Opinion ID: 593224
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: first amendment due process

Text: 52 The defendants argue that they have a complete defense to Churchill's claims because, as Churchill alleges, they were unaware of the actual content of her January 16, 1987 conversation with Perkins-Graham. Under Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 287, 97 S.Ct. 568, 576, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977), a plaintiff is obligated to show that [her] conduct was constitutionally protected, and that this conduct was a 'substantial factor'--or to put it in other words, that it was a 'motivating factor'  in the termination decision. Thus, the defendants contend, even if the discussion involved protected speech, Churchill has failed to demonstrate that the fact that she was discussing matters of public concern was a motivating cause of her termination. In order to get around this Mt. Healthy defense, the plaintiff argues that the hospital's failure to properly investigate the actual content of her speech violated her right to due process under the First Amendment. Notwithstanding the lack of a Due Process Clause in the First Amendment and the lack of case law holding that an at-will public employee has a right to a hearing before he or she may be discharged for engaging in protected speech, Churchill asserts that we must create such a right in order to protect the free-speech rights of public employees. She insists that otherwise employers may avoid liability for violating employees' free-speech rights through deliberate ignorance of the content of the speech, thereby creating a chilling effect on speech that opposes official policy. We disagree that it is necessary to create a First Amendment due process right in order to protect the rights of public employees to speak out on matters of public concern, for we believe that Mt. Healthy provides adequate safeguards regardless of whether the employer actually knew the precise content of the statements for which it fired the employee. 53 In Mt. Healthy, the Supreme Court considered the claims of a non-tenured teacher whom the school board decided not to rehire (and thus not grant him tenure). The Court ruled that this violated his free-speech rights because the decision was partially based on a conversation the teacher had with a local radio station announcer. The Court held: 54 Doyle's claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments are not defeated by the fact that he did not have tenure. Even though he could have been discharged for no reason whatever, and had no constitutional right to a hearing prior to the decision not to rehire him, he may nonetheless establish a claim to reinstatement if the decision not to rehire him was made by reason of his exercise of constitutionally protected First Amendment freedoms. 55 Id. at 283, 97 S.Ct. at 574 (citations omitted). 9 The Court further held that the plaintiff must establish that he would not have been dismissed absent the constitutionally protected conduct: 56 The constitutional principle at stake is sufficiently vindicated if such an employee is placed in no worse a position than if he had not engaged in the conduct. A borderline or marginal candidate should not have the employment question resolved against him because of constitutionally protected conduct. But that same candidate ought not to be able, by engaging in such conduct, to prevent his employer from assessing his performance record and reaching a decision not to rehire on the basis of that record, simply because the protected conduct makes the employer more certain of the correctness of its decision. 57 Id. at 285-86, 97 S.Ct. at 575. Thus, when an employee claims to have been terminated for engaging in protected speech, the public employer must establish by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision as to [the employee's termination] even in the absence of the protected conduct. Id. at 287, 97 S.Ct. at 576. The defendants allege they have carried that burden, for they allege that they fired Churchill for complaining in general rather than for engaging in conversation about the cross-training policy. But the point of Mt. Healthy is the protected conduct, rather than the public employer's knowledge of the precise content of the speech. The hospital admits it discharged Churchill for her conduct in speaking with a fellow employee during a break because they viewed the speech as critical and disruptive. If on remand the jury determines that the point of Churchill's conversation was to raise the issues of inadequate nurse staffing resulting in inept patient care and even danger to patients because of the allegedly ill-conceived and inept cross-training policy rather than simply to complain, then she was engaged in protected conduct. We hold that when a public employer fires an employee for engaging in speech, and that speech is later found to be protected under the First Amendment, the employer is liable for violating the employee's free-speech rights regardless of what the employer knew at the time of termination. If the employer chooses to discharge the employee without sufficient knowledge of her protected speech as a result of an inadequate investigation into the employee's conduct, the employer runs the risk of eventually being required to remedy any wrongdoing whether it was deliberate or accidental. 10