Opinion ID: 775784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Director of Personnel

Text: 36 (emphasis added). See also Majority Opinion at 469 n. 10. There is no reference to the possible consequences of a violation; to the person who has direct authority to apply the policy; or to the procedures by which any complaint might be resolved or decided. 37 By defining sexual harassment to include, in part, sexually explicit derogatory statements or sexually discriminatory remarks, this sweeping policy forbids a broad class of protected speech. Even limiting harassment to speech or conduct which is offensive or objectionable to the recipient, or causes the recipient to feel discomfort or humiliation, or interferes with job performance is inherently vague, dependent for its meaning on the unpredictable and varying sensibilities of different persons. Such a definition inevitably outlaws a substantial amount of protected speech. It is clear that under our Constitution the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers. Street v. New York, 394 U.S. 576, 592 (1969). The college's policy proscribes speech based upon the listener's subjective feeling of offense, and could thus render as prohibited harassment, in the view of an especially sensitive listener, nearly all speech related to sex. A straightforward application of the policy would allow, for example, the college to punish a student or professor who, in a classroom discussion on the roles of women and men in the military, makes broad generalized statements about the sexes that someone in the class finds discomforting or offensive. This silencing of discussion is especially troubling when it involves teachers in a university setting because when we impose [a] straight jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities[, we] imperil the future of our Nation. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957) (plurality opinion). 38 A statute, regulation, or policy is impermissibly vague when it does not allow a person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 (1972); see Marchi v. Board of Cooperative Educ. Servs. of Albany, 173 F.3d 469, 480 (2d Cir.), cert. denied 528 U.S. 869 (1999). Where a vague statute abuts upon sensitive areas of basic First Amendment freedoms, it operates to inhibit the exercise of those freedoms. Grayned, 408 U.S. at 109 (alterations and internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The college's policy is impermissibly vague on its face. Even if one interprets the policy to avoid reaching sexually discriminatory remarks protected under the First Amendment so as to avoid overbreadth, the terms of the policy do not indicate or warn where the boundary between permissible and impermissible speech might be. Limiting sexually discriminatory or sexually derogatory remarks to those perceived as offensive, humiliat[ing], objectionable, or discomfort[ing] by an aggrieved person does not provide any objective definition as to what such remarks might be and who, as a final matter, is to define them. Unavoidably, faculty and students alike are left to guess at [the policy's] meaning and differ as to its application. Keyishian, 385 U.S. at 604. 39 Indeed, it is unclear whether a complaint must be lodged in order to activate the policy, or whether, as in this case, sanctions can be exacted by the administration on its own initiative without any complaint at all. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters... for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application. Grayned, 408 U.S. at 108-109. The college's policy states that sexual harassment grievances may be filed by employees; however, it does not state whether, pursuant to the policy, the college may fire summarily a faculty member without being afforded opportunity for some kind of a hearing. Bd. of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 570 n.7 (1972). 40 Because the law prohibiting overbroad and vague policies that restrict speech in a classroom was clearly established at the time of Vega's discharge, and the college policy on sexual harassment was by its terms both overbroad and vague, I would conclude that it was not objectively reasonable for the college to fire Vega pursuant to that policy. Any reasonably competent and well-informed college official, in so much as setting eyes on such a policy, could have recognized that the policy's terms were so sweeping-startlingly sweeping in a context where, unlike a business or industrial setting, hierarchies are blurred and teachers perform their duties under the most general directions and virtually no supervision-that it would have violated not only Vega's First Amendment rights, but also the college's own policies on academic freedom. 41 The college's policy on academic freedom provides in relevant part that faculty members may, without limitation, discuss their own subject in the classroom; they may not, however, claim as their right the privilege of discussing in their classroom controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. This college policy substantially tracks the language of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Academic Freedom and Tenure 33 (Louis Joughin ed., 1969), an organization founded to promote and protect academic freedom in higher education. 