Opinion ID: 2631230
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Pickering Balancing Test

Text: {28} In determining whether an employee's speech involves a matter of public concern, we evaluate the content, form, and context of the speech to determine whether it can be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community. Connick, 461 U.S. at 146-48, 103 S.Ct. 1684. In this case, we do not believe there is any serious doubt that Garcia-Montoya's speech involved a matter of public concern. {29} Montoya and Andermann claim that Garcia-Montoya's speech did not involve a matter of public concern because her comments were made in private, because the speech involved internal personnel matters for which Garcia-Montoya was responsible in the STO, and because Garcia-Montoya indicated that she spoke out about the personnel decisions as an employee and not to express herself politically. Defendants claim these facts indicate that Garcia-Montoya was not assisting the public in its analysis of the performance of the office. {30} As Defendants point out, it is not determinative in this case that Garcia-Montoya privately communicated her concerns to Montoya and Andermann rather than making her concerns public. In Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 439 U.S. 410, 411-13, 99 S.Ct. 693, 58 L.Ed.2d 619 (1979), a teacher met privately with the school principal on two occasions to express her belief that the school's employment policies and practices were racially discriminatory. The employer contended that the teacher's remarks were not protected by the First Amendment because they were made in private. The Supreme Court held that [n]either the Amendment itself nor our decisions indicate that [the freedom of speech] is lost to the public employee who arranges to communicate privately with his [or her] employer rather than to spread his [or her] views before the public. Id. at 415-16, 99 S.Ct. 693. Additionally, [t]he fact that the employee statements were made as a part of the employee's official functions [is] only one of the relevant factors in the First Amendment analysis. Koch v. City of Hutchinson, 847 F.2d 1436, 1442 (10th Cir. 1988). {31} In Connick, an assistant district attorney who was dissatisfied with her employer's plan to transfer her circulated a questionnaire to fellow employees asking their opinion about the office transfer policy, office morale, the need for a grievance committee, the level of confidence in supervisors, and whether employees felt pressured to work in political campaigns. Connick, 461 U.S. at 141, 103 S.Ct. 1684. The Supreme Court elaborated on the proper focus of an inquiry into whether speech involves matters of public concern. We view [most of] the questions ... as mere extensions of [the employee's] dispute over her transfer to another section.... [W]e do not believe these questions are of public import in evaluating the performance of the District Attorney as an elected official.... While discipline and morale in the workplace are related to an agency's efficient performance of its duties, the focus of [the] questions is not to evaluate the performance of the office but rather to gather ammunition for another round of controversy with her superiors. Connick, 461 U.S. at 148, 103 S.Ct. 1684. {32} In this case, it is true that Garcia-Montoya's statements involved matters that could be characterized as part of her official duties relating to personnel. If her statements had only concerned routine matters of personnel, we believe, based on Connick, that this case would present a close question. For example, Garcia-Montoya objected to the firing of two employees based on her interpretation of personnel rules without expressing her belief that the terminations were politically motivated. These statements could be interpreted as merely indicating a routine disagreement with personnel action and are therefore similar to the majority of questions posed of coworkers in Connick in that, if made public, they would convey no information at all other than the fact that a single employee is upset with the status quo. Connick, 461 U.S. at 148, 103 S.Ct. 1684; cf. Koch, 847 F.2d at 1447 (concluding that a matter of public concern was not involved in a written report [that] was simply one of many routine official reports which are processed through the City's local governmental agencies on a daily basis). While as a matter of good judgment, public officials should be receptive to constructive criticism offered by their employees, the First Amendment does not require a public office to be run as a roundtable for employee complaints over internal office affairs. Connick, 461 U.S. at 149, 103 S.Ct. 1684. Thus, if these were the only statements made by Garcia-Montoya, it would be necessary to examine more closely whether Garcia-Montoya's speech implicated the efficiency and effectiveness of the STO during Montoya's term of office. See Connick, 461 U.S. at 148 & n. 8, 103 S.Ct. 1684; Powell v. Basham, 921 F.2d 165, 167 (8th Cir.1990) (stating that an employee's criticism of [the employer's] promotion system and practices went beyond his own dissatisfaction and involved concerns expressed by other department employees and concluding that speech which informs superiors of the adverse impact the department's promotion practices could have on its operations and on the efficiency of the office involves matters of public concern). {33} However, we