Opinion ID: 204285
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Speech as a Citizen

Text: We write further, and in the alternative, because even if Garcetti were applicable where the alleged violator was not the employer, we would hold that Dempsey spoke as a citizen on a matter of public interest. The Supreme Court in Garcetti stated, We hold 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 (emphasis added). The Court continued, Restricting speech that owes its existence to a public employee's professional responsibilities does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen. Id. at 421-22, 126 S.Ct. 1951 (emphasis added). This seemingly straightforward and bright-line rule is less clear than it appears at first blush because the Court had no occasion to articulate a comprehensive framework for defining the scope of an employee's duties in cases where there is room for serious debate. Id. at 424, 126 S.Ct. 1951. The Court spoke broadly of the need to balance the employers' control of operations and services with the public's access to the informed opinions and otherwise unavailable information held by public employees. Id. at 419-421, 126 S.Ct. 1951. In doing so, the Court distinguished speech undertaken as part of an employee's official duties and professional responsibilities from speech that was merely related to employment or that occurred in the workplace. For example, the fact that the speech at issue in Garcetti occurred inside his office, rather than publicly, and concerned the subject matter of [the employee]'s employment ... was nondispositive. Id. at 420-21, 126 S.Ct. 1951. Because it was undisputed in Garcetti that the speech was pursuant to the employee's duties, the Court did not flesh out these distinctions. Id. at 424, 126 S.Ct. 1951. Subsequently, our court has had occasion to address this issue. In Bradley v. James, 479 F.3d 536 (8th Cir.2007), we held that a police officer's unsubstantiated comments about another officer were not made as a citizen because the speaker made his allegations only in the context of an official investigation where he was duty bound to respond to the investigator's questions. Id. at 537-38. Similarly, in McGee v. Pub. Water Supply Dist. #2, 471 F.3d 918 (8th Cir.2006), we addressed First Amendment claims by the manager of a county water district who had spoken to a board of directors against a particular project. There, we looked to the manager's admission that his duties included advising the board regarding regulatory and legal requirements. Id. at 921. We also noted that the manager had supervisory duties over the project at issue and that his speech to the board concerned legal issues surrounding the project. Accordingly, we held he spoke as an employee rather than as a citizen. Id. In doing so, we said determining the scope of an employee's official duties ... is a practical inquiry that focuses on `the duties an employee actually is expected to perform,' rather than his formal job description. Id. (quoting Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 424-25, 126 S.Ct. 1951.) And in Bailey v. Dep't of Elem. & Sec. Ed., 451 F.3d 514 (8th Cir. 2006), we illustrated the practical nature of this inquiry, finding a plaintiff spoke as an employee rather than as a citizen where he had asserted, I consider any time I spend addressing this matter with you or the agency to be services I am giving the state as a consultant. Id. at 520. Recently, in Bonn v. City of Omaha, 623 F.3d 587 (8th Cir.2010), we found employee speech rather than speech as a citizen and affirmed a district court's summary judgment against an employee's federal claims. In Bonn, Omaha's Public Safety Auditor prepared a report describing traffic stops. The report was critical of officers' actions, and the employee also made critical comments when contacted by the media. Regarding the report itself, we noted that the employee admitted in an answer to an interrogatory that she prepared the report as a function or official duty of [her] position as the Public Safety Auditor of the City of Omaha. Id. at 592. Accordingly, we held the report was not speech as a citizen. In holding that her statements to the press also served as employee speech rather than speech as a citizen, we emphasized that the employee spoke to the media pursuant to her official duties and that [s]he acted in response to media inquiries about a report that she published as part of her work as auditor.... Id. at 593 (emphasis added). Bonn, then, was similar to Bradley, McGee, and Bailey where the speech at issue was pursuant to official duties. In Davenport, the court analyzed two instances of speech. The court found employee speech in a context nearly identical to the official-inquiry response in Bradley. Davenport, 553 F.3d at 1113. The other occurrence, however, involved a report of alleged misuse of resources by a university's chief of public safety. As to this separate instance of speech, we said, Davenport's duties did not include reporting either wrongdoing by a superior officer or a lack of resources. With regard to his 1999 statements, Davenport was speaking as a citizen on a matter of public concern. Id. Against this backdrop, we view Dempsey's statements to the Omaha World Herald to be speech as a citizen rather than speech as an employee. Unlike the comments of a commanding uniformed officer at the scene of an emergency or a Public Safety Auditor answering questions about an official and personally authored report, Dempsey's comments to the reporter were informal and did not take on the character of `[o]fficial communications.' See, e.g., Foley v. Town of Randolph, 598 F.3d 1, 7-8 (1st Cir.2010). While it is true that there will be circumstances in which employees' comments to the press may take on such a character, id. at 8, mere relationship between the subject matter of the speech and employment is insufficient to satisfy Garcetti. Here, the newspaper approached Dempsey because he was the police chief of Elkhorn and the complaining officers' ultimate boss. Dempsey admits he was merely answering the reporter's questions. These undisputed facts establish only that the reporter sought otherwise unavailable information from a person likely to possess that information. We find nothing in the record suggesting Dempsey's official duties or professional responsibilities required him to answer the reporter's questions about the officers' qualifications for employment with another municipality or discuss that other municipality's actions towards his officers. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421, 126 S.Ct. 1951. Under Garcetti, a showing of a mere relationship to employment is insufficient to preclude protection. To hold otherwise would effectively eliminate the distinction between official-duty speech and job-related speech and render the cabining language of Garcetti meaningless. On the other hand, if Garcetti were otherwise applicable, we would find Dempsey's speech regarding Marfisi and the efforts to have the seven officers relinquish their equipment prior to Omaha's assumption of control to be employee speech. Dempsey stated in a deposition that he thought what Marfisi was asking him to do was wrong and that it would be unsafe to effectively terminate the Elkhorn officers and leave Elkhorn short staffed before Omaha officially assumed public safety functions. To the extent, then, that Dempsey's actions in response to Marfisi's demands constituted speech, Dempsey took those actions to fulfill his duties of providing for the public's safety and managing the Elkhorn Police Department.