Opinion ID: 215346
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendants' Entitlement to Qualified Immunity

Text: We turn now to the merits of Defendants' qualified immunity claim. Unlike the blog post, the t-shirts at issue in this case constituted student speech on, not beyond, school grounds. The t-shirts were not vulgar, see Fraser, 478 U.S. at 683, 106 S.Ct. 3159, did not promote drug use, see Morse, 551 U.S. at 409, 127 S.Ct. 2618, and were not student speech that could reasonably be perceived to bear the imprimatur of the school, Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 271, 108 S.Ct. 562. Defendants assert that the t-shirts were banned to prevent two kinds of disruption to school activities: (1) vocal outbursts or other disruptions in the assembly to which the students were reporting; and (2) a possible write-in campaign to elect Doninger as Senior Class Secretary even though she had been removed from the ballot. We note that the district court, in denying Defendants' motion for reconsideration, asserted that Defendants failed to make these arguments in their motion for summary judgment, although the court nonetheless proceeded to consider their merits. See Doninger, 2009 WL 763492, at -2. Our review of the parties' submissions on summary judgment, however, demonstrates that Defendants sufficiently highlighted the indicia of disruption in the record so as to preserve the claim that they acted in an objectively reasonable manner pursuant to Tinker. At oral argument on the summary judgment motion, Defendants' counsel urged that there was a risk of disruption arising from the prospect that students might drown out the candidates' speeches during the election assembly with cheers of support for Doninger. In counsel's words, What if ... the principal says, quiet everybody and they say no and then the T-shirts come out... that's absolutely disruptive. Oral Argument Tr. at 80:7-14. We conclude that Defendants' arguments regarding both (1) the threatened disruption of the election assembly and (2) the possibility of a write-in campaign were raised with sufficient particularity so as to be preserved. See McCardle v. Haddad, 131 F.3d 43, 51 (2d Cir.1997). Indeed, Doninger does not argue to the contrary. Because we conclude that the threat of disruption to the school assembly alone provided school officials with substantial grounds for their actions, however, such that [i]t cannot be said there was a clearly established rule as to the illegality of their conduct, see Saucier, 533 U.S. at 208-09, 121 S.Ct. 2151, we need address only the first of Defendants' arguments. We again focus on the second prong of the qualified immunity inquiry whether, assuming that Doninger had a First Amendment right to wear her t-shirt at the assembly, this right was clearly established. Cf. Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 818-19. The relevant, dispositive inquiry in determining whether a right is clearly established is whether it would be clear to a reasonable [official] that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. If `[officials] of reasonable competence could disagree' on the legality of the action at issue in its particular factual context, then the defendant is entitled to qualified immunity, [e]ven if the right at issue was clearly established in certain respects. Walczyk, 496 F.3d at 154 (quoting Malley, 475 U.S. at 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092). Qualified immunity analysis, moreover, is objective rather than subjective. See, e.g., Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641, 107 S.Ct. 3034. Thus, qualified immunity protects government officials when they make reasonable mistakes about the legality of their actions, Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206, 121 S.Ct. 2151, and applies regardless of whether the government official's error is a mistake of law, a mistake of fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact, Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 815 (internal quotation 9 marks omitted). In this respect, the Supreme Court has observed that qualified immunity protects `all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.' Walczyk, 496 F.3d at 154 (quoting Malley, 475 U.S. at 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092); see also Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. The law governing restrictions on student speech can be difficult and confusing, even for lawyers, law professors, and judges. The relevant Supreme Court cases can be hard to reconcile, and courts often struggle to determine which standard applies in any particular case. See, e.g., Morse, 551 U.S. at 430, 127 S.Ct. 2618 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (noting that the law regarding student speech is often unclear, with various courts describing the governing standards as complex and often difficult to apply). We conclude, for instance, that Tinker governs herethat because the t-shirts were not vulgar, see Fraser, 478 U.S. at 683, 106 S.Ct. 3159, could not reasonably be perceived to bear the School's imprimatur, see Hazelwood, 484 U.S. at 271, 108 S.Ct. 562, and did not encourage drug use, see Morse, 551 U.S. at 409, 127 S.Ct. 2618, they could be subject to regulation different from that permissible for adults in non-school settings only if they threatened substantial disruption to the work and discipline of the School. But as we have suggested in the past, it is not entirely clear whether Tinker 's rule (as opposed to other potential standards) applies to all student speech not falling within the holdings of Fraser, Hazelwood, or Morse. See Guiles ex rel. Guiles v. Marineau, 461 F.3d 320, 326 (2d Cir.2006); see also Morse, 551 U.S. at 405, 127 S.Ct. 2618 ( Fraser established that the mode of analysis set forth in Tinker is not absolute.). In Morse, the Supreme Court's most recent pronouncement on student speech, the Court noted that the rule of Tinker is not the only basis for restricting student speech. Id. at 406, 127 S.Ct. 2618. Granted, two Justices who helped constitute the Morse majority joined only on the understanding that Morse does not hold that the special characteristics of schools necessarily justify any additional speech restrictions. Id. at 423, 127 S.Ct. 2618 (Alito, J., concurring). But this qualification does not rule out the possibility that some such hitherto unrecognized grounds of regulation may exist. To be clear, we neither recognize any such grounds, nor express a view as to their desirability. As the Supreme Court stated in Tinker, [t]he Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to [the] robust exchange of ideas, and students may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. 