Court Opinion

ID: 9479339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:15:05.556627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:57.889476
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom KEITH and JONES, Circuit Judges, and LIVELY, Senior Circuit Judge, concur.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. It is a distinction without substance to say that Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 96 S.Ct. 2673, 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976), does not apply to the instant case because Messer and P’Simer were “not-rehired” instead of “discharged.” Plaintiff Bruce Messer was continuously hired by the Kentucky Department of Parks as a maintenance worker for eight consecutive years. Plaintiff P’Simer was hired for the same position for three consecutive years. Each year Messer and P’Simer submitted an annual application and each year the Kentucky Department of Parks continued to hire them. As the majority has pointed out so well in its discussion of the facts, these two employees were “fired” because of their failure to support a candidate for *227governor who eventually was elected. Certainly this is a situation of political patronage dismissal. An administration cannot establish a system of annual reapplications in order to effectuate its system of political patronage and make an end run around the law which clearly forbids political patronage dismissals. Even if I take the majority’s position that Messer and P’Simer were not “discharged,” and Elrod or Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 100 S.Ct. 1287, 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980), do not require us to hold in favor of the plaintiffs, both cases strongly suggest that a court faced with a “non-rehiring” situation should condemn the type of manipulation of human political behavior through a system of patronage that occurred in this case.
The majority reasons that due to the seasonal nature of their work neither Mes-ser nor P’Simer were “in employment” four months before reapplying for their jobs. Therefore, the plaintiffs “had no continuing employment status,” even though one had been repeatedly rehired for eight consecutive years, the other for three. The majority argues that because there was no continuity of employment, there was no “discharge” and thus each year they were new hires. The law cannot solidly stand on fortuitous factual distinctions such as the “seasonal” nature of a person’s work to determine who will be subject to arbitrary political patronage dismissal. Eight consecutive years in the case of Messer and three consecutive years of employment in the case of P’Simer certainly constitutes “continuous employment” and creates some protection from arbitrary action.
The majority correctly notes that Elrod requires a balancing of competing interests. By directly citing to and expressly adopting the balancing test presented by the Supreme Court in Elrod, the majority correctly understands the significance of Messer and P’Simer’s first amendment rights. As the Supreme Court stated in Elrod:
Our concern with the impact of patronage on political belief and associations does not occur in the abstract, for political belief and association constitute the core of those activities protected by the First Amendment.
Elrod, 427 U.S. at 356, 96 S.Ct. at 2681 (emphasis added). As the majority must recognize, we are not dealing with a situation in which the associational rights of Messer and P’Simer do not rise to the level of a constitutional deprivation nor with a situation where the burden on the protected activity is an incidental consequence of other legitimate governmental concerns. See Avery v. Jennings, 786 F.2d 233, 236 (6th Cir. 1986). Otherwise, the balancing test of Elrod would not apply. Id. at 236-37. However, the majority fails to state clearly that the balancing test under Elrod is weighted in favor of the significant core first amendment rights of Messer and P’Simer. The state interests must be compelling, not merely legitimate. The majority seems to ignore this in its total absence of any indication of how significant the state interest must be when balanced against core first amendment rights. The majority asserts only that the state interests must be balanced. In the first amendment area this is an insufficient statement of the law which leads to the erroneous result in the present case.
The state interests presented by the majority are clearly not compelling. The Supreme Court in Elrod clearly and unequivocally rejected the majority's claimed state interests. Political patronage in employment practices is not an appropriate means to implement a democratic mandate. See Elrod, 427 U.S. at 367-70, 96 S.Ct. at 2686-88. The Court in Elrod stated that there was no justification for patronage dismissal as a means of furthering government effectiveness and efficiency; that patronage was not justified by the need for political loyalty of employees; that political patronage was not justified on the basis that it preserved the democratic process; that patronage dismissals were not the least restrictive alternative to achieving the contribution they make to the democratic process. Political patronage also does not contribute to “robust and wide-open” debate. As the Court concluded, “Patronage, therefore, to the extent it compels or restrains belief in association, is inimical to the pro*228cess which undergirds our system of government and is ‘at war with the deeper traditions of democracy embodied in the First Amendment.’ ” Elrod, 427 U.S. at 357, 96 S.Ct. at 2682 (quoting Illinois State Employees Union v. Lewis, 473 F.2d 561, 576 (7th Cir.1972)). The majority here correctly noted that “[t]he plurality opinion in Elrod clearly expresses a strong disapproval of the practice of patronage in all of its manifestations.” (emphasis added). “All” would seem to include those employees, even seasonal employees, dismissed for political patronage reasons who had been continually reemployed on a yearly basis for three to eight years.
