Opinion ID: 4560855
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Fledderjohann Spoke as a Public Employee

Text: With these factors in mind, we hold that Fledderjohann has failed to demonstrate a genuine dispute of material fact about whether he spoke as an employee. Fledderjohann’s emails to ODE expressed concerns involving his responsibilities as a teacher. He therefore cannot show that his speech was constitutionally protected, and thus the district court did not err in granting summary judgment for the defendants. Fledderjohann’s job description as a third-grade teacher included several “essential functions,” among which was “[p]roctor[ing] state/district testing activities as directed” and “[u]phold[ing] mandated security procedures” associated with the testing. Fledderjohann testified at his deposition: “My job as a proctor is to maintain the security in my room and follow what I’m -9- Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. supposed to do.” As part of the teachers’ training in preparation for the AIR exam, Fledderjohann also signed an “Annual Notice Regarding Security Provisions for Statewide Assessments and Standards for the Ethical Use of Tests,” which outlined a teacher’s responsibility to “immediately contact the designated school official and provide him/her with the name(s) of the violator(s) and nature of the alleged violation(s)” if the teacher suspected any “reason to believe that there’s been an assessment security violation.” These facts demonstrate that enforcing test-security protocols was part of Fledderjohann’s duties as a teacher. An analogous case is Mayhew v. Town of Smyrna, in which the plaintiff, who was the lab supervisor of the town’s wastewater-treatment plant, initially reported a coworker’s misconduct (falsifying data, incomplete testing, etc.) to the plant manager. 856 F.3d at 460. However, after the misbehaving coworker was later promoted, Mayhew escalated his complaints to the town’s human-resources department, including sending an email stating that he found “it disturbing that the Town Manager would promote someone” that was putting pressure on plant workers “to hide violations.” Id. at 461. The town characterized Mayhew as “insubordinate” and as being “bitter against” the coworker and ultimately dismissed him. Ibid. We held that Mayhew’s complaints about his coworker were made pursuant to his ordinary job responsibilities because he was required to “report any appropriate situations and accidents immediately to management.” Id. at 465. The fact that Mayhew’s supervisors ultimately disagreed with the reporting or found it “insubordinate” did not mean that the statements were not made as an employee. Compare Mayhew with Buddenberg v. Weisdack, in which we held that a fiscal coordinator for the Geauga County, Ohio, Health District, who was responsible for “processing payroll and accounts payable, preparing fiscal reports, and contributing to the department budget process,” was not speaking as an employee when she reported “internal ethical violations [and] allegations - 10 - Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. of discrimination to the Board of Health.” 939 F.3d 732, 735–36 (6th Cir. 2019). Although the procedural posture of the case was on an appeal from a motion to dismiss, we concluded that because the plaintiff had alleged that her “ordinary duties did not include reporting employee misconduct to the Board,” her lawsuit could proceed. Id. at 740. Here, Fledderjohann’s ordinary job responsibilities required him to “proctor[] state/district testing activities as directed” and to “[u]phold[] mandated security procedures,” and, for the AIR assessment in particular, he was supposed to report any potential testing violations immediately to a “Building Test Coordinator” or a “District Test Coordinator.” Thus, any communication reporting possible testing violations was part of Fledderjohann’s official duties and, indeed, the defendants note that Fledderjohann was fired not just for making false accusations but also for “fail[ing] to report his allegations of test security violations to a District Test Coordinator, a Building Test Coordinator, or the building principal.” Fledderjohann argues that his case is different. He claims that he was uncomfortable reporting directly up the formal chain of command because two of the officials to whom he was supposed to report—Ahrens and Luebke—were two of the alleged perpetrators. Appellant Br. 23. Ahrens was one of two designated “Building Test Coordinators,” and Luebke was the “District Test Coordinator.” Appellee Br. 4–5. This created a situation in which—per the testing protocols—he should have reported the violations directly to the violators themselves. Fledderjohann stated during his deposition that this was one reason that he decided to reach out to ODE directly. He insists that a recent case, Barrow v. City of Hillview, 775 F. App’x 801 (6th Cir. 2019), supports his claim that reporting misconduct to authorities above one’s immediate supervisors means that the individual was not speaking as an employee. In Barrow, two police officers who had witnessed an instance of possible corruption (fellow officers moving drug - 11 - Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. paraphernalia that was found on the mayor’s property to off the property) ultimately reported their concerns to the FBI. Id. at 804. We held that the officers’ interactions with the FBI were not employee speech because speaking to the FBI was not an expected part of their ordinary job responsibilities. Id. at 813. Although the officers’ speech “concerned information they learned as police officers, their ordinary job responsibilities did not include reporting allegations of public corruption to outside authorities,” and their interactions with the FBI were “distinct from their obligations as Hillview police officers.” Ibid. Barrow is not analogous to Fledderjohann’s situation. ODE is not an “outside authority.” Ibid. Rather, ODE is the main authority concerned with allegations of cheating. It is uncontested that ODE was the state entity that established the protocols related to the AIR test, and Fledderjohann stated that he emailed Vaughn specifically because he believed her to be “the head of test security for the AIR testing.” Vaughn confirmed that “[p]otential test security violations always start with [her].” Further, Luebke provided Fledderjohann and other teachers with the “Ohio State Test Fall 2016 Test Administration Manual,” which “is the full resource that should have everything or almost everything that teachers need for testing.” That manual provided instructions on how to respond to a possible security violation: “Call the Office of Curriculum and Assessment . . . for further guidance if needed. Please identify call as possible security incident.” Similarly, “Ohio’s State Tests Rules Book” contains “Procedures for a Possible Test Security Violation,” which require staff to “[c]all the Office of Curriculum and Assessment,” the very office in which Vaughn worked. Fledderjohann contacted Vaughn for guidance and clarification and thus followed these employer-provided instructions. Even if Fledderjohann went above his immediate superiors in the chain of command to report the alleged violations, he did not go outside the chain of command. And reporting of testing violations was not “distinct from” Fledderjohann’s - 12 - Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. obligations as a third-grade teacher. Ibid. One of his job’s “[e]ssential [f]unctions” was to uphold testing security, and Fledderjohann received specific training before the AIR exam on just how to report possible cheating. Moreover, the fact that Ahrens and Luebke were two of the designated officials to whom Fledderjohann was supposed to report does not lead us to conclude that Fledderjohann spoke as a private citizen rather than as an employee. The text of Fledderjohann’s December 22 email to ODE demonstrates a concern with the responsibilities of an educator rather than a “citizen’s concern” about possible testing violations. Holbrook, 658 F. App’x at 288. Fledderjohann stated that he was “an educator at a public school checking on AIR testing” and that he was aware of certain conduct “[a]t our school.” After describing each incident, Fledderjohann asked whether it was “ok” or “allowed.” He also asked “[w]here specifically, if at all does [sic] ‘rules’ tell or spell out, that an educator should report such breaches and how to report . . . if any as listed above are breaches?” (ellipsis in original), whether there would be “consequences” if the conduct described were improper, and—if there were no consequences—whether teachers were “all allowed to do the above? Is it ok?” Fledderjohann signed the email “concerned educator.” These statements suggest that Fledderjohann intended to convey his worries as a “concerned educator” and that he was seeking clarification as to whether certain practices were allowed, in part to clarify his performance of his own duties. These statements do not indicate that Fledderjohann’s email was meant as a way to “blow the whistle” on alleged perpetrators. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that Fledderjohann sent the email over a month after the test, as well as by his deposition statements. For example, when he was asked: “Would it be fair to say that in your making the report that you did to Ms. Vaughn, you thought this is a serious matter?” he responded: “No, not necessarily. I wanted to clear my conscious [sic]. I wouldn’t say, - 13 - Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. I wouldn’t say I really made a report. I was, more or less, asking for questions and clarity because of the concerns I had with the integrity of the test” (emphasis added). When asked again whether he had emailed ODE because he just “had concerns you were seeking clarification on,” Fledderjohann said “Yes.” Most notably, Fledderjohann admitted: “I really didn’t believe there was a violation. After one, two, three, four things happened, it just seemed strange that I missed some opportunities to help my students” (emphasis added). When asked what he meant by having “missed opportunities,” Fledderjohann said that he was unsure whether he was “supposed to leave my posters up” or whether “Mr. Ahrens is allowed to come in” and that he had thought he “goofed up” and thus “needed to call the State for clarification.” These statements suggest that Fledderjohann was concerned primarily with his own responsibilities as a teacher and whether he had erred in the way he administered the test. They do not suggest that he emailed ODE as a citizen wishing to bring to light potential violations of state-testing protocols. Put simply, Fledderjohann’s emails to ODE and his deposition statements all express a concern regarding his responsibilities as a teacher. They do not express a larger concern about the test or its protocols more generally. Our cases have focused on the context and purpose of the speech in determining whether it is public or private. In Haynes v. City of Circleville, Haynes, a canine officer, was fired after writing a memo to the Police Chief expressing his displeasure at a decrease in pay that canine officers would receive for training time that they spent with their dogs. 474 F.3d 357, 360 (6th Cir. 2007). Haynes alleged a First Amendment retaliation claim against the city, but we rejected the argument because “[t]he context of the memo as a whole is best characterized as that of a disgruntled employee upset that his professional suggestions were not followed as they had been - 14 - Case No. 20-3021, Fledderjohann v. Celina City Sch. Bd. of Educ. in the past.” Id. at 364. We also noted that “Haynes’s own lawyer characterized the dispute as a training disagreement.” Ibid. And in Holbrook v. Dumas, we held that a fire chief was speaking as an employee when he emailed fellow firefighters informing them that “we could potentially be out of a job, per the conversation I had with” the village manager because he sent the “e-mail in his role as Fire Chief, not simply as a concerned citizen.” 658 F. App’x at 281, 287. In support, we observed that “the purpose of the e-mail is evident in the text of the message. Holbrook, as Fire Chief, wanted to alert his employees as soon as possible to a development he just learned about that potentially jeopardized their employment,” and that the email did not “reflect[] a citizen’s concern about mismanagement” in governance. Id. at 288. Fledderjohann’s situation is no different. The context of his email to ODE is best characterized as that of a “concerned educator” who wanted to know whether certain practices were “ok” or “allowed.” Moreover, Fledderjohann’s deposition statements characterized his correspondences to ODE as asking for “clarification” and more concerned with whether he had “missed opportunities” to help his students and did not reflect any desire to blow the whistle on purported testing violations.