Court Opinion

ID: 9558379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:08:37.272529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:03.160721
License: Public Domain

CARPENETI, Justice
pro tem., with whom RABINOWITZ, Justice, joins, dissenting in part.
The court holds in Part II that Hickel is entitled to qualified immunity from this suit because Thoma failed to assert a valid claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, concluding that a § 1983 claim does not reach retaliation by speech because imposition of § 1983 liability would have a chilling effect on expression protected by the First Amendment. I dissent from this holding.
The court concludes that imposition of § 1983 liability on a public official who “responds in kind” to protected speech critical of the official would not be consistent with the First Amendment:
Making public officials civilly liable for retaliatory speech would, in essence, convert the First Amendment model of an interchange into a one-way street. As we believe this would be fundamentally inconsistent with the values protected by the First Amendment, we conclude that no valid claim of retaliation has been asserted by Thoma.
Op. at 821.
By focusing on the vehicle for the retaliation, a letter, the court misinterprets the civil rights statute. Section 1983 only provides liability for conduct. Specifically, a § 1983 defendant is liable only for depriving a person of his or her federal rights under color of state law. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1994). The defendant’s speech is incidental and not the basis for the § 1983 violation.
The state action that forms the basis for Thoma’s § 1983 claim is not the sending of a letter responding in kind to Thoma’s complaints about Hickel’s performance as governor. The violation of § 1983 in this case occurred when Hickel used his official access to the APSIN database for an unauthorized and unconstitutional purpose: to search for information about Thoma and publish it in order to discredit him in retaliation for Tho-ma’s protected political speech.1
The court cites Soranno’s Gasco, Inc. v. Morgan, 874 F.2d 1310, 1314 (9th Cir.1989), Gibson v. United States, 781 F.2d 1334, 1338 (9th Cir.1986), and Mt. Healthy City School District v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 287, 97 S.Ct. 568, 576, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977), for the well-established rule that an action under state authority in retaliation for the exercise of First Amendment rights establishes a claim under § 1983 — even if the action, when taken for a different reason, would have been proper. The court then attempts to distinguish the conduct in these eases from the speech in the present case:
In Soranno’s the official act of retaliation was cancellation of permits; in Gibson it was harassment with helicopters; in Mt. Healthy it was non-retention of a teacher. Here, the act of retaliation was a letter. As the letter was truthful, it is itself speech protected under the First Amendment.
Op. at 821.
In attempting to distinguish these cases from the present case in this manner, the court ignores the fact that the letters sent to plaintiffs customers in Soranno’s by the county air pollution district informing them that plaintiffs permits had been suspended *826were also protected expression under the First Amendment, as was the letter from the school superintendent to the plaintiff in Mt. Healthy explaining why he would not be rehired. See Soranno’s, 874 F.2d at 1316; Mt. Healthy, 429 U.S. at 574. However, the defendants’ First Amendment rights in Soranno’s and Mt. Healthy were not at issue because, as is true in the present case, it was the defendants’ conduct, using their power as state officials to retaliate against an individual’s exercise of free speech rights, that gave rise to their liability under § 1983. Hickel illegally ordered that the APSIN database be accessed and that confidential information found therein be published for the sole purpose of retaliating against Thoma for his exercise of his First Amendment rights. By focusing on Hickel’s protected expression instead of his abuse of power, the court creates an illusory First Amendment dilemma.
The purpose of § 1983 is to provide a remedy for abuse of state authority in violation of federal law. Soranno’s, 874 F.2d at 1314. In each of the eases cited by the court, a state actor used his or her official power for an improper purpose: to retaliate against an individual for the exercise of his or her First Amendment rights. In each case, the action taken would have been legal had it not been motivated by the desire to retaliate against the exercise of First Amendment rights.
In Soranno’s, the county had the authority to suspend a permit if a permittee did not provide certain requested information. 874 F.2d at 1316. The plaintiffs did not provide information requested by the county, and therefore suspension was warranted. However, the court found that the suspension violated § 1983 if “the decision to suspend the permits was made because of Soranno’s exercise of constitutionally protected rights.” Id. at 1314.
In Mt. Healthy, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs employment was at will and could have been terminated at any time. 429 U.S. at 283, 97 S.Ct. at 574. However, the plaintiff established a § 1983 claim because the school’s decision not to rehire him “was made by reason of his exercise of constitutionally protected First Amendment freedoms.” Id. at 283-84, 97 S.Ct. at 574.
In Gibson, while the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the Los Angeles police had the authority to fly helicopters over residential neighborhoods, frequent flights at low altitude over the plaintiffs house to intimidate her and induce her to stop her political advocacy stated a § 1983 claim. Gibson, 781 F.2d at 1338.
These cases illustrate that the means of retaliation by a state actor is irrelevant so long as the retaliatory conduct is under color of state law and is substantially motivated by the exercise of the complainant’s First Amendment rights.
Allowing a § 1983 claim in this case would not, as the court fears, subject public officials who respond to political speech “in kind” to § 1983 liability. Had Hickel’s aide written a letter to the Sierra Club simply refuting Thoma’s allegations, and suggesting that Thoma was not someone with whom the Sierra Club should align itself, a valid § 1983 claim would not lie, for Hickel would have been doing no more than exercising his First Amendment right.
In the present case, state personnel were authorized to access the APSIN database and publish conviction data obtained therein only for law enforcement purposes. 13 Alaska Administrative Code (AAC) 25.280. However, Hickel ordered his aides to obtain damaging information about Thoma through APSIN and publish it to discredit him in retaliation for Thoma’s ethics charges and recall effort against Hickel. This constitutes the same kind of abuse of state authority designed to retaliate against and chill political expression found in the cases above. Therefore, I would hold that Thoma has stated a claim under § 19832 and remand to the su*827perior court for further proceedings.3

. When reviewing a grant of summary judgment, all reasonable inferences of fact must be drawn in favor of the non-moving party. Walt v. State, 751 P.2d 1345, 1348 n. 2 (Alaska 1988). Where there is a factual dispute, the non-moving party's version of the facts is assumed correct. Id. For the purposes of this appeal, I assume that Tho-ma's version of the facts is true.

. After concluding that § 1983 does not apply to speech, the court turns to whether the illegal use and dissemination of confidential information from the APSIN file alone supports a § 1983 claim against Hickel. Op. at 821-822. The court holds that pursuant to Polchowski v. Gorris, 714 F.2d 749, 751 (7th Cir.1983) and Cline v. Rogers, 87 F.3d 176, 184 (6th Cir.1996), the federal statute prohibiting the release of criminal history information for non-law enforcement *827purposes does not create a privately enforceable right of action and therefore does not support a § 1983 claim. This holding is irrelevant to whether violation of Thoma’s First Amendment rights supports a § 1983 claim because the independent constitutional violation is sufficient to state a § 1983 claim.

. Because I believe that Thoma has stated a claim under § 1983, I would not reach his state constitutional claims. Accordingly, I do not join the majority's rejection of Thoma's state constitutional claims in section III.B.