Opinion ID: 624961
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff’s Claim against the City

Text: In order for Plaintiff to prevail on her retaliation claim against the City, we must first determine whether Plaintiff was engaged in constitutionally protected conduct. Under this first step, we must decide as a question of law whether Plaintiff was speaking as a citizen or as part of her 11 No. 10-2064 official duties as the Interim Corporation Counsel. Weisbarth v. Geauga Park Dist., 499 F.3d 538, 542 (6th Cir. 2007). “The First Amendment protects a public employee's right, in certain circumstances, to speak as citizens addressing matters of public concern.” Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 417 (2006). However, “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.” Id. at 421. In Garcetti, relying on Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968), the Supreme Court established the relevant inquiry to guide our First Amendment analysis for public employee speech. Garcetti held that a court must determine: whether the employee spoke as a citizen as a matter of public concern. If the answer is no, the employee has no First Amendment cause of action based on his or her employer’s reaction to the speech. If the answer is yes, then the possibility of a First Amendment claim arises. The question becomes whether the relevant government entity had an adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public. This consideration reflects the importance of the relationship between the speaker’s expressions and employment. A government entity has broader discretion to restrict speech when it acts in its role as employer, but the restrictions it imposes must be directed at speech that has some potential to affect the entity’s operations. Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 418 (internal citations and quotations omitted). A public concern is defined as relating to “any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community.” Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146 (1983). “Because of the need to provide government officials with the ability to manage their offices without ‘intrusive oversight by the judiciary,’ . . . our concern must be to protect those expressive activities of a public employee when he speaks as a citizen on a public matter; that concern ordinarily does not extend to a public employee’s speaking as an employee on matters only of his personal interest.” Gragg v. Kentucky 12 No. 10-2064 Cabinet for Workforce Dev., 289 F.3d 958, 965 (6th Cir. 2002) (quoting Connick, 461 U.S. at 146–47). In the instant case, the district court properly analyzed Plaintiff’s claim to conclude that she was acting within her official duties when she made her comments about the 36th District Court. Plaintiff’s attempt to distinguish between statements made in conjunction with her job and statements made unrelated to her job is unconvincing. The district court properly found that Plaintiff’s complaint and her deposition testimony provided evidence that Plaintiff was acting within her official duties as Interim Corporation Counsel when she made the comments about the 36th District Court. The payment of judgments by the City is identified by the City Charter as an official duty of Plaintiff. According to the City Charter, the Interim Corporation Counsel is responsible for: defense of all actions or proceedings against the City; prosecution of all actions and proceedings in which the City was a party or in which the City had a legal interest; prosecution of cases involving violations of city ordinances; representation of officers or employees of the City in matters involving official duties; provision of legal advice and opinions to the Mayor, the City Council, or the City’s department heads; drafting or ordinances and resolutions; review and approval of contracts and bonds; and approval of the payment of judgments against the City. (Def. The City’s Br. 8–9.) Plaintiff further emphasized that her job responsibilities included addressing the payment of judgments against the City by stating at her deposition that she “was doing what my job required, which was to talk about a judgment, find out what had happened and relay that to Mr. Green.” (R.59: City’s Mot. for Summ. J. Ex. A 144.) In addition, Plaintiff testified that she: was concerned about. . . the fact that there was a judgment hanging out there that had not been paid, and I was concerned that this gentleman [Sciotti’s attorney] was taking a lot of bizarre action to, you know, satisfy the judgment. And we needed to clean 13 No. 10-2064 this up. That’s the whole reason for having the conversation is we had to make a decision one way or the other. (Id.) Plaintiff’s attempt to isolate the statement from her official duty is misplaced. She argues in her claim against the City that she engaged in protective speech under the First Amendment because the statements she made in regard to the 36th District Court were not related to her job but “was merely uttered in conjunction with her job.” (emphasis added). As the record below demonstrates, Plaintiff’s speech arose in the context of her official duty as the Interim Corporation Counsel. If Plaintiff truly believed that her official responsibilities did not include issues related to the payment of court judgments then she would not have made so many attempts to try to resolve this matter. The record shows that Plaintiff first contacted the judicial assistant who handled the trial and after that strategy proved unsuccessful, she took it upon herself to attempt to speak directly with the Court’s Chief Judge, Marylin Atkins. Plaintiff then proceeded to schedule a conference call with the Chief Assistant Corporation Counsel and the judicial assistant to address the issue. It was during the course of the plaintiff’s professional duty as Interim Corporation Counsel that she made the comments which the Defendants considered inappropriate. See Haynes v. City of Circleville, 474 F.3d 357, 364 (6th Cir. 2007) (finding that the plaintiff “was acting as a public employee carrying out [her] professional responsibilities” when she made her remarks and therefore the employee’s speech was unprotected). While government employees “do not surrender all their First Amendment rights by reason of their employment,” Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 417, they “must accept certain limitations on [their] freedom.” Id. at 418. We find this to include disparaging comments about another governmental entity—in particular, one with which Plaintiff had regular and frequent 14 No. 10-2064 interactions and was required to work with on a close and cooperative basis. Because Plaintiff cannot prove that her speech was constitutionally protected, she cannot establish a prima facie case for her First Amendment retaliation claim. 