Opinion ID: 2266316
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: First Amendment and acts of governance

Text: An elected official's vote on a matter of public importance is first and foremost an act of governance. The official has broad common law and, at the federal level, Speech and Debate Clause immunity for his vote. See S. Sherr, Freedom and Federalism: The First Amendment's Protection of Legislative Voting, 101 Yale L.J. 233, 235-36 (1991) (discussing U.S. Const. art. I, § 6). But thus far the Supreme Court has not overlaid that immunity with First Amendment protection for the act of governance that an official's vote on a public matter represents. Id. at 245. Whether the First Amendment protects an official's vote qua governance was raised but not decided in Spallone v. United States, 493 U.S. 265, 110 S.Ct. 625, 107 L.Ed.2d 644 (1990), an appeal of a contempt order issued against the City of Yonkers and its city council members for not passing an ordinance required by a federal consent decree. Justice Brennan would have upheld the contempt citation against both the City and its council members and reached the First Amendment issue. Id. at 281-306, 110 S.Ct. 625 (dissenting). Writing for four members of the Court, he characterized as unpersuasive the argument that the First Amendment protected a city council member's vote yea or nay on the ordinance to which the City had stipulated in the federal consent decree: Petitioner Chema claims that his legislative discretion is protected by the First Amendment as well. Characterizing his vote on proposed legislation as core political speech, he contends that the Order infringes his right to communicate with his constituents through his vote. This attempt to recharacterize the common-law legislative immunity doctrine into traditional First Amendment terms is unpersuasive. While the act of publicly voting on legislation arguably contains a communicative element, the act is quintessentially one of governance.... Id. at 302 n. 12, 110 S.Ct. 625 (emphasis added). See Clarke v. United States, 915 F.2d 699, 708 (D.C.Cir.1990) (en banc) (vacating as moot an earlier panel opinion that held, pre- Spallone, that Congress could not, consistent with the First Amendment, coerce the votes of the District of Columbia Council; noting that this was an important issue of first impression that would carry broad implications for federal, state, and local governments and might open[] the door to more litigation than we can now appreciate); Zilich v. Longo, 34 F.3d 359, 363-64 (6th Cir.1994) (holding that a former city council member's First Amendment rights were not violated by a resolution authorizing suit against him for having violated the council's residency requirement, even though alleged to be in retaliation for his politics: Congress frequently conducts committee investigations and adopts resolutions condemning or approving of the conduct of elected and appointed officials, groups, corporations and individuals; the manifest function of the First Amendment in a representative government requires that legislators be given the widest latitude to express their views, including the plaintiffs right to oppose the mayor and the defendants' right to oppose the plaintiff by acting on the residency issue (internal quotation and citation omitted)); Rangra v. Brown, 584 F.3d 206 (5th Cir.2009) (dismissing appeal after vacating panel decision, 566 F.3d 515, reh'g granted, 576 F.3d 531, that had concluded that elected local and state government officials' decision-making represents political speech, requiring the Texas Open Meeting Act to survive strict scrutiny review); cf. Doe v. Reed, 561 U.S. ___, ___ & n. 2, 130 S.Ct. 2811, 2817-18, 2820 n. 2, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2010) (recognizing that a citizen engages in both expressive and legislative speech in signing a referendum petition and declining strict scrutiny review of Washington's Public Records Act's application to signers who wished to remain anonymous). Voting by a public official is conductan act of governance. Still, as Justice Brennan noted in Spallone, a public official's vote also arguably contains a communicative element, 493 U.S. at 302 n. 12, 110 S.Ct. 625; an elected official's vote defines his beliefs and positions in a way words alone cannot. Thus, the First Amendment was held to protect the communicative element in a public official's vote in Miller v. Town of Hull, Mass., 878 F.2d 523 (1st Cir.1989), on which the majority relies. Miller was a retaliation case under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In Miller, the First Circuit affirmed a judgment after a jury trial awarding elected members of a town redevelopment authority damages against the board of selectmen who removed them, the jury found, not for a permissible reason but in retaliation for their vote on a housing development for the elderly. 878 F.2d 523. The expressive component of the redevelopment authority members' votes in Miller was what was singled out and punished: The board members were retaliated against for how they voted, not because they voted. There is a difference the majority does not acknowledge between `retaliatory First Amendment claims' and `affirmative' First Amendment claims, such as `facial challenges to statutes.' Velez v. Levy, 401 F.3d 75, 97 (2d Cir.2005) (quoting Greenwich Citizens Comm. v. Counties of Warren, 77 F.3d 26, 31 (2d Cir.1996)). Because a First Amendment retaliation claim succeeds does not mean that the right vindicated is absolute, or that a statute that implicates such a right while regulating related conduct in a content-neutral way must pass strict scrutiny to survive facial challenge. First Circuit cases that have followed Miller make the point unmistakably. Thus, in Mullin v. Town of Fairhaven, 284 F.3d 31, 37 (2002), the First Circuit refined Miller, stating that, while [w]e have extended First Amendment protection to votes on `controversial public issue[s]' cast by `a member of a public agency or board[,]' ... [t]his protection is far from absolute . Mullin, 284 F.3d at 37 (emphasis added) (quoting Miller, 878 F.2d at 532). The court then proceeded to analyze Mullin's First Amendment retaliation claim under the flexible Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968), standard the majority rejectsparadoxically, at the same time it embraces Miller. See also Mihos v. Swift, 358 F.3d 91, 109 (1st Cir.2004) (we articulate the First Amendment right at stake here as the right of a public official to vote on a matter of public concern properly before his agency without suffering retaliation from the appointing authority for reasons unrelated to legitimate governmental interests ; applying Pickering balancing) (emphasis added). The Pickering / Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 126 S.Ct. 1951, 164 L.Ed.2d 689 (2006), line of cases speaks to the First Amendment rights of public employees and holds that, when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421, 126 S.Ct. 1951. Restricting a public employee's official speech does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen. It simply reflects the exercise of employer control over what the employer itself has commissioned or created. Id. at 421-22, 126 S.Ct. 1951. The majority deems Pickering / Garcetti inapplicable because Carrigan is elected and his constituents, not the government, are his ultimate employer with the power to hire or fire him. But this is an overly simplistic view. It does not take into account the Legislature's control over local governments in our state constitutional scheme and the constitutional and policy-based imperative of non-self-interested governmental decisionmakers, especially in the quasi-adjudicative setting. Even though Carrigan is an elected official, I thus would affirm the district court's ruling that Pickering / Garcetti balancing applies to Carrigan's challenge to Nevada's Ethics in Government Act. See Siefert v. Alexander, 608 F.3d 974, 985-86 (7th Cir. 2010) (applying Pickering / Garcetti balancing, not strict scrutiny, to challenge by judge campaigning for reelection to ethics regulations; rejecting the argument that Pickering / Garcetti depends on who can hire or fire the government official and noting that, It is small comfort for a litigant who takes her case to state court to know that while her trial was unfair, the judge would eventually lose an election, especially if that litigant were unable to muster the resources to combat a well-financed, corrupt judge around election time.); Shields v. Charter Tp. of Comstock, 617 F.Supp.2d 606, 615-16 (W.D.Mich.2009) (applying Pickering / Garcetti to elected member of the Township Board and noting that, [u]nlike an ordinary citizen, [Shields] represents the Township when he speaks at a public board meeting [making] his constitutional rights ... more analogous to the employee in Garcetti than to a private citizen sitting in the audience).