Opinion ID: 2782334
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Official Duties

Text: “[W]hen public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421. Accordingly, we have held that speech is not protected if it is “part‐and‐parcel of [the employee’s] concerns about his ability to properly execute his duties.” Weintraub, 593 F.3d at 203 (internal quotation marks omitted). 13 In Garcetti, the Supreme Court adopted a functional approach toward evaluating an employee’s job duties. There, a deputy district attorney alleged that he had been retaliated against for writing a memorandum recommending that a case be dismissed. The Supreme Court held that the prosecutor’s memorandum to his superior was unprotected because it was “part of what [the speaker] . . . was employed to do.” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421. The “controlling factor” in its decision, the Court noted, was that the employee’s “expressions were made pursuant to his duties as a calendar deputy.” Id. The Court counseled that the appropriate inquiry is a “practical one” directed to the regular duties of the employee. Id. at 424. While relevant to that inquiry, the Court cautioned, “[f]ormal job descriptions often bear little resemblance to the duties an employee actually is expected to perform” and “the listing of a given task in an employee’s written job description is neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate that conducting the task is within the scope of the employee’s professional duties for First Amendment purposes.” Id. at 424‐25. 14 We have applied Garcetti’s functional approach in previous cases. In Weintraub, we held that a school teacher’s formal grievance regarding the administration’s refusal to discipline a student was unprotected speech because a teacher’s need to discipline his own students is essential to his ability to effectively run a classroom as part of his day‐to‐day responsibilities. 593 F.3d at 203. We also found that the teacher’s choice to pursue his complaint by following the employee grievance procedure supported the conclusion that the speech was unprotected because that procedure had no civilian analogue. Id. Similarly, in Ross v. Breslin, we held that a payroll clerk’s speech to her superiors about pay discrepancies was unprotected because it was part of her job responsibilities, which included “making sure pay rates were correct.” 693 F.3d 300, 306 (2d Cir. 2012). We noted that the determination of “whether a public employee is speaking pursuant to her official duties is not susceptible to a brightline rule,” and that “[c]ourts must examine the nature of the plaintiff’s job responsibilities, the nature of the speech, 15 and the relationship between the two.” Id. Because the employee was expected to uncover wrongdoing as part of her daily job as a payroll clerk, we concluded that her speech was not protected. In this case, Matthews reported the existence of the quota system on three occasions to Captain Bugge and on one occasion to an unnamed executive officer in the Precinct. Over a year later, after Captain Bloch had replaced Captain Bugge as the Precinct commanding officer, Matthews reported the quota system to him and stated that it was “causing unjustified stops, arrests, and summonses because police officers felt forced to abandon their discretion in order to meet their numbers” and it “was having an adverse effect on the precinct’s relationship with the community.” Joint App’x 28. Matthews’s speech to the Precinct’s leadership in this case was not what he was “employed to do,” unlike the prosecutor’s speech in Garcetti, nor was it “part‐and‐parcel” of his regular job, unlike the case of the teacher in Weintraub and the payroll clerk in Ross. Matthews’s speech addressed a precinct‐wide policy. Such policy‐ 16 oriented speech was neither part of his job description nor part of the practical reality of his everyday work. Section 202–21 of the NYPD Patrol Guide, which outlines the “Duties and Responsibilities” of a Police Officer, reinforces this conclusion. It lists 20 specific duties, but none includes a duty to provide feedback on precinct policy or any other policy‐related duty. See Joint App’x 113. Matthews similarly stated that his job as a police officer consisted of radio runs, patrols, complaint reports, and other tasks involving enforcement of the law; it did not include reporting misconduct of supervisors nor did it encompass commenting on precinct‐wide policy. Matthews had no role in setting policy; he was neither expected to speak on policy nor consulted on formulating policy. Commissioner Beirne, Captain Bloch, and Captain Bugge all testified that a police officer has no duty to monitor the conduct of his supervisors. Captain Bloch and Captain Bugge also testified that Matthews neither met regularly with the Captains nor submitted regular reports to them. Apart from the occasions on which Matthews spoke to them about the quota system, he did not 17 communicate with the Precinct’s commanding officers beyond occasional hallway small talk. In sum, Matthews’s actual, functional job responsibilities did not include reporting his opinions on precinct‐wide quota systems to the Precinct commanders. We hold that when a public employee whose duties do not involve formulating, implementing, or providing feedback on a policy that implicates a matter of public concern engages in speech concerning that policy, and does so in a manner in which ordinary citizens would be expected to engage, he or she speaks as a citizen, not as a public employee. The City points to Section 207‐21 of the NYPD Patrol Guide, which, as noted earlier, states in pertinent part “[a]ll members of the service have an absolute duty to report any corruption or other misconduct, or allegation of corruption or other misconduct, of which they become aware.” Joint App’x 36. It defines “corruption/other misconduct” as “[c]riminal activity or other misconduct of any kind including the use of excessive force or perjury that is committed by a member of the service whether on or 18 off duty.” Id. The district court relied on this provision in holding that Matthews’s reports were part of his official duties. We believe this reliance was misplaced. Matthews testified that he understood Section 207‐21 to require only reports of misconduct rising to the level of a violation of penal law. Commissioner Beirne testified that the section requires reports of almost every violation of the Patrol Guide.. Under either interpretation, however, the provision does not render Matthews’s speech unprotected. Matthews, in speaking out about the quota system, was not reporting suspected violations of law that might have required him to exercise his authority to arrest a fellow police officer or turn in an officer for breach of a protocol. Matthews admitted that he would have to report a police officer who violated the law, but this is not such a case. Here, Matthews was voicing concerns about broad policy issues that, at most, had the potential of incentivizing a violation of law; he was not identifying individual violations. Matthews told Captain Bloch that, as a result of the quota policy, 19 “police officers felt forced to abandon their discretion,” which was causing “unjustified stops.” Compl. ¶ 28, Joint App’x 28. Matthews was not flagging specific violations of law, but rather expressing an opinion on a policy which he believed was limiting officer discretion to not intervene in situations that, in the officer’s own judgment, might not warrant intervention. According to Matthews, the policy resulted in stops that were “unjustified” because no officer properly exercising discretion would have made them. In addition, we note that Matthews, by reporting the quota system to the Precinct commanders instead of to the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, did not follow the internal procedures set out in Section 207‐21. Even if Matthews’s speech were deemed to fall within Section 207‐21, this provision would not be determinative of whether that speech was protected by the First Amendment. If the Patrol Guide’s general duty to report misconduct were permitted to control whether the speech of any employee—without regard to whether the investigation and reporting of misconduct is an integral part of the employee’s day‐to‐day job (i.e. what he or she is “employed to 20 do,” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421)—enjoyed First Amendment protection, public employers could be encouraged to simply prescribe similarly general duties, thereby limiting such protection for wide swaths of employee speech. When Justice Souter’s dissent in Garcetti flagged this risk, id. at 431 n.2, the Court majority responded by explicitly “reject[ing] . . . the suggestion that employers can restrict employees’ rights by creating excessively broad job descriptions,” id. at 424. To be sure, the duty to report misconduct has increased relevance in the context of law enforcement, but we believe that it is more properly considered as part of the Pickering balancing analysis in determining whether the government employer had an adequate justification for its actions. See supra DISCUSSION, Section II, Legal Framework; see also Lane, 134 S.Ct. at 2381 (describing the Pickering framework as “balancing 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” (citing Pickering, 391 U.S. at 598 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted))). 21