Opinion ID: 204285
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Threshold Inquiry: Applicability of Garcetti

Text: We can envision many situations where a public employee might speak in a manner deemed objectionable by governmental actors other than his or her actual employer. Examples include statements made by members of statefederal crime task forces or any multi-government or multi-agency organizations. In these types of joint ventures, it is possible that personnel oversight may be distributed or delegated, and governmental actors other than the speaker's actual employer may be in a position to retaliate against, or otherwise chill, speech. In such situations, where an employee who asserts First Amendment rights speaks against an entity other than his or her actual employer, a hard question arises: should courts analyze the purportedly protected speech and alleged adverse action under the standards that apply when a state actor has denied a government benefit based on a normal citizen's speech or under the standards for less-protected speech as per Garcetti and Pickering. In the present case, Dempsey argued the answer was simple and clear. The district court appears to have agreed, addressing the question in the context of Garcetti's citizen speech or employee speech inquiry. The court concluded: Dempsey's speech that is at issue here was not made in connection with any official duties as an employee of the City of Omaha. While he may have spoken in his official capacity as the Police Chief of the City of Elkhorn, he was not employed by the City of Omaha at the time he made the statements in question. The balance between a plaintiff's right of free speech as a citizen and a defendant government entity's interest are not called into question where the government entity is not the employer. Drawing all inferences in favor of Dempsey, the Court concludes that he spoke as a citizen. (Emphasis added). Although we agree with the district court's ultimate conclusion in this case, we do not necessarily agree that the inquiry will always be as straightforward as suggested by the district court. While this literal approach provides ease of application and clarity for employers and litigants, it leaves little room for employer control of speech within the setting of multi-employer ventures or task forces. The degree to which employers distribute and delegate authority over one another's employees presumably varies widely, and it is possible that the concerns addressed in Garcetti and Pickering merit consideration in such settings. Here, however, we need not and do not purport to resolve this question in any context other than the limited facts at hand. The present case simply does not involve a situation where governments have come together in an ongoing cooperative spirit to achieve a common goal or where ongoing supervision of employees is delegated to a cooperating agency or government. Rather, the present case involves a hostile, politicized, and heavily resisted annexation of a small city by a larger city. The two years of litigation that held up the annexation are evidence of this fact. We simply do not view the present case as analogous to the more difficult example of public joint ventures. In this context, we find nothing in Garcetti or Pickering to suggest a non-employer should be entitled to control the speech of the target entity's employees. We see little potential benefit to the public's interest in the free flow of information or the efficient provision of government services from treating an annexing city as the de facto employer of the target city's employees. To hold otherwise would risk the suppression of information surrounding a political event: the expansion of one municipality and the dissolution of an other. To the extent speech occurs when a political, government-changing act such as an annexation is not yet complete, the public has a strong interest in understanding the dynamics and consequences of the potential annexation. To the extent speech occurs when the annexation is actually, or effectively, complete, the public's interest continues: members of the public are entitled to learn about the practices of their newly and involuntarily acquired public officials. We hold that Garcetti simply does not apply to Dempsey's speech. [4]