Court Opinion

ID: 9496647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:31:35.687245+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:42.219238
License: Public Domain

SUTTON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I see this case differently. In Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988), the Supreme Court rejected a First and Fourteenth Amendment challenge to a city ordinance that imposed a “complete ban” on “targeted residential picketing” because (among other reasons) it can “scarcely be doubted” that this medium of communication is “offensive and disturbing,” because this type of picketing is directed at “captive audience[s]” who “are presumptively unwilling to receive” the message, and because such picketing invariably “invade[s] residential privacy.” Id. at 487-88, 108 S.Ct. 2495. Consistent with Frisby, the State of Michigan makes it unlawful “to engage in picketing a private residence by any means or methods whatever.” Mich. Comp. Laws § 423.9f. On this record and under these circumstances, I fail to see how E. Stephen Dean can tenably claim that Thomas Byer-ley violated his constitutional rights, much less violated his clearly established constitutional rights, when Byerley objected to Dean’s targeted residential picketing of his home on the morning of March 27, 2001. Add to this the undisputed fact that Byer-ley wrote Dean a letter two days after the picketing (but before the filing of this lawsuit) confirming he had “a right to exercise [his] First Amendment rights” in permissible ways, and it becomes difficult to understand why Mr. Dean ought to be able to make a $2 million federal case out of this incident. In my view, the district court properly rejected Dean’s federal claims as a matter of law, and accordingly I respectfully dissent.
I. BACKGROUND
While a considerable number of ambiguities cloud this pro se lawsuit, two things are clear: E. Stephen Dean had an unsatisfying experience in submitting his application to become a member of the Michigan Bar, and he believes that the defendant in this case, Thomas Byerley, sought to curb his efforts to engage in targeted residential picketing of Byerley’s house over his Bar application. In order to explain my perspective on this case, the background to both points deserves some elaboration.
Dean is a graduate of the Thomas Cooley School of Law. In December 2000, he submitted his application for admission to the State Bar of Michigan. As he was delivering the application to the State Bar, he expressed concern to the Executive Director of the. Bar that his application was not entirely complete. As a 60-year-old law-school graduate, he explained that he was unable to identify each of his places of residence over the course of his life and *560that he was concerned that the omissions might prejudice his efforts to gain admission to the Bar. When questioned by a Magistrate at the hearing on Byerley’s motion for summary judgment, Dean recounted what he had told the Executive Director in the following words.
DEAN: I’m really concerned and what I’m concerned about is not withholding anything, but, my gosh, I can’t remember where I was 3 years ago and an apartment number or something like that, and that has me a little nervous .... The people at the bar handling this stuff are under 30. Try explaining to somebody 25 years old ... that you don’t remember where you lived. They think you’re crazy. I said, but if it’s 40 or 41 years ago it can be tough. He said, oh, don’t worry about that; I took the bar when I was in my 50s ... they’ll work with you. Well, that isn’t what I got from the bar. I got no phone calls, you know, where were you and — I’d leave off a couple of months someplace. I’ve lived in several states. And they keep — first, they would ignore it for a couple of weeks and then they would write back the same old, same old, as if I were refusing to cooperate with them.
THE COURT: So they were trying to get information to complete your application that they felt you ought to provide and you were having difficulty remembering the information that you needed to provide.
DEAN: They were refusing to accept my up-front — before I handed in the application, the attachment to it, that I’ve done my absolute best but it’s difficult to remember 38 or 40 or 25 years ago an exact address. I’ve done my utmost here.
THE COURT: All right. And then this dialogue went on between you and the staff members at the bar and eventually that led to your beginning this picketing?
DEAN: That’s correct.
Summ. J. Hr’g Tr. at 38-39.
At some point after these exchanges with employees of the Michigan Bar, but before the State had acted on his Bar application and before he took the Bar exam, Dean began picketing about his application and about the treatment he had received from employees of the Michigan Bar. In his first protest, in March 2001, Dean hired two individuals to assist him in picketing the Michigan State Bar Building about the treatment he had received in submitting his Bar application. He paid each picketer $10 an hour.
Dean eventually extended his picketing to the residence of Thomas Byerley, the Regulation Counsel and Director of the Professional Standards Division for the Michigan Bar. Among other things, the Professional Standards Division oversees the Michigan Bar’s Character and Fitness Department. Members of the Department investigate the backgrounds of all State Bar applicants and assess whether they have the requisite character and fitness to practice law in Michigan. They then submit their findings to the Board of Law Examiners, which makes the ultimate admission decisions about each application.
Dean arrived at the Byerley residence on the morning of March 27, 2001, and brought with him the two mercenary picketers he had employed in earlier demonstrations. No sidewalk runs in front of Byerley’s home. Therefore, according to Dean, he and his colleagues picketed on the public street in front of the Byerley home and solely on that part of the street in front of that home. According to Byer-ley, the protestors also demonstrated on his property.
*561When Byerley left his home for work that morning, a confrontation occurred. According to the allegations of the complaint, Byerley (1) threatened to have Dean arrested for illegal picketing and (2) told Dean he would never practice law in the State of Michigan due to his illegal picketing. After this confrontation and after Byerley had proceeded to work, Dean and the two other protesters left. Since then, Dean has not picketed Byerley’s home or the State Bar Building.
Two days after this incident, on March 29, 2001, Byerley sent a letter to Dean about his picketing. In full, the letter reads as follows:
As you know, you and two other individuals were outside of my private residence on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 carrying signs. Although you have a right to exercise your First Amendment rights on public property, you do not have that right on private property.
On March 27 I verbally told you that you were on private property and that if you did not immediately leave I would call the police. This letter memorializes that statement. You are put on formal notice that you are never welcome on my private property and that if you trespass again I will ask that you be arrested.
Similarly, you are notified that you are not to enter the private property of any other State Bar of Michigan employee or officer.
Del’s Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. E.
Rather than respond to this letter or seek to clarify his authority to continue picketing, Dean filed this pro se complaint for $2 million against Byerley on April 4, 2001. He brought the claim in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, contending that Byerley: (1) had violated his First (and Fourteenth) Amendment rights and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by threatening to arrest Dean or retaliate against him for his residential picketing; (2) had committed a state-law assault by driving his car at Dean; and (3) had committed state-law libel by sending a letter to Dean claiming he had been trespassing. Dean sought $2 million in damages.
In July 2001, during discovery in the case, Dean voluntarily withdrew his Michigan State Bar application. At a motions hearing before a Magistrate on August 15, 2001, he said, “I withdrew [my Michigan State Bar application] because I thought it was best, and my letter of withdrawal to the bar stated this — not verbatim, Judge— but that I felt it would be best for me to get this lawsuit behind me before I went on with my application to the bar and, therefore, I’m withdrawing it at this time.” Tr. of Aug. 15, 2001 Magistrate Mot. Hr’g at 9. At this hearing, in response to questions from the Magistrate, Dean clarified that he was not alleging that Byerley actually did anything to prevent him from being admitted to the Bar or that he would do that. Id. at 8. And he confirmed that he had not withdrawn his application because of fears that Byerley would block the application. Id. at 9-10. (Dean apparently has since become a member of the Missouri Bar.)
In August 2001, Byerley filed a Motion for Summary Judgment, which the Magistrate recommended granting. In the Magistrate’s view, Dean did not have a constitutional right to picket Byerley’s residence in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988), which upheld a content-neutral ordinance barring focused residential picketing. Accordingly, the Magistrate recommended that the court dismiss Dean’s § 1983 claim and not retain supplemental jurisdiction over his state-law claims.
*562The district court agreed with this recommended disposition of the case but for different reasons. ■ It concluded that Dean’s § 1983 claim failed as a matter of law because Byerley did not act under color of state law when he allegedly threatened Dean that he would not become a member of the Michigan Bar if he continued picketing at his home. Among other reasons for reaching this conclusion, the district court noted that Byerley did not have actual authority to reject or approve Dean’s Bar Application. The court also dismissed Dean’s state-law claims for lack of supplemental jurisdiction. Dean responded with this appeal.
