Opinion ID: 216201
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ms. Leverington's Claim Against Memorial[3]

Text: At the heart of Ms. Leverington's claim against Memorial is her contention that Memorial violated her rights of free speech under the First Amendment when it fired her for telling Officer Peters that she hoped she never had him as a patient. (Aplt. App'x at 5, ¶ 16.) As discussed below, while Ms. Leverington certainly has free speech rights even as a public employee, in this case Memorial did not overstep its bounds in taking action against her for her statement to Peters. [A] public employee does not relinquish First Amendment rights to comment on matters of public interest by virtue of government employment. Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 140, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). Rather, the First Amendment protects a public employee's right, in certain circumstances, to speak as a citizen addressing matters of public concern. Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 417, 126 S.Ct. 1951, 164 L.Ed.2d 689 (2006). However, the interests of public employees in commenting on matters of public concern must be balanced with the employer's interests in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968); see also Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 420, 126 S.Ct. 1951 (The Court's decisions, then, have sought both to promote the individual and societal interests that are served when employees speak as citizens on matters of public concern and to respect the needs of government employers attempting to perform their important public functions.). The Court in Pickering sought to achieve this balance through the adoption of a four-part test to be implemented in public-employee, free-speech cases. See, e.g., Kent v. Martin, 252 F.3d 1141, 1143 (10th Cir.2001) (describing Pickering test). In Garcetti, the court expanded on the Pickering test by adding a fifth, threshold inquiry that seeks to determine whether the speech at issue was made pursuant to the public employee's official duties. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421, 126 S.Ct. 1951; see also Brammer-Hoelter v. Twin Peaks Charter Acad., 492 F.3d 1192, 1202 n. 4 (10th Cir.2007) ( Garcetti made clear that the first step is to determine whether the employee speaks pursuant to his official duties.). Thus, after Garcetti, it is apparent that the ` Pickering ' analysis of freedom of speech retaliation claims is a five step inquiry which we now refer to as the ` Garcetti/Pickering ' analysis. Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1202; see also Couch v. Bd. of Trs. of the Mem'l Hosp., 587 F.3d 1223, 1235 (10th Cir.2009) (When analyzing a free speech claim based on retaliation by an employer, this court applies the five-prong Garcetti/Pickering test.). The Garcetti/Pickering test thus includes the following inquiries: (1) whether the speech was made pursuant to an employee's official duties; (2) whether the speech was on a matter of public concern; (3) whether the government's interests, as employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public service are sufficient to outweigh the plaintiff's free speech interests; (4) whether the protected speech was a motivating factor in the adverse employment action; and (5) whether the defendant would have reached the same employment decision in the absence of the protected conduct. Dixon v. Kirkpatrick, 553 F.3d 1294, 1302 (10th Cir.2009). Ms. Leverington argues that the second prong of this testwhether her speech was on a matter of public concernshould not be applied to her claim against Memorial. As discussed below, this argument is without merit. The test applies and, indeed, is dispositive in this case, because even drawing all reasonable inferences in Ms. Leverington's favor, it is clear that she was not speaking on a matter of public concern when she made her statement to Peters.
