Opinion ID: 763587
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Retaliation in General

Text: 25 Retaliation claims arise in any number of contexts. The essence of such a claim is that the plaintiff engaged in conduct protected by the Constitution or by statute, the defendant took an adverse action against the plaintiff, and this adverse action was taken (at least in part) because of the protected conduct. 3 There are variations on this theme in bodies of statutory law that allow retaliation claims (e.g., ADA, Title VII, NLRA, etc.), but the essential framework remains the same. See, e.g., Barnett v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 153 F.3d 338, 343 (6th Cir.1998) (Title VII retaliation claim); Walborn v. Erie County Care Facility, 150 F.3d 584, 588-89 (6th Cir.1998) (ADA retaliation claim); Wrenn v. Gould, 808 F.2d 493, 500-01 (6th Cir.1987) (Title VII retaliation claim) (citing cases). 26 Protected conduct in the statutory settings is, clearly, that conduct which the statute defines as protected: for example, the National Labor Relations Act protects certain kinds of collective action on the part of employees; Title VII protects individuals from racially (and other) discriminatory employment practices and explicitly disallows retaliation for actions taken in pursuit of those rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-3; Wrenn, 808 F.2d at 500. Constitutional retaliation cases are similar in that certain provisions of the Constitution define individual rights with which the government generally cannot interfere--actions taken pursuant to those rights are protected by the Constitution. 27 We pause here to note the difference between constitutional retaliation cases arising under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and those arising under a more specific provision of the Constitution. Supreme Court precedent suggests that these two types of claims should not be conflated. In Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989), the Supreme Court rejected various lower courts' reliance on substantive due process standards in evaluating claims of excessive use of governmental force where such claims were covered by explicit provisions in the Constitution, there the Fourth Amendment. See id. at 392, 109 S.Ct. 1865. Reasoning that the guideposts for responsible decisionmaking in [the substantive due process] area are scarce and open-ended, Albright v. Oliver, 510 U.S. 266, 272, 114 S.Ct. 807, 127 L.Ed.2d 114 (1994) (quoting Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U.S. 115, 125, 112 S.Ct. 1061, 117 L.Ed.2d 261 (1992)), the Court pointed to the Second Circuit's four-factor substantive due process test derived from the shocks the conscience concept as an illustration of what should not be used when an enumerated constitutional right is available as a source of protection. See Graham, 490 U.S. at 392-93, 109 S.Ct. 1865. Instead, [w]here a particular Amendment 'provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection' against a particular sort of government behavior, 'that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of substantive due process, must be the guide for analyzing these claims.'  Albright, 510 U.S. at 273, 114 S.Ct. 807 (quoting Graham, 490 U.S. at 395, 109 S.Ct. 1865). 28 In various instances since Graham, this circuit (mainly in unpublished opinions) has subjected prisoners claiming retaliation in violation of an enumerated constitutional right to a heightened requirement that the retaliatory act shock the conscience. See McLaurin v. Cole, 115 F.3d 408, 411 (6th Cir.1997). All of these opinions cite Cale v. Johnson, 861 F.2d 943, 950 (6th Cir.1988), for requiring prisoners to make this heightened showing. Yet, reliance on Cale for such a proposition is inappropriate and inaccurate. While the Sixth Circuit in Cale used an egregious abuse of governmental power test and noted that the retaliation was in response to Cale's exercise of his First Amendment rights, it clearly explained that the inmate's claim was based on his general substantive due process rights and not on the First Amendment. See id. at 945. To the extent that our prior decisions have imposed the shocks the conscience test when prisoners claim retaliation in violation of an enumerated constitutional right, they are in conflict with the Supreme Court's decisions in Graham and its progeny and are no longer the law of this Circuit. 4 29 Here, the First Amendment properly covers the retaliation claims of X and Bell, as we explain below, and so we turn to that framework for guidance.