Opinion ID: 798362
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Claims Against the School Board and Its Security Officers

Text: Although the allegedly unconstitutional arrest and prosecution were the focus of Green's case in the district court, the First Amendment claims against these defendants is the nub of his appeal. Green sued no member of the School Board in his or her individual capacity, including President Clinkscale, whose hand signal to McCrary is portrayed on appeal as an essential component of the alleged conspiracy to deprive Green of his First Amendment rights to attend the public meeting and to oppose the Board majority's actions. Instead, only the School Board in its official capacity was named as a defendant, and nowhere in the Fourth Amended Complaint was a § 1983 First Amendment claim against the Board clearly articulated. In its lengthy initial opinion denying security officers McCrary and Miller summary judgment on Green's First Amendment claims, the district court carefully framed this issue: The focal point of McCrary and Kestner Miller's First Amendment argument is what types of restriction the School Board could place on Green's speech. They spend substantial energy discussing the type of forum the School Board meeting was, the types of permissible restrictions on speech in that forum, and how those restrictions applied to Green's claim to show that they did not impermissibly restrain Green's speech at the School Board meeting. But Green's First Amendment claim is not that his speech was restricted at the School Board meeting. Instead, Green's claim is the Defendant Police Officers and School Security Officers retaliated against him for his past civil rights activities and his speech during the comment section of the meeting. Indeed, this is one of the few areas where his claims are relatively clear. (Emphasis in original.) In its second opinion, the district court restated this interpretation and noted, Green does not dispute my characterization of his First Amendment claims. The court then analyzed the claims in accordance with well-established First Amendment retaliation standards and concluded that Green failed to identify any evidence that Defendant School Security Officers retaliated against him [because of] his past civil rights activities or his comments during the public comment portion of the Meeting. Therefore, the court concluded, Green failed to show a causal connection between Defendant School Security Officers' retaliatory animus and Green's subsequent injury, his arrest and prosecution. On appeal, Green again articulates only a claim of First Amendment retaliation. He notes that McCrary, a former police officer, admitted knowing Green was a well known civil rights activist and also knew Green had spoken out against the actions of the School Board majority at the November 18 meeting and at prior Board meetings. Therefore, he argues, a reasonable jury could find that McCrary, acting at the request of Board President Clinkscale, falsely told the police officers that Green was loud and disruptive and asked the police to arrest Green for `peace disturbance' because of Green's First Amendment activities. This retaliation claim fails for the reasons stated by the district court. Assuming as we must that Green was not in fact disruptive, he presented no facts, only his own unsupported belief, refuting the testimony by security officers McCrary and Miller that their actions were not motivated by retaliatory animus based either on Green's history of civil rights activism or on his remarks during the public comment portion of the November 18 meeting. Indeed, as the district court emphasized, after three years of discovery, Green failed to identify what speech allegedly gave rise to the alleged retaliation. Bare allegations of retaliatory animus cannot withstand a properly supported motion for summary judgment. Moreover, neither McCrary nor Miller arrested Green. Rather, McCrary told the police officers that Green was disruptive and refused to leave, the officers then asked Green to leave, and he was arrested when he refused their request. We agree with the district court that this sequence fails to show a sufficient causal connection between the actions of McCrary and Miller and Green's subsequent arrest and prosecution. As in Baribeau v. City of Minneapolis, 596 F.3d 465, 481 (8th Cir.2010), accepting Green's version of the facts and viewing the conduct of the police officers and the security officers in tandem, there is no evidence to suggest that the decision to arrest ... was not based on an actual but overly exaggerated belief that Green had been disruptive. Though we agree with the district court's analysis of Green's First Amendment retaliation claim, the summary judgment record suggests a broader First Amendment issue that we will note but not resolve. For First Amendment purposes, the School Board meeting was what has variously been called a nonpublic or a limited public forum. The School Board could reasonably restrict public access to this forum based on the subject matter of the speech, on the identity or status of the speaker, or on the practical need to restrict access for reasons of manageability or the lack of resources to meet total demand. Victory Through Jesus Sports v. Lee's Summit R-7 Sch. Dist., 640 F.3d 329, 334-35 