2. Plaintiff’s Claim against Judge Atkins Plaintiff also raises a First Amendment retaliation claim against Judge Atkins asserting that Plaintiff’s speech was protected because it touched upon a matter of public concern.3 In reviewing the conduct of both Plaintiff and Judge Atkins to determine whether Plaintiff’s remarks were intended to address a matter of public concern, the district court considered our analysis in Farhat v. Jopke, 370 F.3d 580, 589 (6th Cir. 2004). The district court determined that the “focus” of the speech; the point of the speech in question; purpose to which the employee spoke; the intent of the speech; the communicative purpose of the speaker; and the record, provided sufficient evidence that Plaintiff’s remarks were not made to express a matter of public concern. We agree. To the extent that her incidental remarks can be isolated as addressing a matter of public concern, the circumstances do not warrant constitutional protection or give rise to a retaliation cause of action. The record clearly established that Plaintiff was acting in her capacity as Interim Corporation Counsel and not as a concerned citizen. In the alternative, Plaintiff raises for the first time on appeal that she was engaged in a protected petitioning activity in registering a complaint regarding what she viewed as a dysfunctional 3 Plaintiff alleges in her complaint that “in forwarding the email and letter, Judge Atkins was acting under color of State law, i.e., in her capacity as Chief Judge of the 36th District Court.” (R.27: Compl. ¶ 45.) 15 No. 10-2064 36th District Court.4 In California Transport v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510 (1972), the Supreme Court established that in a representative democracy the whole concept of representation depends upon the ability of people to exercise the right of petition as one of the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights. In Gable v. Lewis, 201 F.3d 769 (6th Cir. 2000), we applied California Transport’s definition of the petition clause to hold that the submission of complaints and criticisms by a non-public employee to non-legislative and non-judicial public agencies constitutes petitioning activity protected by the petition clause. Although Plaintiff’s evidence is insufficient on its face to satisfy the requirements of the petition activity as discussed by this court in Holzemer v. City of Memphis, 621 F.3d 512 (6th Cir. 2010), we decline to address whether Plaintiff’s activity falls under the petition clause because she did not raise this issue below. See Brickner v. Voinovich, 977 F.2 235, 238 (6th Cir. 1992) (finding that Plaintiff’s constitutional and statutory arguments were not pleaded or preserved in the district court and are therefore waived on appeal). In addition, the more appropriate analysis is under the “public concerns” test, and Plaintiff was acting at all time within her capacity as a public employee. Judge Atkins argues that Plaintiff’s claim fails because she cannot establish a prima facie case of First Amendment retaliation. In addition, Judge Atkins asserts qualified immunity and argues that as a government official she is “shielded from liability from civil damages insofar as [her] conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a 4 Although Plaintiff has consistently maintained during proceedings before the district court and in its brief to this court, that “matters of public concern” were raised during the conversation, Plaintiff now urges this Court to rely not on cases involving “matters of public concern” but instead view her complaint as a petition clause activity. 16 No. 10-2064 reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1983). Qualified immunity balances two important interests—the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction and liability when they reasonably perform their duties. The protection of qualified immunity applies regardless of whether the government’s error is a “mistake of law, a mistake of fact, or a mistake based on mixed questions of law and fact.” Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009) (citing Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 567 (2004)). Judge Atkins’ qualified immunity defense requires a three-step inquiry. The first step requires us to determine whether, “in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, . . . the facts alleged show the [ ] conduct violated a constitutional right[.]” Parsons v. City of Pontiac, 533 F.3d 492, 500 (6th Cir. 2008) (citing Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001)). We must adopt the plaintiff's version of the facts when reviewing a defense of qualified immunity on a motion for summary judgment. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 377 (2007). If the Court decides that a constitutional right was violated then the second step is to “ask whether the right was clearly established.” Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201. We sometimes apply a third step to “increase the clarity” of the analysis which asks “whether the plaintiff offered sufficient evidence to indicate that what the official allegedly did was objectively unreasonable in light of the clearly established constitutional rights.” Estate of Carter v. City of Detroit, 408 F.3d 305, 311 n. 2 (6th Cir.2005) (internal citations omitted). In Pearson, the Supreme Court recently interpreted the sequence of analysis for qualified immunity as “often appropriate [but] it should no longer be considered as mandatory.” 555 U.S. at 236. In applying Pearson, we have stated that although courts are “still required to address the same 17 No. 10-2064 questions in conducting [the] qualified immunity analysis, [they are now] free to consider those questions in whatever order is appropriate in light of the issues before [them].” Moldowan v. City of Warren, 573 F.3d 309, 333 (6th Cir. 2009). As previously discussed, Plaintiff made her comments about the 36th District Court pursuant to her official duties as the Interim Corporation Counsel. Therefore, Plaintiff’s speech is not protected as would be the speech of a citizen commenting on a matter of a public concern. Because Plaintiff cannot establish a constitutional violation consisting of a violation of her First Amendment rights, the defense of qualified immunity applies in the instant action. In the absence of a constitutional violation of Plaintiff’s rights, there is no requirement to consider whether the alleged constitutional right was clearly established. Saucier, 533 U.S. at 201. Therefore an analysis proceeding with the second step is not necessary to address Judge Atkins qualified immunity defense. Id. (stating that “[i]f no constitutional right would have been violated were the allegations established, there is no necessity for further inquiries concerning qualified immunity”). Plaintiff, while acting in her official capacity as the Interim Corporation Counsel for the City of Detroit, engaged in comments that could have adversely impacted relationships between the City and the 36th District Court. Plaintiff is unable to now frame the underlying conversation in the context of a right warranting protection by this Court, as the Constitution does not shield from discipline unprotected expressions made in the context of an individual’s official duties. Plaintiff failed to establish a causal connection between any constitutional right or protected action and her termination, and failed to present evidence that she experienced severe and pervasive harassment in retaliation for engaging in activity warranting constitutional protection. Therefore, the district court 18 No. 10-2064 did not err in granting summary judgment for Defendant the City of Detroit on Plaintiff’s claims of First Amendment retaliation and reverse racial discrimination, and for Defendant Atkins on Plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claim.