Court Opinion

ID: 9633663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:56:11.620173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:39.544886
License: Public Domain

McKEAGUE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the majority’s opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of CIC but write separately to point out a couple of wrinkles in the majority’s balancing test. The majority sets forth a six-factor balancing test for determining whether Niswan-der’s delivery of confidential documents to her attorney was reasonable. With the sixth factor — “the ability of the employee to preserve the evidence in a manner that does not violate the employer’s privacy policy” — being placed within the mix of factors, maj. op. at 726, one could read the majority opinion to permit an employee to breach her employer’s privacy policy even when there are nonbreaching alternatives within her reach if a particular tribunal believes that one or more of the other factors weigh heavily enough in her favor.
This reading raises a troubling question. Why, if nonbreaching alternatives are available, should an employee’s affirmative decision to breach her employer’s privacy policy be judicially sanctioned? The question almost answers itself — if she has “the ability ... to preserve the evidence in a manner that does not violate the employer’s privacy policy,” then she must exercise that ability. An employee does not act reasonably when she favors her own expediency over employer and customer privacy and confidentiality. See Holden v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 793 F.2d 745, 751 (6th Cir.1986) (“An employee is not protected by Title VII when he violates legitimate company rules, knowingly disobeys company orders, disrupts the work environment *730of his employer, or willfully interferes with the attainment of the employer’s goals.” (quoting Unt v. Aerospace Corp., 765 F.2d 1440, 1446 (9th Cir.1985))). It is only when an employee’s reasonable activities clash against an employer’s legitimate job requirements and workplace rules that a court must balance those two competing interests under Title VII. Unreasonable activities and illegitimate business concerns should not be variables in that calculus.
Moreover, it is unclear from the majority’s formulation whether each factor is on equal footing with the others. If, for example, “the contents of the [confidential] documents” (maj. op. at 726) taken by the employee have no possible relevance to any claim of discrimination or retaliation, can it really be that the employee’s action was reasonable? And, yet, under the majority’s balancing test, if one or more of the other five factors weigh in favor of the employee, it appears (at least conceptually) that the employee’s breach could still be deemed reasonable, protected activity under Title VII.
The facts of this case, however, do not present us with the opportunity to iron out these wrinkles. As the majority recognizes, the case does not turn solely on whether Niswander had a nonbreaching way to preserve the information in the confidential documents (she did), nor does it turn solely on the evidentiary value of many of those documents (nil). Maj. op. at 726-28. With so many factors weighing against Niswander, no one factor can be deemed to be the tipping point. Thus, we must leave these matters to a future panel presented with a case more closely drawn. Van Hook v. Anderson, 488 F.3d 411, 425 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 614, 169 L.Ed.2d 396 (2007) (‘We leave to another day any further refinement of our holding which may be necessitated by a different set of facts than those presented here.”).
RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write this separate concurrence to express my disagreement with the concurring opinion of Judge McKeague, who raises concerns about the possibility of “permitting] an employee to breach her employer’s privacy policy even when there are nonbreaching alternatives within her reach if a particular tribunal believes that one or more of the other factors weigh heavily enough in her favor.” (Concurring Op. at 729) This view implies that if a nonbreaching alternative exists, then an employee’s breach of the company’s privacy policy can never be reasonable. Although we have no need to resolve this issue under the facts of this case, I am concerned that giving controlling weight to the sixth factor to the exclusion of the other five would essentially be an adoption of the rebuttable-presumption test applied by the district court in Laughlin v. Metropolitan Airports Authority, 952 F.Supp. 1129 (E.D.Va.1997), a test rejected on appeal by the Fourth Circuit in favor of the kind of balancing test that we have embraced herein. 149 F.3d 253, 260 (4th Cir.1998). I am, in sum, unwilling to foreclose the possibility that an employee’s dissemination of confidential documents might be reasonable under the totality of the circumstances despite having a nonbreaching alternative available, as for example in a case where an employee reasonably believes that she is being subjected to discrimination and takes confidential documents to an attorney for advice and counsel. See Kempcke v. Monsanto Co., 132 F.3d 442 (8th Cir.1998).