Ms. Leverington argues that the public-concern test should not apply to her claim against Memorial because when a public employee engages in protected speech which occurs off duty and is unrelated to the employer's internal functioning, a straightforward Pickering balancing test is applied, without application of the typical public concern prong as a predicate to first amendment protection. (Aplt. Br. at 23.) In support, Ms. Leverington cites Flanagan v. Munger, 890 F.2d 1557, 1562-63 (10th Cir.1989); United States v. National Treasury Employees Union ( NTEU ), 513 U.S. 454, 480, 115 S.Ct. 1003, 130 L.Ed.2d 964 (1995) (O'Connor, J., concurring); and Bonds v. Milwaukee County, 207 F.3d 969, 976 (7th Cir.2000). None of these authorities support Ms. Leverington's contention. In Flanagan, several Colorado Springs police officers sued the police chief and city, alleging that their First Amendment rights were violated when they were issued reprimands for owning a video store that rented X-rated films. 890 F.2d at 1560-61. In considering the plaintiffs' appeal from an adverse summary judgment ruling, we found that it is nearly impossible to logically apply the public concern test to the present case in which an employee engages in nonverbal protected expression neither at work nor about work. Id. at 1562. We reached this conclusion for several reasons. First, we noted that the language of the public-concern test itself indicated that it was inapplicable to the situation before the Court: It is difficult to comprehend how each of the officer's owning of a one-quarter interest in a video store which rents a small portion of sexually explicit videos is making a `comment' on any subject, especially a subject of public concern. Id. at 1563. [4] Second, we found that [t]he specificity of precedential language in our circuit further indicates that the public concern test was not intended to apply to situations of this type. Id. By declaring that `what is actually said on [a] topic is the crux of the public concern content inquiry,' and that First Amendment protection is limited to statements made by public employees which ` sufficiently inform [an] issue ' of public concern, our prior cases seemed to us to require that something actually be said on the topic, and rendered application of the public-concern test difficult to apply in that case because there was no traditional speech. Id. (second alteration in original) (quoting Wren v. Spurlock, 798 F.2d 1313, 1317 n. 1 (10th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1085, 107 S.Ct. 1287, 94 L.Ed.2d 145 (1987), and Wilson v. City of Littleton, 732 F.2d 765, 768 (10th Cir. 1984)). Third, we found that application of the public-concern test to speech that occurred at work or about a work-related subject makes sense because the test helps define public concern in an area in which the critical distinction should be whether the speech at issue takes on significance outside the workplace or whether it deals primarily with an employee's personal employment problem. Id. at 1564. However, we found that in a case involving nonverbal protected expression not at or about the workplace, the `speech' already takes place outside of the workplace and thus the purpose behind using the public concern test is simply irrelevant. Id. Finally, we determined that the public-concern test implies that the test is not intended to apply to areas in which the employee does not speak at work or about work, because the test is intended to weed out speech by an employee speaking as an employee upon matters only of personal interest. Id. Based on the incompatibility of the public-concern test in that case, we thus concluded that the public concern test does not apply when public employee nonverbal protected expression does not occur at work and is not about work. Id. In the case now before us, however, Ms. Leverington's statement was clearly verbal expression, it related to her work, and it potentially had an impact upon her employer. Unlike the difficulty in Flanagan in determining what comment was being made by ownership in a video store that rented sexually explicit videos, here we have no difficulty in evaluating Ms. Leverington's statement. Finally, as we discuss more fully below, Ms. Leverington's speech was speech as an employee upon matters only of personal interest. Id. Her statement on its face indicated that her personal animus toward Peters could impact any possible future interaction with him that she might have as a nurse at Memorial. This is precisely the kind of speech that that public-concern requirement is designed to weed out. Id. Thus, our pronouncement in Flanagan does not apply to Ms. Leverington's claim. Ms. Leverington's reliance on Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion in NTEU is also misplaced. In NTEU, the Supreme Court held that an honoraria ban prohibiting federal employees from accepting compensation for making speeches or writing articles, even when the subject of the speech or article does not have any connection with the employee's official duties, was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. 513 U.S. at 457, 115 S.Ct. 1003. Nowhere in NTEU did the Court hold that the public-concern test does not apply; in fact, the Court applied the public-concern test to the claims at issue. Id. at 466, 115 S.Ct. 1003. The comments by Justice O'Connor in her concurring opinion that Ms. Leverington refers to are a bit difficult to understand, but Justice O'Connor clearly did not intend to abrogate the public-concern test in this context because she immediately cites and quotes Connick. Id. at 480, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (O'Connor, J., concurring). Justice O'Connor observed that the plaintiffs in NTEU were only challenging the ban as it applied to off-hour speech bearing no nexus to Government employment. Id. (O'Connor, J., concurring). By contrast, here Ms. Leverington's speech directly made a nexus between her animus toward Peters and her employment as a nurse at Memorial. Finally, Ms. Leverington relies on the statement by the Seventh Circuit in Bonds that [s]peech by government employees, completely divorced from the employment context, is protected under the same standard as speech by those who are not government employees. 207 F.3d at 976. In making this statement, however, the court was identifying the general distinction between regulation of speech by the government acting as the government, on one hand, and regulation of speech by the government acting as an employer, on the other. The very next sentences in the opinion illustrate this distinction: The government qua employer, however, may apply legitimate employment standards in regulating the workplace and promoting efficient operation. This often requires the government to regulate the speech of its employees in a manner that, outside the employer-employee relationship, would violate the First Amendment. Id. at 976-77. This distinction has been recognized since at least Pickering, see Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 417-419, 126 S.Ct. 1951 (describing development of public-employee free-speech jurisprudence), and does not compel the conclusion that the public-concern test does not apply to Ms. Leverington's statement. Indeed, the Seventh Circuit in Bonds went on to apply the Pickering test, including the public-concern requirement, to the speech at issue. Bonds, 207 F.3d at 979-81. In short, Ms. Leverington has failed to identify any authority for the proposition that the public-concern test does not apply to her claim against Memorial. See City of San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 78-79, 82-84, 125 S.Ct. 521, 160 L.Ed.2d 410 (2004) (applying public-concern test to police officer's sale of sexually explicit videos of himself).