5 See Walter P. Metzger, Academic Freedom in the Age of the University 194 (6th prtg. 1969) (Metzger, the preeminent student of the history of academic freedom in the United States, observes: To examine the activities and acheivements of the AAUP since its establishment is to view the main outlines of the problems of academic freedom in the twentieth century.). The AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure has been relied upon as persuasive authority by courts to shed light on, and to resolve, a wide range of cases related to academic freedom and tenure. See, e.g., Mayberry v. Dees, 663 F.2d 502, 513 (4th Cir. 1981) (quoting from an AAUP report deemed an authoritative source on tenure, [T]he [Association of American Colleges] and the AAUP were the framers of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the fundamental document on the subject.); Jiminez v. Almodovar, 650 F.2d 363, 368 (1st Cir. 1981) (American court decisions [on tenure] are consistent with the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure widely adopted by institutions of higher education and professional organizations of faculty members.); Browzin v. Catholic Univ. of Am., 527 F.2d 843, 848 & n.8 (D.C. Cir. 1975) ([The 1940 Statement] represent[s] widely shared norms within the academic community, having achieved acceptance by organizations which represent teachers as well as organizations which represent college administrators and governing boards.); see generally Gray v. Bd. of Higher Educ., City of New York, 692 F.2d 901, 907 (2d Cir. 1982) (Certain AAUP policy statements have assisted the courts in the past in resolving a wide range of educational controversies, such as off-campus speech by professors.); Adamian v. Jacobsen, 523 F.2d 929, 934 (9th Cir. 1975). Since students uttered sexually-explicit terms during a concededly legitimate ten-minute writing exercise in the classroom in 1994, no college administrator in 1994 reasonably could have concluded that Vega's actions violated the college's policy on sexual harassment or fell outside the protection of the policy on academic freedom. See Wilson v. Layne, 526 U.S. 603, 614 (1999) (government officials are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). 42 The majority's reliance upon diLeo v. Greenfield, 541 F.2d 949 (2d Cir. 1976), Majority Opinion at [22], to support the conclusion that the defendants' actions were objectively reasonable given the state of the law at the time Vega was fired, is misplaced. In that case, we upheld a state statute allowing the discharge of a junior high school teacher for other due and sufficient cause and declined to find that the statute was unconstitutionally vague or overbroad. 6 diLeo, 541 F.2d at 954. We held in diLeo that the teacher had engaged in a persistent pattern of neglecting his professional duties and harassing and humiliating students. Id. at 953. We reached this conclusion after observing that the teacher had met with, and been cautioned by, school administrators for his behavior several times before and that he reasonably knew that the behavior was the cause for the discharge. Id. Moreover, we limited the challenged provisions of the statute by construing its vague terms in light of the teaching- specific restrictions in the remainder of the statute and by concluding that other due and sufficient cause was limited only to conduct relating to a teacher's professional duties. Id. at 954-55. 43 Indeed, on its facts, diLeo, a case decided more than two decades before the episode at issue here, should have alerted the defendants in Vega's case that its actions were likely to violate Vega's First Amendment rights. Unlike in diLeo, the college administrators here did not meet with Vega or caution him prior to firing him. Furthermore, the vague and overbroad college policy on sexual harassment at issue here is not susceptible to a limiting construction, as was the statute in diLeo, because there are no other specific terms to constrain the policy's broad restrictions. The college policy on sexual harassment did not in its own terms limit its sweep to conduct outside the protection of the First Amendment. 44 The majority also relies on the decision of a panel of the Ninth Circuit in Cohen v. San Bernadino Valley Coll., 92 F.3d 968 (9th Cir. 1996), for the notion that a court in 2001 can conclude that it was reasonable for school officials, in 1994, not to know that this policy on sexual harassment applied to a faculty member's classroom work might violate the First Amendment. Majority Opinion at [22]. See Cohen, 92 F.3d at 971 (Neither the Supreme Court nor [the Ninth Circuit] has determined what scope of First Amendment protection is to be given a public college professor's classroom speech). I disagree. Although in determining whether a defendant is entitled to qualified immunity this Court must carefully define the scope of the right assertedly violated so that it would be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right, Shechter v. Comptroller of the City of New York, 79 F.3d 265, 270-271 (2d Cir. 1996), it has never been required that the right be defined so narrowly as to require precedent that is on all fours with the case at hand. Jeffries v. Harleston, 21 F.3d 1238, 1248 (2d Cir.), vacated on other grounds, 513 U.S. 996 (1994). Vague and overbroad speech codes in an academic setting, whether they seek to restrict ideas related to political affiliation, as in Keyishian, or speech related to sex, have long been understood to run afoul of the First Amendment. See UWM Post, Inc. v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Wisc. Sys., 774 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Wis. 1991); Doe v. Univ. of Mich., 721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989). The defendants failed to realize that their sexual harassment policy was vague and overbroad because of their own inadequate training and judgment, not because the law on the subject was unclear. 45 On the facts presented by this plaintiff, the defendants' decision to fire the plaintiff based on a vague and overbroad policy on sexual harassment was not objectively reasonable. Accordingly, the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity on plaintiff's First Amendment claim of vagueness and overbreadth.