I am also unable to see how patronage is directly related to the state interests presented by the majority. It is one thing to claim that the state interests involved are a “party's ability to implement [its] democratic mandate” and to promote “ ‘robust and wide-open’ debate” but it is another thing to nakedly assert without reasons that patronage contributes to those state interests and to a better state government. I do not agree that political patronage logically leads to the implementation of a democratic mandate at the level of seasonal maintenance workers or that the arbitrary dismissal for political patronage purposes at the level of seasonal maintenance workers leads to “robust and wide-open” debate. Indeed, the raw exercise of political patronage here is the very antithesis of the “implementation of a democratic mandate” or “robust and wide-open” debate.
The majority states that a practice of systematic patronage is tolerable “where not otherwise controlled by statute.” Such a statement ignores political reality. What incentive is there for lawmakers to fairly limit political patronage? A person who lives on bread will never outlaw butter. The majority states that a practice of political patronage of lower level employees “disadvantages in only a modest way any given individual not given preference and advantages in only a modest way any individual from among those that may be given preference_” A person’s means of living, his or her job, is not to be dependent upon his or her expression of the “correct politics” or his or her association with the “right” party. First amendment rights are not bartering tools for politicians. If, as the majority states, political patronage “advantages only in a modest way” any individual then it would seem that a constitutionally protected core first amendment right should outweigh that “modest advantage.” As for the modest disadvantage, Messer and P’Simer lost their jobs and means of livelihood after eight and three years of continuous employment on the sole basis of their political associations and refusal to work for the “right” candidate for governor of Kentucky. In Elrod, the Court found that a situation in which respondents were required to work for the election of other candidates of the Democratic Party was intolerable and in violation of the first amendment, 427 U.S. at 355, 96 S.Ct. at 2680. I am unable to see this as a “modest disadvantage” and apparently, neither are the plaintiffs Messer and P’Simer.
Even if it were true that the Elrod and Branti line of cases do not require us to hold for Messer and P’Simer, the precedent in our own Circuit still requires us to declare that they were impermissibly denied their reemployment due to political patronage. Avery v. Jennings, 786 F.2d 233 (6th Cir.1986). It is irrelevant how we describe a system whose purpose “is designed to call attention to political differences and punish those who differ.” Avery, 786 F.2d at 237. Whether we characterize the situation of Messer and P'Simer as one of “dismissal” or “non-rehiring,” their termination of employment resulted from “a patronage system that intentionally uses a strict political test as a standard for hiring or firing decisions ...” with its “single end tied to political belief.” Avery, 786 F.2d at 237. Such a result is forbidden under Avery. Id. at 237.
Finally, the majority states that the question of the use of political patronage in “initial hiring” is to be fought out in the political arena and not the courts. Questions of first amendment violations are for the courts. A person is not “initially hired” after three to eight years of faithful *229service to the state. The fact that the nature of that person’s work for the past three to eight years is “seasonal” also fails to make that person an initial hiree. When a person performs satisfactory work for a state in a good and faithful manner continuously for several years, it is impossible for me to see how it is in the best interest of the state or its democratic institutions to make that person’s means of support contingent upon which candidate or political party “has its turn at the trough.” The majority does little more than perpetuate Andrew Jackson’s idea of “to the victor goes the spoils,” or as one noted Kentucky politician said, “Our boys can drive those little yellow trucks just as well as theirs.”
The first amendment prevents a person from being removed from employment solely for his or her political views and associations as were Messer and P’Simer in this case. In order to remain employed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, both Messer and P’Simer were required to work for the election of the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor in 1983, Martha Layne Collins. Messer and P’Simer’s freedom of belief and association were severely and unjustifiably restricted in violation of the first amendment.
I,therefore, respectfully dissent.