Whether Ms. Leverington's statement was on a matter of public concern is a question of law. Baca v. Sklar, 398 F.3d 1210, 1219 (10th Cir.2005). Matters of public concern are those of interest to the community, whether for social, political, or other reasons. Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1205 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also City of San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 83-84, 125 S.Ct. 521, 160 L.Ed.2d 410 (2004) ([P]ublic concern is something that is a subject of legitimate news interest; that is, a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public at the time of publication.). Whether an employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern must be determined by the content, form, and context of a given statement, as revealed by the whole record. Connick, 461 U.S. at 147-48, 103 S.Ct. 1684. Courts construe `public concern' very narrowly. Flanagan, 890 F.2d at 1563. Ms. Leverington argues that her statement that she hoped she never had Peters as a patient was criticism . . . akin to questioning the integrity of Officer Peters or revealing the impropriety of a government official. (Aplt. Br. at 31.) Thus, Ms. Leverington concludes, her statement was on a matter of public concern because [i]t has long been established that members of the public are free to criticize the government, including the police. Id. This argument is unpersuasive. First, it is not always enough that the subject matter of a communication be one in which there might be general interest; rather, what is actually said on the topic is the crux of the public concern content inquiry. Wren, 798 F.2d at 1317 n. 1; see also Wilson, 732 F.2d at 769 (In order for a public employee's speech to be `of public concern,' . . ., it is not always enough that its subject matter could in [certain] circumstances, [be] the topic of a communication to the public that might be of general interest. What is actually said on that topic must itself be of public concern. (alterations in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). A statement does not attain the status of public concern simply because its subject matter could, in different circumstances, have been the topic of a communication to the public that might be of general interest. Salehpoor v. Shahinpoor, 358 F.3d 782, 788 (10th Cir.2004) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Lee v. Nicholl, 197 F.3d 1291, 1295 (10th Cir.1999) ([I]t is insufficient that the speech relates generally to a subject matter of public importance.). Second, [i]n analyzing whether speech constitutes a matter of public concern, we may focus on the motive of the speaker and whether the speech is calculated to disclose misconduct or merely deals with personal disputes and grievances unrelated to the public's interest.  Lighton v. Univ. of Utah, 209 F.3d 1213, 1224 (10th Cir.2000) (emphasis added). Here, it is apparent that what Ms. Leverington actually saidthat she hoped she never had Peters as a patientdealt with a personal dispute or grievance with Peters and was not calculated to disclose misconduct. Indeed, Ms. Leverington alleges in her complaint that she felt that Officer Peters was rude, and that she made the statement because she hoped to never interact with him again. (Aplt. App'x at 5, ¶¶ 15, 17.) These allegations on their face indicate a personal grievance with Peters. [5] Because Ms. Leverington's statement as alleged was not on a matter of public concern, the district court properly dismissed her claim against Memorial, and we need not reach the other prongs of the Garcetti/Pickering test. See Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1203 (If the speech is not a matter of public concern, then the speech is unprotected and the inquiry ends.). [6]