II. ANALYSIS
To obtain relief under § 1983, Dean must demonstrate that (1) a person acting under color of state law (2) deprived him of a right protected by either the Constitution or laws of the United States. See Waters v. City of Morristown, 242 F.3d 353, 359 (6th Cir.2001). In seeking $2 million in civil damages against Byerley in his individual capacity, Dean faces one more hurdle. He must show that the constitutional claim upon which he relies was “clearly established” at the time of the incident. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). As this Court, has put it: “[T]he question is whether any officer in the defendant’s position, measured objectively, would have clearly understood that he was under an affirmative duty to have refrained from such conduct.” Adams v. Metiva, 31 F.3d 375, 386 (6th Cir.1994). State officials thus are “entitled to qualified immunity [when] their decision was reasonable, even if mistaken.” Pray v. City of Sandusky, 49 F.3d 1154, 1158 (6th Cir.1995) (quoting Castro v. United States, 34 F.3d 106, 112 (2d Cir.1994)).
There are two ways to construe Dean’s objection to Byerley’s conduct, and neither of them suffices to establish a cognizable § 1983 claim in this instance. One possibility is that Dean believed Byerley sought to prevent him from picketing on the morning of March 27th. But this theory cannot succeed in view of the “color of state law” requirement. As a staff member of the Michigan State Bar, Byerley clearly did not have, or appear to have, authority to prevent Dean from picketing on his property or on the street in front of his property. He is not a law enforcement officer; Dean knew he was not a law enforcement officer; and Dean thus cannot say that Byerley was acting under color of state law in this respect during their confrontation on the morning of March 27th.
The second possibility, and the more probable one, is that Dean believed Byer-ley’s conduct amounted to a threat of retaliation if Dean continued to picket. That is to say, Dean complains that Byerley threatened to undermine his efforts to become a member of the State Bar if Dean continued picketing at the Byerley home. A retaliation claim under § 1983 consists of three elements: (1) the plaintiff engaged in constitutionally protected conduct (here, conduct protected by the First Amendment); (2) the defendant took “an adverse action” against the plaintiff that would deter.“a person of ordinary firmness” from continuing to engage in the conduct; and (3) the adverse action was in some way motivated by-the plaintiffs protected conduct. Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 386, 394 (6th Cir.1999) (en banc).
Dean cannot satisfy the first or second prong of this test. As Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988) makes clear, his targeted residential picketing on the morning of March 27, 2001 did not amount to constitutionally *563protected conduct. And in view of Byer-ley’s letter of March 29, 2001 (which removed any threat of retaliation) and in view of Dean’s decision voluntarily to abandon his Michigan Bar application (which eliminated anything to retaliate against), Dean cannot tenably claim that “a person of ordinary firmness” would have been dissuaded from engaging in legitimate speech by this incident.
A. Dean Did Not Have a Clearly-Established Constitutional Right To Engage In Targeted Residential Picketing.
At issue in Frisby was a residential picketing ordinance enacted by the town of Brookfield, Wisconsin. The ordinance made it “unlawful for any person to engage in picketing before or about the residence or dwelling of any individual” and was designed to “protee[t] and preserv[e] the home” by ensuring “that members of the community enjoy in their homes ... a feeling of well-being, tranquility, and privacy.” 487 U.S. at 477, 108 S.Ct. 2495. The Town Board also believed that “the practice of picketing before or about residences and dwellings causes emotional disturbance and distress to the occupants ... [and] has as its object the harassing of such occupants.” Id.
