Opinion ID: 799692
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Mosholder's Speech as a Matter of Public Concern

Text: The First Amendment may afford protection to a public employee's speech about her employer's activities where the speech relates to a matter of public concern. In determining whether such speech has First Amendment protection, a court must, under Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731, balance the individual's interest in free expression with the employer's interest in effectively operating its public institutions. The boundaries of the public concern test are not well defined. San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 83, 125 S.Ct. 521, 160 L.Ed.2d 410 (2004). Generally, an employee speaking as a citizen is speaking on a matter of public concern when that speech can be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community. Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). Another consideration is whether the speech involves a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public. Roe, 543 U.S. at 83-84, 125 S.Ct. 521. We live in an age where individuals possess a near-limitless ability to speak to audiences who might share their outrage at a particular controversy or allegation, turning the matter of concern test into a simple test of whether the statement was made and someone heard it. The more meaningful inquiry, then, calls for looking into the content, form, and context of a given statement, as revealed by the whole record, Connick, supra, 461 U.S. at 147-48, 103 S.Ct. 1684, and determining whether the employee predominantly spoke upon matters only of personal interest or upon matters of public concern. Id. at 147, 103 S.Ct. 1684. The district court relied heavily on Brown v. City of Trenton, 867 F.2d 318, 322 (6th Cir.1989), in reaching its finding that Mosholder did not speak on a matter of public concern. In that case, a group of disgruntled police officers serving on the Emergency Response Tactical Team sent a letter to the city's police chief; they also sent copies to several other public officials. The letter contained rather extensive complaints about the management of their team, particular decisions by police administrators, and accusations of administrative jealousy and betrayal. Id. at 319-20. The letter ended with an implied endorsement of a change in administration and an offer to return all of their gear and resign. Id. at 320. The officers later resigned. Id. This court held that the letter concerned a matter of limited interest to members of the general public. Id. at 322. Finding no hint . . . of any actual or potential wrongdoing or breach of public trust, the court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the city. Id. at 322-25. The district court determined that Mosholder's letter was little more than a quintessential employee beef, see Fox v. Traverse City Area Pub. Schs. Bd. of Educ., 605 F.3d 345, 349 (6th Cir.2010) (quoting Barnes v. McDowell, 848 F.2d 725, 735 (6th Cir.1988)), and, as such, did not touch on a matter of public concern. This analysis was incorrect. There are two ways of reading Mosholder's letter. The first, which the district court embraced, is as the airing of personal complaints about a management practice with which Mosholder disagreed, albeit dressed up as a larger treatise on the prison's failure to rehabilitate inmates properly. The second is as a specific instance of the prison failing to accomplish its rehabilitative goals, as manifest in inmate behavior during the rap competition, accompanied by a series of statistics providing a wider view of the problems. The second reading more closely adheres to the content, form and context of the letter. [T]he pertinent question is not why the employee spoke, but what he said. . . . Farhat v. Jopke, 370 F.3d 580, 591 (6th Cir.2004) (emphasis in original). We are concerned with the distinction between matters of public concern and those only of private interest, not [between] civic-minded motives and self-serving motives. Chappel v. Montgomery Cnty. Fire Protection, 131 F.3d 564, 575 (6th Cir.1997). Mosholder disagreed with the operation of an institution charged with protecting the public. She was almost certainly motivated, at least in part, by personal disagreement with the manner in which the prison administration ran TCF. Correct operation of that institution is a matter of public concern. Mattox v. City of Forest Park, 183 F.3d 515, 521 (6th Cir.1999). This court's evaluation of her letter, then, focuses on whether her complaint is merely a matter of private interesther personal offense at a rap competition, decorated with appended statistics and expressing merely a token concern for the communityor if it remains in the realm of public concern. The relevant analysis here is whether the communication touches upon matters only of personal interest. . . . Connick, 461 U.S. at 147, 103 S.Ct. 1684 (emphasis added). A public concern/private interest analysis does not require that a communication be utterly bereft of private observations or even expressions of private interest. See, e.g., Perry v. McGinnis, 209 F.3d 597 (6th Cir.2000) (holding that an employee was speaking on a matter of public concern even when airing a personal grievance about racial discrimination). In Brown, the purpose of the letter was to vent (rather extensively) personal grievances with the administration of the officers' unit, share the officers' perception of jealousy coming from other units, their sense of betrayal by their superiors, and prospectively tender their resignations. No matter the arguable relationship between their grievances and public safety, the complaints in Brown did not concern actual or potential wrongdoing or any breach of public trust. . . . 867 F.2d at 322. Mosholder, on the other hand, lodged complaints about the administration of a public safety facility that, in her view, promoted behavior that could offend victims and their families, and also potentially put prisoners and staff immediately, and the general public eventually, at risk. Whatever her personal motivation, including her own desire to see different policies enacted, she wrote primarily on a matter of public concern.