need not engage in such an analysis because Garcia-Montoya's statements to Montoya and Andermann went well beyond routine personnel matters. Garcia-Montoya expressed her belief to Andermann that he had fired a different employee for political reasons, told Montoya on more than one occasion that she disagreed with the political nature in which he filled various positions, and refused Andermann's request to interview individuals on the ground that she believed they were illegally pre-selected. In Connick, while the Court determined that most of the questions posed to the plaintiff's coworkers did not involve matters of public concern, the Court reached a different conclusion with respect to the question of whether the coworkers felt pressured to work on political campaigns for members of the office. Connick, 461 U.S. at 149, 103 S.Ct. 1684. The Court determined that the political campaign question implicated a coercion of belief in violation of fundamental constitutional rights. Id. [T]here is a demonstrated interest in this country that government service should depend upon meritorious performance rather than political service. Id. Like the political campaign question in Connick, Garcia-Montoya's speech constituted an expression of belief that Montoya improperly based his personnel decisions on political affiliation instead of meritorious performance. In effect, Garcia-Montoya was asserting a violation of the First Amendment rights of others and voicing an objection to what she believed was unconstitutional and illegal action by an elected official. Garcia-Montoya therefore sought to bring to light actual or potential wrongdoing or breach of public trust. Id. at 148, 103 S.Ct. 1684. This type of speech is analogous to the complaints about sexual harassment and discrimination in Martinez and about racial discrimination in Givhan because it involves a matter inherently of public concern, Connick, 461 U.S. at 148 n. 8, 103 S.Ct. 1684. See Martinez, 1996 NMSC 061, ¶ 27, 122 N.M. 507, 927 P.2d 1045 (Through ... legislation society has voiced its concern with and condemnation of sexual discrimination and favoritism in the workplace.); Connick, 461 U.S. at 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684 (Although the subject matter of [the plaintiff's] statements were not the issue before the Court [in Givhan ], it is clear that her statements concerning the School District's allegedly racially discriminatory policies involved a matter of public concern.). The Supreme Court clearly considers it apparent that this type of information is a matter of interest to the community upon which it is essential that public employees be able to speak out freely without fear of retaliatory dismissal. Connick, 461 U.S. at 149, 103 S.Ct. 1684. As a result, we again find it unnecessary to decide ... the degree of deference that must be accorded to the employer when the terminated employee's speech addresses only matters of internal office policy. Martinez, 1996 NMSC 061, ¶ 31, 122 N.M. 507, 927 P.2d 1045. We conclude that Garcia-Montoya's speech involves matters of public concern. {34} With respect to the second factor in the four-part test, courts must attempt to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731. See generally Waters v. Churchill, 511 U.S. 661, 672-75, 114 S.Ct. 1878, 128 L.Ed.2d 686 (1994) (plurality opinion). There are a number of factors to consider in performing the Pickering balancing, including whether the statement impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among co-workers, has a detrimental impact on close working relationships for which personal loyalty and confidence are necessary, or impedes the performance of the speaker's duties or interferes with the regular operation of the enterprise. Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 388, 107 S.Ct. 2891, 97 L.Ed.2d 315 (1987). The State bears a burden of justifying the discharge on legitimate grounds, Rankin, 483 U.S. at 388, 107 S.Ct. 2891, and the State's burden in justifying a particular discharge varies depending upon the nature of the employee's expression. Connick, 461 U.S. at 150, 103 S.Ct. 1684. The focus is on the effective functioning of the public employer's enterprise. Rankin, 483 U.S. at 388, 107 S.Ct. 2891. Thus, Montoya and Andermann must produce evidence of an actual disruption in public services, Martinez, 1996 NMSC 061, ¶ 29, 122 N.M. 507, 927 P.2d 1045, or evidence sufficient to support a reasonable belief that the speech would disrupt the department, undermine their authority, or destroy close working relationships in the STO, see Connick, 461 U.S. at 154, 103 S.Ct. 1684. See generally id. at 152, 103 S.Ct. 1684 ([W]e do not see the necessity for an employer to allow events to unfold to the extent that the disruption of the office and the destruction of working relationships is manifest before taking action.). {35} Because this case involves both the freedom of political belief and the freedom of speech, we note as an initial matter that at least one federal Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the determination that an individual serves in a position subject to political patronage dismissal under Elrod-Branti renders the Pickering balancing test inapplicable to a Section 1983 claim based on freedom of speech. See Biggs v. Best, Best & Krieger, 189 F.3d 989, 994-95 (9th Cir.1999). We do not agree with this approach. The political patronage