Opinion ID: 215346
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discipline for the Blog Post

Text: We begin with Doninger's claim that her First Amendment rights were violated when Niehoff prohibited her from running for Senior Class Secretary in response to Doninger's blog post. Citing Fraser, the district court concluded that Doninger's First Amendment rights were not violated when she was told that she could not run for class secretary because of an offensive blog entry that was clearly designed to come on to campus and influence fellow students. Doninger III, 594 F.Supp.2d at 221. Alternatively, the court determined in its qualified immunity analysis that any First Amendment right claimed by Doninger not to be prohibited from participating in a voluntary, extracurricular activity because of offensive off-campus speech when it was reasonably foreseeable that the speech would come on to campus and thus come to the attention of school authorities was not clearly established. Id. at 222. We do not reach the question whether school officials violated Doninger's First Amendment rights by preventing her from running for Senior Class Secretary. We see no need to decide this question. We agree with the district court that any First Amendment right allegedly violated here was not clearly established, such that it would [have been] clear to a reasonable [school official] that [her] conduct was unlawful in the situation [she] confronted. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Accordingly, Defendants were properly afforded qualified immunity as to this claim. Doninger's principal argument to the contrary is that under Supreme Court precedent and this Court's decision in Thomas v. Board of Education, 607 F.2d 1043 (2d Cir.1979), it was clearly established at the time [of the events in this case] that off campus speech could not be the subject of school discipline, Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant Reply Br. at 12 (emphasis added). But as we explained in Doninger II, the Supreme Court has yet to speak on the scope of a school's authority to regulate expression that, like Avery's, does not occur on school grounds or at a school-sponsored event. 527 F.3d at 48. It is thus incorrect to urge, as Doninger does, that Supreme Court precedent necessarily insulates students from discipline for speech-related activity occurring away from school property, no matter its relation to school affairs or its likelihood of having effectseven substantial and disruptive effectsin school. This Court's 1979 decision in Thomas similarly fails to establish that off-campus speech may never properly be disciplined. In Thomas, public school students were punished for publishing and distributing to their peers a lewd, satirical newspaper. 607 F.2d at 1045-46. The production, publication, and distribution of the paper occurred almost entirely off campus, although some copies eventually found their way to school grounds and drew the attention of school officials. Id. This Court concluded that because the students' activities were deliberately designed to take place away from school, such that any activity within the school itself was de minimis,  the school, in punishing them, had ventured out of the school yard and into the general community, and the punishment imposed could not withstand the proscription of the First Amendment. Id. at 1050. The Thomas Court noted, however, that it could envision a case in which a group of students incites substantial disruption within the school from some remote locale, suggesting that such behavior, simply not present in the case before it, might appropriately be disciplined. Id. at 1052 n. 17. Judge Newman, moreover, concurring in the result in Thomas, explicitly noted that [s]chool authorities ought to be accorded some latitude to regulate student activity that affects matters of legitimate concern to the school community, and territoriality is not necessarily a useful concept in determining the limit of their authority. Id. at 1058 n. 13 (Newman, J., concurring). It is therefore not the case that, in this Circuit, Thomas clearly established that off-campus speech-related conduct may never be the basis for discipline by school officials. Indeed, this Court expressly held that it could in Wisniewski v. Board of Education, 494 F.3d 34 (2d Cir.2007), a case decided only a few months after the events in question here. In Wisniewski, a public school student used an instant messaging (IM) program to communicate with fellow students from his home computer. For a three-week period, whenever he sent an IM, the message was accompanied by a crudely drawn icon depicting one of his teachers being shot in the head, with text below reading Kill Mr. VanderMolen. Id. at 35-36. When the icon came to the attention of school officials, it caused a disturbance, leading to a criminal investigation and also requiring the special attention of school officials, the replacement of VanderMolen (who asked to be relieved from teaching the student's class), and interviews of pupils during class time. Id. at 35. Citing Tinker and Thomas, we determined that [t]he fact that [the] creation and transmission of the IM icon occurred away from school property does not necessarily insulate [the student] from school discipline. Id. at 39. Where the icon's off-campus display pose[d] a reasonably foreseeable risk that [it] would come to the attention of school authorities and ... `materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school,' the student's suspension for this display did not run afoul of the First Amendment. See id. at 38-39 (quoting Morse, 551 U.S. at 403, 127 S.Ct. 2618). Doninger next contends that even if off-campus expression may in some circumstances be regulated by school officials, any reasonable school administrator would know that such regulation is permissible only when speech-related activity satisfies the so-called Tinker test employed in Wisniewski i.e., when it poses a reasonably foreseeable risk of coming to the attention of school authorities and materially and substantially disrupting the work and discipline of the school. See id. at 38-39 (applying Tinker standard to off-campus speech). Doninger urges that no reasonable school administrator could have deemed that standard satisfied here or, at a minimum, that disputed issues of material fact exist as to the reasonableness of any such conclusion. We disagree with all these propositions. At the start, it would gravely distort the doctrine of qualified immunity to hold that a school official should fairly be said to `know' that the law forb[ids] conduct not previously identified as unlawful. