Opinion ID: 204011
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Federal Court Litigation

Text: Two months later, on December 18, 2006, plaintiffs, now represented by counsel, filed this suit in federal court. The suit alleged that defendants violated plaintiffs' First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by creating fora . . . for the expression of their viewpoints regarding spending, while failing and refusing to allow the [plaintiffs] access to such fora in order to communicate their contrary viewpoints regarding spending. Along with Sutliffe and ERPG, who were the plaintiffs in the state court action, the complaint listed as a plaintiff Donald Sisson, an Epping resident -11- and ERPG member. Along with the school board and the Board of Selectmen, the federal complaint also named a wider set of defendants, including the Town, the Epping School District, its superintendent, the school district moderator, and the principal of Epping Elementary School. The initial complaint sought only money damages and was based on activities occurring in 2004 and 2005. These events were: (1) the distribution of the Cool News newsletter in February and March 2004 (which included the reference to the Advocates' website); (2) the distribution of other promotional flyers by the school in 2004 and 2005, which were mailed at the taxpayers' expense; (3) the use of similar advocacy mailers since 2001; (4) the placing of favorable information about a proposed school addition at the polls during the March 8, 2005, election; (5) mailings from the Board of Selectmen advocating the passage of certain warrant articles in 2004; and (6) mailings from the Town conservation committee advocating particular political viewpoints in the 2003 and 2004 elections. The school and Town defendants filed motions to dismiss, arguing that plaintiffs' claims were barred by res judicata and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Before the district court ruled on these motions, plaintiffs moved to amend their complaint. The plaintiffs' motion to amend was granted on May 3, 2007. The first amended complaint, filed the same day, differed from the initial -12- complaint in two ways. First, in an apparent attempt to circumvent defendants' res judicata argument, the amended complaint added three plaintiffs, Leo Grimard, Nancy Grimard, and Renee Victoria, all Epping residents who had no affiliation with ERPG. Second, the first amended complaint added an allegation based on alleged advocacy in the 2006 annual report, which the plaintiffs explained is a matter that [they] could not possibly have raised in the 2005 state court trial. Defendants moved again to dismiss, and on October 12, 2007, plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint. The second amended complaint added a new set of allegations based on the Town's decision in 2007 to add a link on its website to the website for the Speak Up, Epping! (SUE) event while refusing to add a link to ERPG's website. The facts surrounding these allegations are briefly summarized. Since the 1990s, the Town has owned and maintained a website; the Board of Selectmen determines what materials are placed on it. The website provides information on various Town boards and commissions, Town meetings, and proposed warrant articles. The Town website has also included hyperlinks to other websites. It is undisputed that these hyperlinks have only been added with the approval of the Board of Selectmen. Over the years, the Board of Selectmen has granted approval for external links to -13- the websites of governmental agencies and certain civic organizations, such as the New Hampshire Municipal Association, the Epping Middle High School, and the Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce. These links are not the subject of plaintiffs' complaint. For many years, there was an informal and unwritten policy as to when links would be added. Defendants say the purpose of the hyperlinks on the Town's website was always to provide information to the citizenry of the Town on Town business. The only links that were permitted were ones that would promote providing information about the Town, and any links that were political or advocate[d] for certain candidates were not allowed. However, on March 31, 2008, after the events at issue in this suit occurred, the Town adopted a written website policy that limited hyperlinks on the Town website to those for governmental agencies or events and programs that are coordinated and/or sponsored by the Town of Epping. In early 2007, the Town placed a hyperlink on its website to the website for SUE, which was an event that was scheduled to take place on April 14 of that year. SUE, which was part of a state-wide program facilitated by the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, consisted of a day-long discussion, held at the Epping Middle-High School, among Town residents; the event was intended to foster community spirit, civic discourse, and the -14- organization of community-defined projects and action groups. SUE was not itself a formal organization. Epping's Board of Selectmen endorsed the SUE event. In August 2006, at the behest of a group of Epping residents who had formed a steering committee for SUE, the selectmen agreed to provide $500 in funds to the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension to cover the costs of facilitating the event. The Board of Selectmen entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Extension regarding the details of the event and later received reports from the steering committee as planning and preparation for the event progressed. The steering committee provided the selectmen detailed information on its members, meeting times, purpose, and finances. One of the reports from the steering committee to the selectmen