Court Opinion

ID: 9479019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:06:03.886134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:46.689300
License: Public Domain

REAVLEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I read the district court to say that the plaintiffs failed to prove that retaliation for their exercise of First Amendment rights was a substantial motivating factor in the Board’s denial of advertising. The majority reads the district court differently. This court should then call on the district judge upon remand to resolve this question first. Instead, we are contributing to the confusion by telling the district judge that this is a mixed motives case.
If the district court finds, as I believe it has, that plaintiffs failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that retaliation was a substantial motivating factor in the Board’s decision, that view of the record is warranted. To be sure, there is evidence that Board members disliked the editor of the newspaper, but the unreliability and lack of cooperation by the plaintiff newspaper gave the Board legitimate cause to publish more of its legal notices in the Tribune. I do not reach Mount Healthy because, under my view of the district court’s findings, this is not a mixed motives case. I would affirm.