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Doninger has identified no caseand we are aware of nonethat enunciates her supposedly bright-line principle strictly limiting the regulation of off-campus speech to Tinker -style circumstances or otherwise demonstrating a clearly established rule applicable to the specific circumstances of this case. See Gilles, 511 F.3d at 244 (noting that [t]he inquiry into whether a right at issue was clearly established is tied to the specific facts and context of the case). Indeed, in the previous iteration of this case before this Court, we specifically noted that the applicability of Fraser to plainly offensive off-campus student speech is uncertain, Doninger II, 527 F.3d at 49-50, reinforcing the absence of a clearly established right under the circumstances of this case. To the extent Doninger concedes that courts have upheld as consistent with First Amendment principles the regulation of off-campus expression satisfying the Tinker standard, moreover, Tinker itself provides substantial grounds for the school officials here to have concluded [they] had legitimate justification under the law for acting as [they] did. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 208, 121 S.Ct. 2151. The undisputed factsthat Doninger's blog post directly pertained to an event at LMHS, that it invited other students to read and respond to it by contacting school officials, that students did in fact post comments on the post, and that school administrators eventually became aware of itdemonstrate that it was reasonably foreseeable that Doninger's post would reach school property and have disruptive consequences there. See Doninger II, 527 F.3d at 50; Wisniewski, 494 F.3d at 39-40. In Doninger II, we relied primarily on two additional facts to conclude that Doninger's blog post portended foreseeable disruption to the school's work and discipline: namely, (1) that the language Doninger employed (asking others to call the douchebags in the central office to piss [them] off more) was potentially disruptive of efforts to resolve the ongoing controversy, 527 F.3d at 50-51; and (2) that in the midst of this controversy, Doninger's blog post conveyed the `at best misleading and at wors[t] false' information that Jamfest had been cancelled in [Doninger's] effort to solicit more calls and emails to Schwartz, id. at 51 (first alteration in original) (quoting Doninger I, 514 F.Supp.2d at 202). Doninger argues that in light of further development of the record since Doninger II and the procedural posture of our review of a grant of summary judgment, disputed issues of fact now exist as to the reasonableness of any conclusion that her post was potentially disruptive. We agree with Doninger that, when the record is viewed in the light most favorable to her, it no longer supports the conclusion that on April 24 Niehoff informed Doninger both that her behavior was inappropriate for a class officer and that the students' mass email contained inaccurate information (because Niehoff was amenable to rescheduling Jamfest so it could be held in the auditorium). There similarly exists a factual dispute as to whether Niehoff obtained Doninger's word that the email would be corrected, only subsequently to learn that Doninger republished it that very night, and as to whether Doninger's blog post, claiming that Jamfest had been cancelled, was in fact false. [9] Even taking the facts presented in the record in the light most favorable to Doninger, however, there remains no triable issue here as to whether it was objectively reasonable for school administrators to conclude that Doninger's posting was potentially disruptive to the degree required by Tinker. According to the undisputed facts in this case, the controversy over Jamfest's scheduling had already resulted in a deluge of phone calls and emails, several disrupted schedules, and many upset students even before Doninger posted her comments on livejournal.com. This disruption continued the next day, as calls poured in for both Principal Niehoff and Superintendent Schwartz, a group of upset students gathered outside Niehoff's office, and Doninger and three other students were called out of class to meet with Schwartz, Niehoff, Hill, Miller, and Fortin (themselves pulled away from other duties) in an effort to resolve the controversy. Perhaps a school official in these circumstances might err in concluding that Doninger's blog postdisseminated amidst circulating rumors that Jamfest had been arbitrarily cancelled, calling the responsible school administrators douchebags, and urging fellow students to take action to piss [them] off morewas of the sort to stoke disruption and frustrate the School's ongoing efforts at conflict resolution. See Doninger II, 527 F.3d at 51 (noting that [t]he question is not whether there has been actual disruption, but whether school officials `might reasonably portend disruption' from the student expression at issue (quoting LaVine v. Blaine Sch. Dist., 257 F.3d 981, 989 (9th Cir.2001))). But even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Doninger, there is simply nothing in the record creating a disputed issue of fact as to the objective reasonableness of any such judgment. See Lennon v. Miller, 66 F.3d 416, 420-21 (2d Cir.1995) (An [official's] actions are objectively unreasonable when no [official] of reasonable competence could have made the same choice in similar circumstances. Thus, if the court determines that the only conclusion a rational jury could reach is that reasonable [officials] would disagree about the legality of the defendants' conduct under the circumstances, summary judgement for the [officials] is appropriate. (citation omitted)). And this is the concern of qualified immunity doctrine. See Gilles, 511 F.3d at 244. Doninger urges in reply that there is a disputed issue of fact as to whether Niehoff disciplined her because her posting was potentially disruptive, or simply because it was offensive, and that this factual dispute renders the district court's grant of summary judgment erroneous. Indeed, it was on this basis that the district court concluded that it could not grant summary judgment solely on the basis of a Tinker analysis of the disruptive potential of Doninger's speech. See Doninger III, 594 F.Supp.2d at 219-20. Even assuming the existence of such a factual dispute, however, the Supreme Court has stated that a defense of qualified immunity may not be rebutted by evidence that the defendant's conduct was ... improperly motivated. Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. 574, 588, 118 S.Ct. 1584, 140 L.Ed.2d 759 (1998). Evidence of subjective intent is simply irrelevant to [this] defense. Id. Granted, this rule does not apply when intent is an element of a First Amendment claim or defense  as defined by clearly established law  and a factual dispute as to intent precludes the conclusion that a government official's conduct was objectively reasonable. Locurto v. Safir, 264 F.3d 154, 169 (2d Cir.2001) (emphasis added). But such is not the case here. The district court concluded that under Tinker a defendant must show not only a potential for disruption, but also that `the concern for disruption, rather than some other, impermissible motive, was the actual reason for' the punishment imposed. Doninger III, 594 F.Supp.2d at 219 (quoting Locurto v. Giuliani, 447 F.3d 159, 180 (2d Cir.2006)). In so ruling, however, it relied not on our school speech cases but rather on our case law addressing the different context of alleged retaliation against government employees for the exercise of First Amendment rights. In that setting, retaliatory intent is a necessary element of the First Amendment claim. See Johnson v. Ganim, 342 F.3d 105, 112 (2d Cir.2003). Moreover, it is an established element of the so-called Pickering balancing test defense that a government official establish that an adverse employment action was taken not in retaliation for the employee's speech, but because of [a] potential for disruption. Id. at 114. In contrast, the Supreme Court in Tinker did not clearly establish intent as an element of any claim or defense, nor has our case law pursuant to Tinker. As a result, even assuming a factual dispute exists as to Niehoff's motivation, qualified immunity is still proper where Defendants were objectively reasonable in their judgment that they might reasonably portend disruption from the student expression at issue. Doninger II, 527 F.3d at 51 (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, even if this were not the caseeven if intent constituted a clearly established element of a Tinker defensethe supposed factual dispute as to whether Niehoff was motivated by the offensiveness of Doninger's speech or by its disruptive potential would still not matter here. As the district court recognized, it was also not clearly established at the time of these events that Doninger had any First Amendment right not to be prohibited from running for Senior Class Secretary because of offensive off-campus speech, at least when such speech pertained to a school event, invited students to read and respond to it by contacting school administrators, and it was reasonably foreseeable that the speech would come on to campus and thus come to the attention of school authorities. Doninger III, 594 F.Supp.2d. at 222. Finally, our conclusion that whatever right Doninger may have had was not clearly established is buttressed by the similarities between this case and the Sixth Circuit's decision in Lowery v. Euverard, 497 F.3d 584 (6th Cir.2007), decided only shortly after the events at issue here. In Lowery, a group of high school football players signed a petition expressing their hatred of the coach and their desire not to play for him. When the coach became aware of this activity, he dismissed those players who refused to apologize from the team. Id. at 585-86. The Sixth Circuit, conducting an analysis under Tinker, concluded that the school did not violate the players' First Amendment rights by deeming them unfit to serve on the football team so long as they were actively working to undermine the coach. Id. at 587-96. In determining that the students' First Amendment rights had not been violated, the Sixth Circuit noted that Plaintiffs' regular education has not been impeded, and, significantly, they are free to continue their campaign to have [the coach] fired. What they are not free to do is continue to play football for him while actively working to undermine his authority. Id. at 600 (emphasis omitted). Similarly, Doninger's discipline extended only to her role as a student government representative: she was not suspended from classes or punished in any other way. Given that Doninger, in serving in such a position, was to help maintain a continuous communication channel from students to both faculty and administration, it was not unreasonable for Niehoff to conclude that Doninger, by posting an incendiary blog post in the midst of an ongoing school controversy, had demonstrated her unwillingness properly to carry out this role. To be clear, we do not conclude in any way that school administrators are immune from First Amendment scrutiny when they react to student speech by limiting students' participation in extracurricular activities. Here, however, pursuant to Tinker and its progeny, it was objectively reasonable for school officials to conclude that Doninger's behavior was potentially disruptive of student government functions (such as the organization of Jamfest) and that Doninger was not free to engage in such behavior while serving as a class representativea representative charged with working with these very same school officials to carry out her responsibilities. Qualified immunity balances two important intereststhe need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably. Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 815. Under the qualified immunity doctrine, government officials such as the school administrators here 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. Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727. They are entitled to the protection of qualified immunity unless the unlawfulness of their actions was apparent in light of preexisting law. See Anderson, 483 U.S. at 639-40, 107 S.Ct. 3034. There was no such apparent unlawfulness here. Instead, it was objectively reasonable for Niehoff and Schwartz to believe they could prohibit Doninger from running for Senior Class Secretary without violating her First Amendment rights, given the specific facts and context of the case. Gilles, 511 F.3d at 244. We thus conclude that Niehoff and Schwartz were properly afforded qualified immunity as to Doninger's blog post claim.