In reviewing the ordinance, the Court first determined that it was “content neutral,” which is to say it banned all residential picketing regardless of the subject matter of the speech. Id. at 481-82, 108 S.Ct. 2495. The Court then applied the familiar time-place-and-manner test applicable to content-neutral regulations of speech in traditional public fora. Writing for the Court, Justice O’Connor first reasoned that the ordinance left open “alternative channels of communication” as it applied only to picketing directly in front of a single residence. Id. at 488-84, 108 S.Ct. 2495. She then explained that the ordinance served a “significant government interest” because “ ‘the State’s interest in protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society.’ ” Id. at 484, 108 S.Ct. 2495 (quoting Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 471, 100 S.Ct. 2286, 65 L.Ed.2d 263 (1980)). That was particularly true in the context of a ban on targeted residential picketing, she added, given the importance of “protecting]” “unwilling listenerfs]” in their own homes. Id. at 484-85, 100 S.Ct. 2286. Lastly, she concluded that the ordinance was “narrowly tailored to protect only unwilling recipients of the communications” because “the type of picketers banned by the Brookfield ordinance generally do not seek to disseminate a message to the general public, but to intrude upon the targeted resident, and to do so in an especially offensive way.” Id. at 485-86, 100 S.Ct. 2286. The means-end fit between the objectives of the ordinance and the methods of furthering them sufficed, the Court observed, since the “devastating effect of targeted picketing on the quiet enjoyment of the home is beyond doubt.” Id. at 486, 100 S.Ct. 2286. See id. (“To those inside ... [,] the home becomes something less than a home when and while the picketing ... continued].... [The] tensions and pressures may be psychological, not physical, but they are not, for that reason, less inimical to family privacy and truly domestic tranquility.”) (internal quotations omitted).
Fifteen years after Frisby, it is difficult to understand how Mr. Dean can claim that he had a constitutional right, let alone a “clearly established” constitutional right, to engage in what he acknowledges was targeted residential picketing of the Byer-ley home on the morning of March 27th. That conclusion seems not just improbable but impossible in the aftermath of Frisby, *564a decision that to my knowledge uniformly has been followed by the lower courts in the last decade and a half.
Making the parallels between this case and Frisby more salient still is the existence of a Michigan statute that, like the ordinance in Frisby, specifically bans residential picketing. As the majority points out, the parties’ briefs in the district court and in this Court seemed to assume that Michigan does not ban targeted residential picketing. Apparently, in the State’s view of this dispute, the existence of Frisby as well as the general prohibition against trespassing on private property sufficed to reject this constitutional claim. Appellee Br. at 20, 23-24. When this line of thinking was challenged at oral argument, counsel for Byerley insisted that Michigan law does prohibit such picketing but did not offer any specific authority to support this proposition.
Further review confirms that a Michigan statute does prohibit private residential picketing. Under Mich. Comp. Laws § 423.9f, “[i]t shall be unlawful ... to engage in picketing a private residence by any means or methods whatever: Provided, That picketing, to the extent that the same is authorized under constitutional provisions, shall in no manner be prohibited.” Violations of the section are treated as a misdemeanor. Id.
The majority concludes that this provision does not apply here because it should be construed to apply only to picketing regarding labor-related matters. Maj. Op. at 547-M8. I disagree with that conclusion. Dean was picketing about a matter related to labor and employment — namely, his effort to become a lawyer in the State of Michigan and his effort to be available for employment in that profession. When individuals attempt to become members of the legal profession, as when they are regulated in the profession, they are involved in a matter of labor — or at least employment. That is particularly true here in view of Dean’s apparent claim that employees of the Michigan Bar showed an age bias against him in discussing his application with them.
