Court Opinion

ID: 9493746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:18:05.5388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:00.888187
License: Public Domain

BETTY B. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from Part IV.B but concur in the remainder of the majority opinion.
In Part IV.B, the majority affirms the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Sweeney on Keyser and Robledo’s First Amendment claims. The majority contends that Keyser and Robledo have only produced “mere evidence that Swee*1143ney knew of their charges” and that this is not enough to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Sweeney’s allegedly adverse employment actions were motivated by their charges. Majority Opinion at 1627. If that were so, I would agree. However, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Keyser and Robledo, as we must, I conclude that they have presented sufficient evidence for their First Amendment claims to survive summary judgment.
It is “well established that a plaintiff need not prove allegations with direct evidence and that circumstantial evidence can be sufficient” to prove that retaliatory intent was a motivating factor for a public employer’s adverse employment decision. Erickson v. Pierce County, 960 F.2d 801, 805 (9th Cir.1992) (citing U.S. Postal Serv. Bd. of Governors v. Aikens, 460 U.S. 711, 716-17, 103 S.Ct. 1478, 75 L.Ed.2d 403 (1983)); see also Magana v. Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, 107 F.3d 1436, 1448 (9th Cir.1997).
In this case, Keyser and Robledo have presented the following circumstantial evidence that Sweeney’s employment decisions were motivated by his desire to retaliate for the charges they brought against him. Sweeney evaluated Robledo and Keyser’s job performance in late January 1995. In both cases, his evaluations were critical but constructive, suggesting ways in which Robledo and Keyser could improve their performance in their present jobs. In his evaluations, Sweeney told Robledo that she has “the skills to be most successful in a top leadership role.” He told Keyser that he wanted to provide her with “maximum support.” In February 1995, a Board member told Sweeney that Keyser and Robledo had alleged that Sweeney had misused federal funds. Less than a month later, Sweeney recommended that Keyser be reassigned. The board approved the reassignment, but Keyser kept her position because of a de-feet in the notice given to her. In November or December of 1996, four “pro-Sweeney” Board members were elected. However, before the new members took office, the old Board voted unanimously to call for a federal investigation of Sweeney’s alleged misuse of federal funds. After the new members took office, the Board made Sweeney Interim Superintendent on February 3, 1997, placing him in a position to affect Keyser and Robledo’s employment status.1 Sweeney “refocused” Robledo’s job and immediately* removed her from his cabinet. In May 1997, Sweeney recommended that the Board adopt the Vogel reorganization plan. He presented the Board with personnel recommendations, including reassignment of Keyser and Robledo. On May 12, 1997, the Board adopted the Vo-gel plan and approved Sweeney’s, personnel recommendations.
The evidence of retaliatory motivation is sufficient for Keyser and Robledo’s claims to withstand summary judgment. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Keyser and Robledo, it appears that after he evaluated them in January 1995, Sweeney intended Keyser and Robledo to remain in their present jobs. It was only after he learned that they had brought charges against him that Sweeney attempted to remove Keyser and Robledo from their positions.
Sweeney attempted to take adverse employment action against Keyser less than a month after hearing that she and Robledo had levied charges against him. The majority ignores this evidence, claiming that, at the very least, one and one-half years separate the time when Sweeney learned of Keyser and Robledo’s charges to the time he took action against them. See Majority Opinion at 1140 n.4. This is simply wrong. The majority states that Sweeney’s attempt to reassign Keyser less than a month after being informed that *1144she and Robledo had alleged that he misused federal funds “is not even a potentially viable adverse employment action because the reassignment never came to fruition.” Id. But whether the employment action “came to fruition” is completely beside the point. The fact that Sweeney tried to reassign Keyser just after hearing about her whistle-blowing and not long after he indicated that he intended to keep her in her present position is-viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Keyser-clearly probative of Sweeney’s motivation. In addition, I note that the majority fails to include in its calculation the fact that Keyser was away on medical leave from May 1995 until March 1996.
The majority also characterizes as dicta our statement in Schwartzman v. Valenzuela, 846 F.2d 1209, 1212 (9th Cir.1988), that proximity between an employer’s knowledge of an employee’s protected speech and the employer’s adverse action is sufficient to preclude summary judgment for the defendant. See Majority Opinion at 1140 n.4. This mischaracterizes our decision. It was holding, not dicta. See Schwartzman, 846 F.2d at 1212 (“Given the employer’s knowledge that the plaintiff engaged in protected activities and the proximity in time between the protected action and the allegedly retaliatory employment decision, a jury logically could infer that Schwartzman was terminated in retaliation for his speech.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). The plaintiffs evidence that his employer had sent him a memorandum concerning his speech was an additional basis for our holding. See id. (“Additionally, Schwartzman presented a memorandum from the hospital’s clinical director warning him that he was not authorized to speak out on certain employee matters that were then in dispute at the hospital. Based upon this evidence, the trial court correctly held that Schwartzman had presented a genuine issue of fact concerning the question whether his speech was a substantial factor in his termination.”). In any case, I note that here Keyser and Robledo have presented more than evidence of proximity. When viewed in the light most favorable to them, Keyser and Robledo have presented evidence that Sweeney was content to have them remain in their jobs after he evaluated them in 1995 and that it was only after he learned of their whistle-blowing that Sweeney took steps to remove them.
Sweeney took adverse employment action against Robledo within two to three months of the Board’s voting for an investigation of the charges against him. Moreover, he acted as soon as he had power to do so. The majority ignores the fact that Sweeney’s action towards Robledo occurred on the heels of the Board’s vote for a federal investigation. See Majority Opinion at 1140 n.4. The Board’s vote was the first indication that Keyser and Roble-do’s whistle-blowing might adversely affect Sweeney. Since the Board’s vote resulted directly from Keyser and Robledo’s charges, and since Sweeney knew this, the Board’s vote is a salient point from which to measure the amount of time that elapsed between the plaintiffs protected conduct and the defendant’s adverse action. The majority fails to explain why it “rejects [the] invitationf ]” to consider the time between the Board’s vote and Sweeney’s action towards Robledo. Id.
Circumstantial evidence such as we have here is sufficient to merit factfinding by a jury. See Perez v. Curcio, 841 F.2d 255, 258 (9th Cir.1988). Moreover, “courts have traditionally held that summary judgment is inappropriate when questions of motive predominate in the inquiry about how big a role the protected behavior played in the employment decision.” Peacock v. Duval, 694 F.2d 644, 646 (9th Cir.1982) (internal quotation marks omitted). The majority has taken on the role of the jurors. I would reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in Sweeney’s favor on Keyser and Robledo’s First Amendment claims and remand for trial by real jurors. Accordingly, I dissent.

. According to his deposition, Sweeney did not supervise Keyser or Robledo between June 1996 and February 1997.