inquiry under Elrod-Branti can involve many of the same considerations that inform the Pickering balancing test. Both analyses take into account the need for loyalty and confidence from a public employee and the extent to which activity protected by the First Amendment affects the performance of a public office. However, the United States Supreme Court has indicated in discussing Elrod-Branti that the Court's cases call for a different, though related, inquiry where a government employer takes adverse action on account of an employee or service provider's right of free speech. There, we apply the balancing test from [ Pickering ].... [T]he inquiry is whether the affiliation requirement is a reasonable one, so it is inevitable that some case-by-case adjudication will be required even where political affiliation is the test the government has imposed. A reasonableness analysis will also accommodate those many cases ... where specific instances of the employee's speech or expression, which require balancing in the Pickering context, are intermixed with a political affiliation requirement. In those cases, the balancing Pickering mandates will be inevitable. O'Hare Truck Serv., Inc. v. City of Northlake, 518 U.S. 712, 719, 116 S.Ct. 2353, 135 L.Ed.2d 874 (1996). {36} We believe that the distinction between an Elrod-Branti analysis and a Pickering balancing lies in the focus of the potential interference with performance; whereas the Elrod-Branti analysis focuses generally on the potential detrimental impact of an opposing political affiliation, Pickering focuses more specifically on the content, form, place, and manner of the speech at issue and requires a balancing of the importance of the speech with the functioning of the public office. Presumably, even employees holding policymaking positions should be entitled to speak out freely on matters of fundamental social and political importance, such as unlawful discrimination in a public workplace, as long as the manner, time, and place in which the speech is made does not unduly disrupt the functioning of the governmental entity. See Barker, 215 F.3d at 1139-40 (reversing the grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer on a claim of infringement of free speech, despite the employee's status as a policymaker, because, under Pickering, no actual evidence indicates that the City experienced any disruption, that any such disruption was reasonably predicted, or that the City itself had any particular interest in limiting [the] speech). As a result, we conclude that in cases involving a claim by a public employee of adverse employment action based on both the freedom of political belief and the freedom of speech we must separately address the Elrod-Branti analysis and the Pickering balancing test. Barker, 215 F.3d at 1139 (stating that the two different analyses remain distinct and separate and citing other cases following this approach). {37} In this case, Montoya and Andermann do not contend at this stage that Garcia-Montoya's statements disrupted the office or undermined their authority. Garcia-Montoya made the statements privately to Andermann and Montoya, and there is no indication that the statements affected other employees in the office. Cf. Rankin, 483 U.S. at 388-89 & n. 13, 107 S.Ct. 2891 ([A] purely private statement on a matter of public concern will rarely, if ever, justify discharge of a public employee.). Additionally, similar to our political affiliation analysis in this case, we believe that Montoya and Andermann have failed to demonstrate sufficient facts to support a close working relationship requiring personal loyalty and confidence, and in any event, they have failed to show that Garcia-Montoya's speech would seriously undermine the effectiveness of the working relationship between them. Pickering, 391 U.S. at 570 n. 3, 88 S.Ct. 1731. Indeed, Garcia-Montoya alleged that Andermann agreed with her on one occasion that a particular personnel decision was politically motivated but lamented that he was carrying out Montoya's instructions. Garcia-Montoya also alleged that Montoya listened to her criticisms, accepted the information, and took whatever course of action he deemed appropriate. There is some evidence in the record that Garcia-Montoya's speech affected her ability to perform the duties of her position. For example, Garcia-Montoya declined to participate in interviews of applicants she believed were pre-selected on the basis of political affiliation. However, based on the limited facts provided by Montoya and Andermann and the important interests implicated by Garcia-Montoya's speech, we are unable to conclude as a matter of law that Defendants have carried their burden of justifying the employment action on legitimate grounds. Cf. Connick, 461 U.S. at 152, 103 S.Ct. 1684 (We caution that a stronger showing may be necessary if the employee's speech more substantially involved matters of public concern.); Martinez, 1996 NMSC 061, ¶ 31, 122 N.M. 507, 927 P.2d 1045 (noting that speech touching upon matters of public concern critical of a supervisor or other members of an office will invariably cause some disruption and that the relevant inquiry in the Pickering balance is the degree of disruption in relation to the importance of the speech). Viewing the facts on summary judgment in a light most favorable to the nonmovant, we conclude that the Pickering balance weighs in favor of Garcia-Montoya.