The provision, at any rate, plainly covers all forms of picketing, whether employment-related or not. While the provision appears in a chapter of the Michigan Code labeled “Labor Disputes and Employment Relations,” the statute by its terms applies to all residential picketing: It refers to all “picketing” of any “private residence” and “by any means or methods whatever.” Id. A statute that comes with these kinds of explicit directions leaves no room for discretion — whether that discretion is invoked on the basis of the title of the law or its preamble. For neither the title of a statute nor the preamble of a bill has the capacity to impose a limitation that the statute explicitly removes. See Pa. Dep’t of Corr. v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 212, 118 S.Ct. 1952, 141 L.Ed.2d 215 (1998) (“The title of a statute ... cannot limit the plain meaning of the text.”) (quotation omitted); Price v. Forrest, 173 U.S. 410, 427, 19 S.Ct. 434, 43 L.Ed. 749 (1899) (“Although a preamble has been said to be a key to open the understanding of a statute, we must not be understood as adjudging that a statute, clear and unambiguous in its enacting parts, may be so controlled by its preamble as to justify a construction plainly inconsistent with the words used in the body of the statute.”); Browder v. Int’l Fidelity Ins. Co., 413 Mich. 603, 321 N.W.2d 668, 673 (1982) (“A basic rule of statutory construction is that where the Legislature uses certain and unambiguous language, the plain meaning of the statute must be followed.”); King v. Ford Motor Credit Co., 257 Mich.App. 303, 668 N.W.2d 357, 363 (2003) (“The preamble can neither limit nor extend the meaning of a statute *565which is clear. Similarly, it cannot be used to create doubt or uncertainty.”) (quoting 2A Norman J. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 47:04, at 224 (6th ed.2000)).
Nor does the preamble or title of this law — even if one of them could alter the plain meaning of the statute — lead to a different conclusion. The preamble (as amended in 1947 when the residential picketing ban was added) says only that the bill is designed generally to “limit the right to strike and picket.” Mich. Comp. Laws § 423 pmbl. It does not restrict the provision to picketing on labor or employment matters, even though other portions of the preamble discuss subjects of the law in the limited context of labor and employment. Id. Likewise, while this anti-picketing legislation was enacted in an amendment to a piece of legislation with a labor and employment title, that fact tells us nothing about whether the legislature chose — as its words clearly indicate — to extend the ban to all forms of picketing rather than just some.
The surrounding legislative text of the provision also fails to change matters. Once again, it seems doubtful that surrounding text by itself ever could alter language as plain as this. See Field v. Mans, 516 U.S. 59, 67, 116 S.Ct. 437, 133 L.Ed.2d 351 (1995) (cautioning that a contextual inference “should not be elevated to the level of interpretive trump card”); Conn. Nat’l Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54, 112 S.Ct. 1146, 117 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992) (“[A] court should always turn to one, cardinal canon before all others[,] ... that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: judicial inquiry is complete.”) (internal quotations and citations omitted); Browder v. Int’l Fidelity Ins. Co., 413 Mich. 603, 321 N.W.2d 668, 673 (1982) (“A basic rule of statutory construction is that where the Legislature uses certain and unambiguous language, the plain meaning of the statute must be followed.”).
This context-based argument also raises more interpretive questions than it answers. While two of the four prohibited activities covered by § 423.9f specifically relate to labor-and-employment picketing, two of them do not- — thus removing the very inference the majority invokes. In full, the text reads:
It shall be unlawful (1) for any person or persons to hinder or prevent by mass picketing, unlawful threats or force the pursuit of any latvful work or employment, (2) to obstruct or interfere with entrance to or egress from any place of employment, (3) to obstruct or interfere with free and uninterrupted use of public roads, streets, highways, railways, airports, or other ways of travel or conveyance, or (4) to engage in picketing a private residence by any means or methods whatever: Provided, That picketing, to the extent that the same is authorized under constitutional provisions, shall in no manner be prohibited. Violation of this section shall be a misdemeanor and punishable as such.
(Emphasis added.) In view of the legislature’s decision to specify a labor-and-employment orientation as to some prohibitions, but not as to others, the customary rule of interpretation is to assume that the legislature meant to give force to the differential language. See Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23, 104 S.Ct. 296, 78 L.Ed.2d 17 (1983); Cherry Growers, Inc. v. Agric. Mktg. &. Bargaining Bd., 240 Mich.App. 153, 610 N.W.2d 613, 622 (2000).
