. Id. 58 If the Fourth and Fifth Circuits' interpretation of Connick were correct, then any time a public employee was speaking as an employee, like Myers was when she asked her question about employees being pressured to campaign, the speech at issue would not be protected. As the Supreme Court made clear in its analysis, however, the key question is not whether a person is speaking in his role as an employee or a citizen, but whether the employee's speech in fact touches on matters of public concern. Id. 148-49. Thus, even if a public employee were acting out of a private motive with no intent to air her speech publicly, as was the case with Myers, so long as the speech relates to matters of political, social, or other concern to the community, as opposed to matters only of personal interest, it shall be considered as touching upon matters of public concern. Id. at 146-49. 59 In Cockrel's case, although she was speaking in her role as an employee when presenting information on the environmental benefits of industrial hemp, the content of her speech, as discussed supra, most certainly involved matters related to the political and social concern of the community, as opposed to mere matters of private interest. Thus, contrary to the analyses in Boring and Kirkland, we hold that Cockrel's speech does touch on matters of public concern. 5 60