Opinion ID: 216201
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Worrell test

Text: The framework set forth in Pickering and Garcetti is traditionally applied in free-speech cases in which the public employer is the same individual or entity that takes the adverse action at issue against the employee. See Worrell, 219 F.3d at 1209-10 (noting that the Pickering balancing has been most frequently applied to adverse actions taken by employersindividuals. . . who have the authority to make hiring and firing decisions and take other personnel actions.). The Court in Worrell was presented with a slightly different situation; specifically, a free-speech retaliation claim by a public employee against a third party for allegedly causing the employee-plaintiff's employer to take the adverse action at issue. Id. The plaintiff in Worrell was a former FBI agent who, in 1986, testified as an expert for the defense in a criminal case involving the killing of an undercover agent for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (OBNDD). Id. at 1201. This testimony generated considerable anger among OBNDD agents. Id. at 1202. Approximately nine years later, the plaintiff applied for an investigative position with the District Attorney's office for the Twentieth Judicial District of Oklahoma, and was offered a position as coordinator for the District Attorney's drug task force. Id. However, the District Attorney subsequently rescinded the offer after an OBNDD agent, who had previously offered the assistance of the OBNDD to the task force, informed the District Attorney that he did not trust the plaintiff and would not work with him, based partly on the plaintiff's testimony nine years earlier. Id. The District Attorney explained to the plaintiff that he was rescinding the offer because he was concerned that the OBNDD would not cooperate or coordinate with the task force if the plaintiff were hired, and he (the District Attorney) felt that the cooperation and coordination of the OBNDD was essential. Id. The plaintiff sued the District Attorney, the OBNDD agent, and certain of the agent's superiors for violation of the plaintiff's free-speech rights under the First Amendment. Id. at 1203. The court applied the Pickering test to the plaintiff's claims against the District Attorney as the plaintiff's prospective employer, and concluded that the plaintiff could not satisfy the balancing prong as a matter of law. Id. at 1207-09. However, with respect to the OBNDD agents, the Court found that there were serious risks in applying the Pickering balancing test to retaliation claims against an official outside the employing agency, because to do so could effectively give such a third party an impermissible veto over the employer's personnel or contractual decisions. Id. at 1210. Specifically, a third party, upon whose cooperation an employer depended, could refuse to cooperate with the employer unless a particular employee was fired, demoted, or transferred. Id. at 1210-11. In this way, the third party could effectively create the very workplace disruption that, under the Pickering approach, could be used to justify the limitation of First Amendment rights. Id. at 1211. Instead, the Court set forth a three-part test to be used in free-speech retaliation claims against a defendant who is not the plaintiff's employer and when there is no contractual relationship between them. Id. at 1212. In order to succeed on such a claim, a plaintiff must prove: (1) that the plaintiff was engaged in constitutionally protected activity; (2) that the defendant's actions caused the plaintiff to suffer an injury that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in that activity; and (3) that the defendant's adverse action was substantially motivated as a response to the plaintiff's exercise of constitutionally protected conduct. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).