also explained plans for getting the word out about the event to the Town's residents; it proposed using the Town website for general outreach and stated that the steering committee would communicate with the Town administrator about this. Because of the Board of Selectmen's endorsement, the Town administrator allowed the link from the Town's website to the SUE event website. On July 20, 2007, after the hyperlink to the SUE website was added to the Town website, Sutliffe wrote a letter to the selectmen requesting that a hyperlink to ERPG's website also be added to the Town website. The selectmen responded with a letter -15- on August 14, 2007. The letter stated that the Board of Selectmen needed more information about ERPG before it could decide on Sutfliffe's request. It requested that Sutliffe provide information about ERPG's mission, a list of its members and officers, and financial statements. It also inquired whether ERPG's meetings and membership were open to the public, when meetings are scheduled, how one joins the group, and how the organization spends the funds it raises. The request essentially paralleled the information that had been voluntarily provided to the Board of Selectmen by the SUE steering committee. On August 21, 2007, Sutliffe responded by requesting: (1) that the Town explain under what authority it could require such information from ERPG and (2) that it produce evidence that the Board of Selectmen had requested similar evidence from SUE. After the Town failed to respond, plaintiffs amended their complaint to add two claims based on these events. First, plaintiffs alleged that the Town defendants violated their free association rights under the First Amendment by requesting that Sutliffe disclose certain information about ERPG. The Town claimed this information was necessary in order to allow the Board of Selectmen to decide whether it was appropriate to add the ERPG hyperlink. According to plaintiffs, however, this request was intended merely to harass and intimidate, in violation of the -16- First Amendment. See generally Gibson v. Fla. Legislative Investigation Comm., 372 U.S. 539, 544 (1963). Plaintiffs' second claim was that the Town defendants violated their Free Speech Clause rights by refusing their request to add a link to ERPG's website while simultaneously posting a link to the website of SUE. Plaintiffs argued that the Town turned its website into a designated public forum, and its rejection of ERPG's request could not withstand strict scrutiny. They argued, in the alternative, that the Town engaged in viewpoint discrimination by adding the hyperlink to the SUE website and not to ERPG's and that such viewpoint discrimination would be impermissible even in a nonpublic forum. Plaintiffs characterized SUE as a private group[] whose views the Town favors, although they provided no support for this characterization or any explanation of what views, if any, SUE espoused. Defendants again moved to dismiss, and on March 25, 2008, the district court held a hearing on these motions. On April 4, 2008, the court issued an order granting the motions to dismiss as to all the claims of the three plaintiffs added in the second amended complaint and as to the bulk of the claims of the remaining plaintiffs. Sutliffe III, 2008 WL 939183, at . The court concluded that the Grimards and Victoria lacked Article III standing because they failed to allege any actual or threatened injury. Id. at -7. -17- As to the other plaintiffs, the court concluded, first, that the claim added in the first amended complaint regarding the 2006 annual report was barred by collateral estoppel. It reasoned that the state court had decided the propriety of the 2004 annual report, and it found that [t]here is no reason to believe, even when the allegations of the second amended complaint are taken as true and augmented with all reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs' favor, that the 2006 annual report can be distinguished from the 2004 annual report in any meaningful sense. Id. at . Second, the court concluded that all the remaining claims, except those added in the second amended complaint pertaining to the Town website, were barred by res judicata. It found that the federal case arose from the same cause of action as the earlier state court case, and that the state court case concluded with a final judgment on the merits. Id. at -10. Once the three plaintiffs who lacked standing were removed from consideration, moreover, the federal complaint and the state court suit involved the same parties or their privies. Id. at -8. All the remaining claims brought in the federal complaint, except for the website claim, were either brought or could have been brought in the state court suit; the claims were thus barred. Id. at . On August 21, 2008, the Town defendants moved for summary judgment on the remaining claims, which pertained to the website. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on -18- November 13, 2008. Sutliffe IV, 2008 WL 4922348, at . First, the district court rejected plaintiffs' free association claim. The court found there was no evidence that the Town's disclosure request would have resulted in harassment of current members, a decline in new members, or other chilling of associational rights. Id. at  (quoting United States v. Comley, 890 F.2d 539, 544 (1st Cir. 1989)) (internal quotation mark omitted). Second, the district court rejected plaintiffs' claim under the Free Speech Clause. The court rejected plaintiffs' argument that the Town turned its website into a designated public forum by adding the SUE link while rejecting the ERPG link. Id. at -8. Viewing the Town website as a nonpublic forum, it concluded that the Town's actions were reasonable and there was no evidence of viewpoint discrimination. Id. at -11.