Nor does adherence to the plain terms of this statute lead to an “absurd result,” which is the only other possible explanation for disregarding words as clear as *566these. See, e.g., United States v. Rodgers, 466 U.S. 475, 484, 104 S.Ct. 1942, 80 L.Ed.2d 492 (1984) (plain language controls unless it leads to “absurd” results); Brandon Charter Township v. Tippett, 241 Mich.App. 417, 616 N.W.2d 243, 246 (2000) (same). After all, the Michigan Legislar ture surely could have taken the view that a ■ statute that proscribes all residential picketing on all topics of speech was not only fair — because it would avoid favoring one subject of speech over another- — but it was the only choice available. A law that banned residential picketing when, and only when, the message of the demonstrator concerns labor would be patently unconstitutional. See Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455, 100 S.Ct. 2286, 65 L.Ed.2d 263 (1980) (invalidating a restriction on picketing that applied to all subjects, except labor, as impermissibly content based); Frisby, supra (upholding ban on targeted residential picketing because, among other reasons, the ban was content neutral). Far from being unusual to include a complete ban on targeted residential picketing in a bill about labor and employment issues, then, it was the only choice the Michigan Legislature had.
In the face of Brown and Frisby and in the face of the general prohibition against content-based regulations of speech, the doctrine of constitutional avoidance resolves any remaining doubts about the meaning of this law. Indeed, in Frisby itself, which also involved a criminal law, 487 U.S. at 477, 108 S.Ct. 2495, the Court applied the same doctrine in construing the law at issue to apply just to targeted residential picketing. Id. at 482, 108 S.Ct. 2495 (“The precise scope of the ban is not further described within the text of the ordinance, but in our view the ordinance is readily subject to a narrowing construction that avoids constitutional difficulties.”). And in Frisby, the Court also accepted “the lower courts’ conclusion that the Brookfield ordinance is content neutral” and rejected an argument that the law should be construed to contain an exception for labor picketing — -the mirror image of the problem we have here. Id. at 481-82, 108 S.Ct. 2495. Thus, in Frisby, the Court accepted one narrowing interpretation of the law (making it applicable only to targeted residential picketing) and rejected one narrowing interpretation of the law (making it applicable to residential picketing on all topics, whether labor-related or not). In the same year the Court decided Frisby, it hewed to this path in Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 108 S.Ct. 1157, 99 L.Ed.2d 333 (1988). There, too, the Court accepted a narx-owing interpretation of a District of Columbia criminal law prohibiting persons from congregating near embassies (making the law applicable only to violent protests), id. at 331, 108 S.Ct. 1157, and rejected a narrowing interpretation of the law (making the law applicable to all protests, whether labor-related or not), id. at 333, 108 S.Ct. 1157. Cf. United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 176, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965) (broadening the interpretation of “Supreme Being” — an awesome task to be sui-e — to “avoid[ ] imputing to Congress an intent to classify different religious beliefs, exempting some and excluding others”).
Informed by Frisby’s (and Boos’s) example of minimizing rather than accentuating the potential infirmities of a law, I would follow a similar course here. The statute at issue makes it unlawful “to engage in picketing a private residence by any means or methods whatever.” In the confines of this straightforward language, the statute cannot be narrowed to ban “picketing a private residence on matters of labor and employment by any means or methods whatever” — which is not what the statute says (or even suggests) and which no rule of construction with which I am *567familiar permits. An alternative approach would not only create a potential constitutional claim in this case against Mr. Byer-ley but would also invalidate the Michigan residential picketing statute — a two-for-the-price-of-one constitutional ruling that cannot coexist with the salutary premises of the constitutional avoidance doctrine.