393 U.S. at 511-12, 89 S.Ct. 733. That said, a reasonable school official could well note salient differences between the circumstances here and those in Tinker. In Tinker, school officials prohibited high school students from wearing black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War. They sought to punish with suspension individual students who engaged in a silent, passive expression of dissenting political opinion in circumstances in which the rights of other students were not implicated and the wearing of the armbands was entirely divorced from ... [even] potentially disruptive conduct. Id. at 505, 508, 89 S.Ct. 733. Here, in contrast, some undetermined number of students, agitated by the actions of school officials, wished jointly to affirm support for a student they believed had been improperly disciplined by being prohibited from running for class office. They wished to do so specifically in the context of a school election assembly at which the candidates for various offices, also students, were scheduled to speak. In light of these significant differences in the two scenarios (not the least of which involves the interests of other students), an official in Defendants' position who thought that a less demanding standard of potential disruption might apply could not be said to have an unreasonable understanding of what the law requires. See Malley, 475 U.S. at 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092 (stating that qualified immunity is designed to protect all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law). And as the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed, [i]f the [official's] mistake as to what the law requires is reasonable ... [she] is entitled to the immunity defense. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 205, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Further, even assuming, arguendo, that it would be clear to a reasonable official that the Tinker standard applied in the circumstances presented, Defendants are still entitled to qualified immunity if such an official could have reasonably erred in determining whether the potential for disruption at the assembly was sufficient to satisfy that standard. Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Doninger, we conclude that such is the case here. To be clear, to prohibit student speech on the ground that it will result in disruption, administrators ... must be able to show that [their] action `was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.' DeFabio, 623 F.3d at 78 (quoting Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508, 89 S.Ct. 733). As we explained the standard in our review of the district court's order denying a preliminary injunction in this case, [t]he question is ... whether school officials `might reasonably portend disruption' from the student expression at issue. Doninger II, 527 F.3d at 51 (quoting La Vine, 257 F.3d at 989). The line between the potential for substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities, Tinker, 393 U.S. at 514, 89 S.Ct. 733, however, and the potential for less significant interference is similar to the hazy border that the Supreme Court has recognized to exist between acceptable and excessive uses of force. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 206, 121 S.Ct. 2151 (quoting Priester v. Riviera Beach, 208 F.3d 919, 926-927 (11th Cir. 2000)). The Court has made clear that qualified immunity operates to protect officials in such areas of indeterminacy and to ensure that before they are subjected to suit, [they] are on notice their conduct is unlawful. Id. According to the undisputed facts in this case, Doninger and her supporters were clearly upset about the decision to remove her from the ballot, and were eager to speak out publicly concerning their views. Doninger had appeared on a local news show with her mother to talk about her blog posting and her resulting punishment. She attempted to discuss the news interview in class on the day preceding the election assembly, provoking another student to shout out apparent support in sufficiently disruptive terms that the student was sent to Niehoff's office. By at least the early morning hours of the day of the election, Niehoff was aware of a plan by students specifically to bring t-shirts supportive of Doninger into an election assembly at which other students, including the two candidates for Senior Class Secretary, were scheduled to speak. Niehoff may not have known with certainty that permitting the t-shirts into the assembly would cause students to disrupt those speeches. But she could not responsibly have ignored the fact that Doninger herself, in her blog post of the previous month, had already demonstrated some willingness to incite confrontation with school officials. And we note further that Niehoff's concern about the potential disruption of the assembly was partially borne out even in the absence of the t-shirts, when students shouted Vote for Avery and had to be warned to be respectful. School principals, as the Supreme Court has recently noted, have a difficult job. Morse, 551 U.S. at 409, 127 S.Ct. 2618. Given Niehoff's responsibility for ensuring an orderly election process, enforcing the punishment against Doninger, and safeguarding the interests of those students who were to speak at the assembly, she faced a difficult task in assessing whether the threat of disruption was severe enough to justify preventing Doninger from wearing her t-shirt into the assembly. A reasonable jury could find that a school official who believed the threatened disruption here was sufficiently substantial was, under the circumstances, mistaken. We cannot conclude, however, that such a mistake was anything but reasonablethe very sort of mistake for which the qualified immunity doctrine exists to shield officials against unwarranted liability. The concern of the immunity inquiry is to acknowledge that reasonable mistakes can be made[.] Saucier, 533 U.S. at 205, 121 S.Ct. 2151. To be clear, the need to make difficult choices cannot protect principals or other school officials when they make unreasonable judgments regarding the legality of their actions. In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Tinker, 393 U.S. at 511, 89 S.Ct. 733. But the record here does not suggest, much less show, the Lewis S. Mills High School to be anything remotely resembling an enclave[ ] of totalitarianism, or the defendant school officials to have acted in a way that suggested a claim to absolute authority over their students. We conclude that, in the circumstances here, reasonable school officials could disagree about the potential for a substantial disruption of the assembly as a result of permitting students to wear the t-shirts inside. Accordingly, Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.