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 592, 181 L.Ed.2d 424 (2011). This necessarily included the authority to remove an unruly or disruptive member of the audience to prevent his badgering, constant interruptions, and disregard for the rules of decorum. Eichenlaub, 385 F.3d at 281; see White v. City of Norwalk, 900 F.2d 1421, 1425-26 (9th Cir. 1990). But having chosen to conduct its business in public and to hear citizen views, the Board could not deny access to the meeting and, while it could limit the subject matter of citizen comments, it could not discriminate against a speaker based on his viewpoint. See City of Madison, Joint Sch. Dist. No. 8 v. Wis. Emp't Relations Comm'n, 429 U.S. 167, 176, 97 S.Ct. 421, 50 L.Ed.2d 376 (1976); Galena v. Leone, 638 F.3d 186, 198-99 (3d Cir. 2011); Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, 629 F.3d 966, 975-76 (9th Cir.2010) (en banc), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 112, 181 L.Ed.2d 37 (2011). Green's First Amendment argument, though articulated as a retaliation claim, was that Defendants could not deny his right to be at the November 18 meeting because it was a public forum. He had a right to remain at the meeting if he did nothing wrong and could not be removed if School Board officials did not want him there because of his likeliness to speak out again on a matter that would embarrass the board majority. The theory is sound, it is not entirely governed by First Amendment retaliation standards, and the genuine dispute whether Green was in fact disruptive  with his denial supported by three other members of the audience  seems to put the theory in play. Moreover, the three supporting affidavits provided some evidence that presiding Board President Clinkscale signaled McCrary before he directed Miller to ask Green to leave the meeting. Absent evidence of personal animus, the question whether McCrary acted under orders from School Board officials in asking Green to leave, or instead exercised his independent judgment as head of security in determining the best way to prevent disruption of the meeting, is material to a complete First Amendment analysis. But this theory, however viable, was neither pleaded nor explicitly argued in the district court. Indeed, Green did not challenge the court's clear warning, in its initial decision issued long before it ruled on the claims against McCrary and Miller, that it construed Green's ambiguous pleadings as asserting only a First Amendment retaliation claim. Moreover, Green did not join as individual defendants Clinkscale, the new Superintendent, or any other policymaker. Nor did he conduct discovery that would have clarified what plans the Board made prior to the meeting to control the anticipated disruption, what actions Board members took or directed as the tumultuous meeting progressed, and whether there was any focus on Green or others in the audience opposed to the Board majority's policies. Absent such evidence, [3] the most plausible inference is that security officers McCrary and Miller were simply doing their job of maintaining security and order when they asked one member of an unruly audience to leave. If they mistakenly asked a non-disruptive person to leave, that was unfortunate, but it did not violate the First Amendment. Given this factual record, the pleadings, and the First Amendment issue actually presented, we conclude that the district court's disposition of these claims should be affirmed. Green also argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment dismissing his Fourth Amendment claims against McCrary and Miller. As the district court noted, a serious flaw in these claims is that the security officers were not the state actors who arrested Green. The security officers did not restrict his freedom of movement in any way. Moreover, the Fourth Amendment claims are premised on Green's unlawful arrest, and we have affirmed the district court's conclusion that the arresting officers had arguable probable cause to arrest Green for refusing their command that he leave the meeting. Of course, the police officers' probable cause was based upon McCrary's reliable but allegedly false information. That raises a question, far from clearly established, whether McCrary, too, is entitled to qualified immunity. For example, a state actor who submits an objectively unreasonable warrant affidavit that causes an unconstitutional arrest may not be entitled to qualified immunity from Fourth Amendment damage claims. See Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 344-45 & n. 7, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986). But here, both the police officers and McCrary testified that McCrary only told the police that Green was disruptive and had refused a request to leave. He left the situation in the hands of the police, and Green was not arrested and removed until he refused to obey the officers' command that he leave. Thus, even if McCrary was mistaken in believing Green was one of those causing the disruption, this was neither an objectively unreasonable way to proceed when Green refused a request to leave by the School Board's authorized agents, nor were the actions of McCrary and Miller the proximate cause of Green's subsequent arrest and prosecution. The district court did not err in dismissing these Fourth Amendment claims.