Court Opinion

ID: 9495838
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:11:17.74182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:13.307918
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority’s opinion does not give appropriate weight to two key facts that weigh in favor of finding Skaarup’s speech protected under the balancing test enunciated in Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). First, the individuals with whom Skaarup spoke “privately” were not just any coworkers. They were an audience chosen because of their expertise on and interest in issues of equal employment. Second, Skaarup was not promulgating “unsubstantiated rumors” but was repeating information given him by the Fire Chief, his immediate superior. These two considerations, when properly placed on the scales, are sufficient to tip the balance sharply in favor of constitutional protection. I therefore respectfully dissent.
The majority finds it significant that Skaarup’s speech occurred in the context of private conversations with Terri Tarbett and Stephanie Wuthrich, and that Skaarup “made no effort to either address the allegations with his superiors or make them public.” But the law imposes no requirement that an employee’s speech on matters of public concern be aired to superiors or publicly expressed. The First Amendment protects speech on matters of public concern uttered in private conversations between employees. See Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated Sch. Dist., 439 U.S. 410, 99 S.Ct. 693, 58 L.Ed.2d 619 (9th Cir.1979); Ulrich v. City and County of San Francisco, 308 F.3d 968, 979 (9th Cir.2002); Nunez v. Davis, 169 F.3d 1222, 1228 (9th Cir.1999).
After hearing from Fire Chief Massey that the City and the union had sacrificed Mary Griego’s job and that Deputy City Manager Importuna had a pattern of getting rid of women employees, Skaarup approached Wuthrich and Tarbett to discuss the matter. Wuthrich and Tarbett, relatively high-ranked women employees of the Fire Department, had represented the City of North Las Vegas Fire Department *1045at national women firefighters’ conventions. In his deposition, Skaarup indicated that Wuthrich and Tarbett’s interest in women firefighters’ issues was the reason he approached them:
A: Captain Tarbett ... was our representative to the women’s firefighters meeting. She had a good grasp on women’s issues in the fire service, and I wanted her opinion.
Q: Okay. So the purpose for you talking to Captain Tarbett was you wanted to solicit information from her to get her read on the situation, much like you had from Captain Wuthrich?
A: Yes.
Q: And you said she was a representative to the women firefighters’ meeting? What is the women’s firefighters meeting?
A: I’m not altogether sure of the circumstances, but they have a group — like they have the black firefighters meetings, and you have the Hispanic firefighters meetings, they have a women’s firefighters group that gets together. One year both Terri Tarbett and Stephanie Wuthrich went to it. One year Stephanie went to it, and I believe your last representative was Tarbett.
Wuthrich’s and Tarbett’s public roles as representatives of women firefighters made them uniquely appropriate persons with whom to discuss allegations of gender discrimination in the Fire Department. Skaarup recognized as much in choosing to share the allegations of gender discrimination in the Department with them.
The audience Skaarup chose indicates that his speech rose above the level of mere rumor-mongering. In addressing Wuthrich and Tarbett, Skaarup directed his statements to persons, who, because of their publicly-demonstrated interest in the status of women firefighters, were likely to take an interest in and act upon allegations of gender discrimination. See Ulrich, 308 F.3d at 979(doctor’s airing of his concerns about layoffs at hospital staff meetings and posting a letter expressing concerns at nurses’ station “indicate that he spoke ‘in order to bring wrongdoing to light,’ not ‘merely to further some purely private interest’ ” (quoting Havekost v. United States Department of Navy, 925 F.2d 316, 318(9th Cir.1991))). In balancing the value of Skaarup’s “private” speech against the City’s interest in suppressing it, the majority should have accounted for Wuthrich’s and Tarbett’s involvement in women firefighters’ issues.
The majority also fails to acknowledge the significance of the source of Skaarup’s information about alleged gender discrimination in the fire department. That source was Skaarup’s immediate superior, Fire Chief Massey. As the current Fire Chief, Massey was surely a credible source of information about City Hall actions affecting the department. So, although Skaarup may have lacked first-hand knowledge of the existence of gender discrimination in the Fire Department, he had little reason to doubt the information relayed to him. Skaarup could legitimately believe that Massey’s theories about dealcutting and discrimination at City Hall were substantiated, especially when Massey could name several women who had been recently dismissed or driven out of City employment.
Although the majority does not question the determination made at Skaarup’s disciplinary hearing that his statements were untruthful, the City presented no evidence in the hearing or in the record before us that the allegations of gender discrimination made by Massey and disseminated by Skaarup were in fact untrue. The disciplinary hearing determination that Skaar-up’s statements were untruthful was presented in an entirely conclusory manner, without elucidation of factual support for *1046the judgment that Skaarup had spoken untruthfully.
Even if the information relayed by Skaarup was untruthful, under our decision in Johnson v. Multnomah County, 48 F.3d 420 (9th Cir.1995), the truthfulness of an employee’s statements must be weighed as only one of several factors in balancing that employee’s interest in speech against the employer’s interests in maintaining office discipline. Johnson dictates that recklessly-made false statements must be considered in light of the actual damage done by the dissemination of untruthful information. Id. at 424.
The City has made no showing that anyone believed Skaarup’s statements. In fact, record evidence shows that Tarbett and Wuthrich openly expressed their disagreement with Skaarup’s statement that the union had made a deal with the city and “sold Mary Griego down the road.” Moreover, the City and the union could have easily rebutted Skaarup’s statements by taking action to clarify why Griego was transferred, or by issuing actual facts to refute charges of discrimination, such as publicizing in a memorandum the actual numbers of women in the Fire Department or City workforce. The record does not indicate that the City took any action to dispel the damage allegedly caused by Skaarup’s speech.
Although City officials assert that Skaarup’s statements were “inflammatory and devisive [sic] in their nature and each separately posed a real threat to working harmony within the Fire Department,” the City provides no evidence that Skaarup’s speech actually generated divisiveness or disruption. See Voigt v. Savell, 70 F.3d 1552, 1560 (9th Cir.1995) (government must show “real, not imagined disruption” caused by employee speech; assertion of close working relationships cannot serve as “a pretext for stifling legitimate speech or penalizing public employees for expressing unpopular views”). Further, if there were any disruption caused by Skaarup’s speech, the disruption was traceable to misinformation provided by his immediate supervisor.
It appears, indeed, that internal disharmony — between the Fire Chief and the Deputy City Manager — already existed. In essence, Skaarup was discharged for choosing to side with one faction rather than the other in a higher-level power struggle, not for himself creating dissonant working relationships within the Fire Department. Under these circumstances, the City’s purported “interest in promoting harmony among co-workers” can become a euphemism for an interest in imposing uniformity of thought and opinion among its employees citywide. That interest is one that is at odds with the values underlying the First Amendment and weighs for rather than against constitutional protection for the offending speech.
The City has therefore not met its burden to demonstrate that concrete management interests outweighed Skaarup’s First Amendment interest in discussing possible gender discrimination in the Fire Department. See Bauer v. Sampson, 261 F.3d 775, 784 (9th Cir.2001) (“Once a plaintiff shows that his statements were of public concern and that the statements were a substantial motivating factor for the disciplinary action taken against him, the burden shifts to the defendant to show that its legitimate administrative interests outweigh the plaintiffs First Amendment rights.”)
In sum, the majority minimizes critical facts that augment the First Amendment value of Skaarup’s speech and weaken the City’s allegations of disruption caused by the speech. Once these facts are weighed, the balance tips in favor of protecting Skaarup’s speech. Because the majority failed to consider all relevant facts and *1047accord them due weight in balancing employer interests in discipline and harmony against employee interests in speech on matters of public concern, I respectfully dissent.