Opinion ID: 173926
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: ms. jordan's appeal

Text: Ms. Jordan appeals the district court's denial of summary judgment on Mr. Deutsch's First Amendment claim against her. She contends that she is entitled to qualified immunity because (1) Mr. Deutsch's testimony was not on a matter of public concern, and (2) even if it was, Ms. Jordan's reasonable belief that he had lied overrode his free-speech interests. After setting forth our standard of review, we take each of Ms. Jordan's contentions in turn, first addressing our jurisdiction and then, if allowable, the merits.
Insofar as we have jurisdiction to review the denial of a qualified-immunity motion for summary judgment, our review is de novo. See Armijo ex rel. Armijo Sanchez v. Peterson, 601 F.3d 1065, 1070 (10th Cir.2010). To defeat such a motion, the plaintiff must clear two hurdles. First, the plaintiff must show a violation of federal constitutional or statutory rights. See Martinez v. Carr, 479 F.3d 1292, 1295 (10th Cir.2007). Second, the plaintiff must show . . . that a reasonable [public official] would have known that his or her challenged conduct was illegal. Id. This second showing must overcome a claim that the official made a reasonable mistake of law (because the law was not clearly established), a reasonable mistake of fact, or a reasonable mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact. Pearson, 129 S.Ct. at 815. Although the plaintiff bears this burden, the evidence is reviewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff when, as here, the defendant seeks summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity. Fletcher, 605 F.3d at 1096.

Denials of summary judgment are ordinarily not final judgments appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Fletcher v. Burkhalter, 605 F.3d 1091, 1096 (10th Cir.2010). But a defendant may be entitled to appeal from a denial of a motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. Id. Qualified immunity is an immunity  from suit rather than a mere defense to liability. Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). Because that immunity is effectively lost if a case is erroneously permitted to go to trial, id., the denial of summary judgment is, in a sense, a final decision on the immunity issue. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has declared that a denial of qualified immunity based on an abstract legal issue is an appealable `final decision' within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291 notwithstanding the absence of a final judgment. Id. at 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806. On the other hand, a portion of a district court's summary judgment order that, though entered in a `qualified immunity' case, determines only a question of `evidence sufficiency,' i.e., which facts a party may, or may not, be able to prove at trial . . ., is not appealable. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). Although founded on principles of finality doctrine, this limitation on appealability is in large part a pragmatic accommodation, based on the assessment that appellate-court interlocutory review of the sufficiency of evidence can greatly burden appellate courts and delay the work of the trial courts while producing questionable benefits. See id. at 313-18, 115 S.Ct. 2151. In this case the question whether Mr. Deutsch's testimony was on a matter of public concern is an abstract legal issue. The relevant facts are undisputed. We therefore have jurisdiction to address the merits. See McFall v. Bednar, 407 F.3d 1081, 1086, 1088-89 (10th Cir.2005).
For Mr. Deutsch to prevail on his First Amendment claim, his testimony at the defamation trial must have been on a matter of public concern. [1] [P]ublic concern is something that is a subject of legitimate news interest; that is, a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public at the time of publication. City of San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 83-84, 125 S.Ct. 521, 160 L.Ed.2d 410 (2004). Whether an employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern must be determined by the content, form, and context of a given statement, as revealed by the whole record. Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 147-48, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). Ms. Jordan contends that Mr. Deutsch's testimony was not on a matter of public concern because of both the content and the context of his testimony. She emphasizes that his speech was not aimed at exposing wrongdoing by the government, and was made in pursuit of a grievance against a private citizen. We are not persuaded. As we have stated, speech which discloses any evidence of corruption, impropriety, or other malfeasance on the part of city officials clearly concerns matters of public import. Dill v. City of Edmond, 155 F.3d 1193, 1202 (10th Cir. 1998) (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). The public interest, however, does not end with the accusation of misconduct. Although the issue may arise rarely (because public employees are rarely punished for defending the integrity of their agencies), the response to an accusation is also a matter of public concern. One would hope that public attitudes toward a government agency are not set before both sides are heard. Thus, not only is speech alleging that the police chief misused city funds ordinarily speech on a matter of public concern, but so, too, is speech defending against such allegations. The context of Mr. Deutsch's speech does not transform it from being speech on a matter of public concern. To be sure, when determining whether speech pertains to a matter of public concern, the court may consider the motive of the speaker and whether the speech is calculated to disclose misconduct or merely deals with personal disputes and grievances unrelated to the public's interest. Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1205 (internal quotation marks omitted). But the speaker's having a highly personal motive for a disclosure does not necessarily mean that the speech is not a matter of public concern. Whistle blowers may often bear personal grudges. Some subject matter is so imbued with the public interest that speech regarding it will almost always be a matter of public concern, whatever the context. The Supreme Court's opinion in Connick is informative. Myers, an assistant district attorney in Connick's office, was unhappy about a change in her assignment. See Connick, 461 U.S. at 140, 103 S.Ct. 1684. When she expressed her discontent and discussed a number of concerns with a supervisor, the supervisor suggested that others in the office did not share those concerns. See id. at 141, 103 S.Ct. 1684. In response, Myers circulated a questionnaire to the other assistant district attorneys regarding office personnel-transfer policies, office morale, the need for a grievance committee, confidence in superiors, and pressure to work in political campaigns. See id. The Court held that all but the last question were not of public import in evaluating the performance of the District Attorney as an elected official, because Myers was not seeking[ing] to inform the public that the District Attorney's office was not discharging its governmental responsibilities in the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases . . . . [or] to bring to light actual or potential wrongdoing or breach of public trust on the part of Connick and others. Id. at 148, 103 S.Ct. 1684. [T]he focus of Myers' questions, said the Court, was not to evaluate the performance of the office but rather to gather ammunition for another round of controversy with her superiors. Id. The Court recognized, however, that the same subject matter could, in different circumstances, have been the topic of a communication to the public that might be of general interest. Id. at 148 n. 8, 103 S.Ct. 1684. And even in the context of Myers's questionnaire, asking whether assistant district attorneys ever feel pressured to work in political campaigns on behalf of office supported candidates did touch upon a matter of public concern. Id. at 149, 103 S.Ct. 1684 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court observed that there is a demonstrated interest in this country that government service should depend upon meritorious performance rather than political service. Id. Connick thus rejected a firm rule that the purpose of the speaker in itself will preclude speech from being on a matter of public concern. Brammer-Hoelter made a similar distinction. We held that some of the plaintiffs' speech was a matter of personal, rather than public, concern because it was inherently related to plaintiffs' grievances with their employer regarding such matters as supervisor performance, pay, and workload. Brammer-Hoelter, 492 F.3d at 1206. But we also held that [s]peech concerning potential illegal conduct by government officials is inherently a matter of public concern even if the plaintiffs' motivation was that the complained-of illegal conduct affected them. Id. Here, Mr. Deutsch testified at trial to satisfy a personal purpose; he certainly wished to clear his name. But clearing his name and responding to a charge of public corruption amounted to the same thing. The testimony at issue was a matter of public concern. [2]
Ms. Jordan's second argument on appeal is that she is not liable because she reasonably believed that Mr. Deutsch had lied in his trial testimony. To determine whether we have jurisdiction to review this argument, we must begin by further exploring its substance. The argument has two parts. First, Ms. Jordan claims that an employee fails the third step of the Garcetti/Pickering testbalancing the competing interestsif the employee intentionally lies and is fired for doing so. This would follow, she argues, because intentional falsehoods are not protected by the First Amendment, see Andersen v. McCotter, 205 F.3d 1214, 1219 n. 1 (10th Cir.2000), and, in any event, a public employer has a substantial interest in the integrity and credibility of its employees, especially a police chief. In other words, the interests of the government would outweigh the employee's unprotected interest. We can assume that Ms. Jordan is correct on this legal point. But Ms. Jordan does not deny that there is a genuine factual dispute regarding whether Mr. Deutsch testified falsely. Therefore, she proceeds to the second step of her argumenta claim of qualified immunity. Even if Mr. Deutsch may have testified accurately, she says, she is still entitled to immunity because she believed that he had lied and her belief was reasonable. Again, we will assume, without deciding, that the legal proposition stated by Ms. Jordan is correctthat is, we will assume that a city manager who reasonably believes that the police chief has lied under oath on a matter of his official duties is entitled to qualified immunity if she fires him on that ground. [3] The problem for Ms. Jordan, however, is that an underlying factual dispute deprives us of jurisdiction to address whether that legal proposition resolves this case. The district court ruled that there is a genuine factual dispute regarding whether Ms. Jordan's claimed reason for [Mr. Deutsch's] termination (her belief that his testimony was untruthful) is true. Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Def.'s Mot. for Summ. J. at 45, Deutsch v. Jordan, No. 08-CV-191-J (D.Wyo. Apr. 13, 2009). [4] Thus, we cannot rule in Ms. Jordan's favor without reversing the district court's determination that there is a factual dispute regarding her state of mind. And a challenge to a determination that there is a factual dispute regarding a defendant's state of mind raises a quintessential evidence-sufficiency issue that we lack jurisdiction to review before final judgment. Fletcher, 605 F.3d at 1097. Therefore, we must let stand, at least for now, the district court's rejection of this qualified-immunity argument by Ms. Jordan. At oral argument Ms. Jordan raised an interesting fall-back argument. She contended that even if she did not believe that Mr. Deutsch had lied during his testimony, she is entitled to qualified immunity so long as it would have been reasonable for her to believe that he had lied. She relied on qualified-immunity analysis in claims under the Fourth Amendment, in which courts have noted that the subjective state of mind of the law-enforcement officer being sued is irrelevant. See, e.g., Keylon v. City of Albuquerque, 535 F.3d 1210, 1218 (10th Cir.2008). In these cases, the constitutionality of the officer's conduct depends only on what a reasonable officer would believe in the circumstances, not what the defendant officer subjectively believed. We doubt the validity of her argument. Unlike a Fourth Amendment claim, a First Amendment retaliation claim depends on the defendant's state of mind; whether the decision to fire violated the First Amendment turns on what motivated the person making the firing decision. See, e.g., Couch v. Bd. of Trs., 587 F.3d 1223, 1239 (10th Cir.2009) (retaliation claim failed because employee did not establish that his speech was a motivating factor behind adverse employment action). In any event, we need not resolve this fall-back argument; it was raised too late in the appellate process, see Corder v. Lewis Palmer Sch. Dist. No. 38, 566 F.3d 1219, 1235 n. 8 (10th Cir.2009) (An argument made for the first time at oral argument . . . will not be considered.).