This is all the more true in a qualified immunity setting where the question is not just whether Dean had a right to picket Byerley’s home, but also whether that right was clearly established in March 2001. See Santana v. Calderon, 342 F.3d 18, 30 (1st Cir.2003) (Because “any ruling by us on the constitutional right question would be premised on our best judgment about the application [of a state law,] .... the best way for us to reconcile our competing obligations of faithful application of the federal law of qualified immunity and respect for the primacy of [state law] is to focus on the second step of the qualified immunity analysis — the clearly established question.”). When the United States Supreme Court has upheld a “complete ban” on targeted residential picketing, when the State of Michigan has made it “unlawful ... to engage in picketing a private residence by any means or methods whatever,” and when no court has previously interpreted the scope of this seemingly straightforward text, it seems plain that Dean did not have a clearly-established right to picket Byerley’s residence. See Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 206, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) (“Qualified immunity operates ... to ensure that before they are subjected to suit, officers are on notice that their conduct is unlawful.”); Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (“The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.”); Santana, 342 F.3d at 30-31 (holding that a state employee’s Fourteenth Amendment due process right to retain her job was not clearly established because a property right was not clearly established under Puerto Rico law); Young v. Harrison, 284 F.3d 863, 868-69 (8th Cir.2002) (holding that an evicted hotel guest’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from a warrantless search of his hotel room was not clearly established because his continuing interest in the hotel room was not clearly established under South Dakota law). Cf. Spruytte v. Walters, 753 F.2d 498, 510-11 (6th Cir.1985) (denying prison officials qualified immunity for due process violations where the meaning of a state regulation creating the property right was clearly established).
B. Dean Did Not Suffer An Adverse Action That Would Deter A Person Of Ordinary Firmness.
In addition to failing to show that he was engaged in constitutionally protected conduct, Dean also has failed to show that Byerley took an “adverse action” against him that would deter “a person of ordinary firmness” from continuing to engage in the challenged conduct. Recall that just two days after this confrontation and before this lawsuit was filed, Byerley sent Dean a letter indicating that he was free “to exercise [his] First Amendment rights” so long as he did so on public, not private, property. In the aftermath of this letter, which Dean does not deny receiving and to which Dean never responded, the fact dispute of whether Dean picketed on private or public property becomes irrelevant. The letter makes clear that the picketing could continue, just not on Byerley’s property. No rational juror could read this letter to say that Dean would still be at risk (from Byerley at least) by continuing to picket on public property.
Had Byerley followed through on his alleged threats, to be sure, his acts would *568have constituted “adverse action” of a constitutional magnitude. See, e.g., Hoover v. Radabaugh, 307 F.3d 460 (6th Cir.2002) (terminating a public employee is an adverse action); Farmer v. Cleveland Public Power, 295 F.3d 593, 602 (reducing a public employee’s job responsibilities is an adverse action). But Byerley did not deny or obstruct Dean’s Bar application or have Dean arrested. He allegedly just threatened to do so, then retracted the threat two days later.
Marginalizing his claim still further (and mooting his claim for injunctive relief), Dean concedes that he withdrew his Bar application voluntarily, not because of fears that Byerley would block it. Never to my knowledge has this Court found “adverse action” with respect to events as inconsequential as these. And, indeed, the extension of § 1983 to this setting serves to “trivialize the First Amendment” rather than to reinforce it. See Mattox v. City of Forest Park, 183 F.3d 515, 521 (6th Cir.1999) (“[Ajllowing constitutional redress for every minor harassment may serve to trivialize the First Amendment.”); id. at 522 (“A deliberate attempt to discredit [a public official], especially if initiated in retaliation for her actions in investigating the fire department, is perhaps an inappropriate and unfortunate occurrence, but on the facts of this case, it is not the type of ‘adverse action’ against which the First Amendment protects. It is not the equivalent of being fired by a government employer for expressing protected views.”); Thaddeus-X, 175 F.3d at 398 (recognizing that “certain threats or deprivations are so de minimis that they do not rise to the level of being constitutional violations” and that the courts may “weed out” such “inconsequential actions”); Davidian v. O’Mara, No. 99-5423, 2000 WL 377342, at *4 (6th Cir. Apr.7, 2000) (being temporarily denied access to public information was not an adverse action); Neier v. City of Pemberville, No. 99-3104, 2000 WL 32008, at *4 (6th Cir. Jan.4, 2000) (a threat made by defendant “that plaintiff would lose his job unless he dropped his [ ] claim” was not an adverse action where “[p]laintiff realized that [defendant] was without authority to carry out such a threat and plaintiff does not allege that [defendant] made an effort to have him terminated”).
Like the district court before us (and the Magistrate as well), I believe that Dean’s First Amendment claim fails as a matter of law. As these views have garnered a majority of one, I respectfully dissent.