Opinion ID: 70757
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Attempt to Influence the Departmental Report

Text: 14 Levent has not offered, nor have we been able to find, any case wherein an unsuccessful attempt, through speech, to influence another's protected speech has been held to violate the First Amendment. The only cases Levent offers in support of his argument that Hubbard violated a clearly established First Amendment right are cases involving retaliation against protected speech. See, e.g., Pickering v. Board of Educ. Township High Sch. Dist. 205, Will County, Ill., 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968); Bryson v. City of Waycross, 888 F.2d 1562 (11th Cir.1989), reh'g denied, 894 F.2d 414 (11th Cir.1990). Although Levent has claimed that the defendants retaliated against him for submitting his departmental report and his EEOC affidavit, that claim is not before us on this appeal. 2 Our focus must, therefore, be a narrow one: whether the law was clearly established at the time of Hubbard's alleged actions that an unsuccessful attempt to influence speech violates the First Amendment. The facts of the speech retaliation cases involve retaliation after speech occurs, which is not materially similar to unsuccessful attempts to prevent or influence protected speech. See Adams, 962 F.2d at 1575. Both situations involve speech and the First Amendment, but that is far too general a level of abstraction for qualified immunity purposes. See Lassiter, 28 F.3d at 1150. Stated somewhat differently, the speech retaliation decisions do not dictate, that is truly compel, id., the conclusion that an unsuccessful attempt to prevent protected speech violates the First Amendment. Therefore, the district court should have granted Hubbard's motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds.