Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle
Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle | |
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Court membership | |
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Case opinion | |
Majority | Rehnquist, joined by unanimous |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amends. I, XI and XIV |
Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977), often shortened to Mt. Healthy v. Doyle, was a unanimous
The case was first heard in the
The Supreme Court took the case and heard
The case introduced what has since become known as the "Mt. Healthy test" into similar cases that follow the Pickering line in asserting the First Amendment rights of public employees where the employer claims other, unprotected conduct motivated the adverse action, a two-prong process that shifts the
Underlying dispute
Doyle had begun teaching in
During the 1970 school year, he served as president of the school's Teachers' Association, and worked to expand the subjects of negotiations between it and the school board. The following year he was on the association's executive board. During this time relations between the association and the board were reportedly very tense, and Doyle was at the center of several incidents during 1970. As the Court recounted them:
In one instance, he engaged in an argument with another teacher which culminated in the other teacher's slapping him. Doyle subsequently refused to accept an apology and insisted upon some punishment for the other teacher. His persistence in the matter resulted in the suspension of both teachers for one day, which was followed by a walkout by a number of other teachers, which in turn resulted in the lifting of the suspensions.
On other occasions, Doyle got into an argument with employees of the school cafeteria over the amount of spaghetti which had been served him; referred to students, in connection with a disciplinary complaint, as "sons of bitches"; and made an obscene gesture to two girls[note 1] in connection with their failure to obey commands made in his capacity as cafeteria supervisor.[2]
In February 1971 the principal circulated a memo to all employees outlining a new dress code, apparently motivated by the administration's belief that public support for the district's bond issues was in part motivated by the teachers' appearance. Doyle, as an association official, had been aware that the administration was considering such a measure but had been led to believe that the association would have had some input before it was announced. He thus shared the memo with a friend at Cincinnati radio station WSAI, which used it as the basis for an on-air news item.[3]
Doyle later apologized to the principal, saying he should have expressed his concerns over the administration's handling of the issue privately before making the memo public. A month later the district's superintendent made his annual recommendations to the board on whether to renew the contracts of untenured faculty. Doyle was one of nine whom he did not recommend rehiring, and the board accepted the recommendations and voted not to renew the contracts, denying Doyle tenure and terminating his employment with the Mt. Healthy schools.[3]
Doyle asked for a reason he had not been rehired, and later received a short written note. The board cited his "notable lack of tact in handling professional matters which leaves much doubt as to your sincerity in establishing good school relationships." It pointed to two specific instances of this: his obscene gesture to the girls in the cafeteria and his leaking of the dress-code memo[3] which "raised much concern not only within this community, but also in neighboring communities."[4]
Lower courts
Shortly after the school year ended Doyle accepted another teaching position, for less pay but with tenure, at
The school district's defenses were primarily
For two reasons, the school district claimed, there was no federal jurisdiction. First, as an "arm of the state", under the Eleventh Amendment, it was entitled to the same sovereign immunity since Ohio law did not consent to litigation against school districts for violations of constitutional rights. Second; Since Doyle had taken another job so soon after his dismissal, his lost wages were minimal and thus the amount in controversy was less than the $10,000 required for federal jurisdiction.[7]
It raised two other defenses that addressed Doyle's substantive claims. In 1972's Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, the Court had held that an untenured professor did not have a due process claim over the nonrenewal of his contract (as opposed to a dismissal prior to the expiration of the contract term) without a property or liberty interest at stake.[8] Therefore, the district argued, neither did Doyle. And even if he did, his history of misconduct and intemperate outbursts was sufficient justification for his termination.[7]
Hogan ruled in Doyle's favor on every issue; although he dismissed the case against the board members as individual defendants. The statute creating school districts had effectively waived any Eleventh Amendment protection. And since Doyle had filed his suit under the section of the law that creates
The district appealed the verdict to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In late 1975, the appellate court affirmed all of Hogan's decision[10] save for attorney's fees, which per the Supreme Court's recent decision in Alyeska Pipeline Co. v. Wilderness Society[11] it believed were not a permissible award in the case.[5] The district petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari, and it was granted early the following year.[12]
Before the Court
In their reply
Oral argument was scheduled for late in 1976. Philip Olinger, the school district's lawyer, argued their case.[5] Michael Gottesman appeared for Doyle.
Argument for board
No sooner had Olinger finished his review of the facts of the case when Justice
When he was able to turn to the specifics of the case, Olinger reminded the justices that Hogan had agreed that, other than Doyle's contact with WSAI, the board had ample reason not to renew his contract. The rest of the argument focused on the jurisdictional issues. Olinger said that the difference between Doyle's salaries at Mt. Healthy and Miami Trace was too small to reach the $10,000 threshold. Pressed by one of the justices, he admitted that he was not taking into account the difference it might have made over the course of several years of employment; however he said it was entirely possible that Doyle's potential top salary step at his new school would be higher than it might be at Mt. Healthy.[5]
Olinger explained to the court that language in
Argument for Doyle
While he understood the jurisdictional issue was most important to them and planned to discuss it first, Gottesman told the justices, he hoped to spend some time on the facts of the case. He conceded that the implied cause of action he saw was not necessary to establish jurisdiction. Rather, it had been a response to the school district's late argument that it was not a person under Section 1983, and that he should have cross-appealed Hogan's ruling, in which he dismissed the case against the individual members as defendants, but did not because he did not expect that issue to arise again.[18]
But he begged the Court's indulgence because under
"It may be the most important civil rights question this court is going to have decide [sic] in the next decade", Gottesman reminded the justices. "The lower courts are deciding this issue by the legions." Nevertheless, he allowed that they might want to wait for a case where the issue was briefed by both parties.[18]
Having devoted most of his time to the jurisdictional arguments, he asked for some time to speak about the merits near the end. "If we only knew what the school board would have done but for the phone call [to WSAI]," Gottesman suggested, "we know how to ... deal with this case." The Court should follow precedent from civil-rights and labor law and put the
Opinion of the Court
Two months later, early in 1977, the Court handed down its decision. The justices had unanimously ruled in Doyle's favor on all the jurisdictional questions. And on the merits, they said, the school district would have to prove that it would have fired him for reasons unrelated to his leaking the memo to the radio station.[20]
Procedural issues
Justice
Since Doyle had made the suggestion in response to the board's late resurrection of its claim to non-personhood, Rehnquist dealt with that. Had the board properly preserved the issue, he noted, the Court would have been obliged to decide it. But it had not, and since Doyle's claim to
The Court had chosen a different approach to the Eleventh Amendment question. Rather than agree with Hogan that Ohio had waived sovereign immunity for its school districts through the statute that had created them, "we prefer to address instead the question of whether such an entity had any Eleventh Amendment immunity in the first place, since if we conclude that it had none it will be unnecessary to reach the question of waiver," Rehnquist wrote. Ohio law itself was very clear—the state did not include local "political subdivisions" and the school district was a political subdivision. While it received guidance and some money from the state Department of Education, it was one of many local school districts in the state and had broad authority to levy property taxes and issue bonds financed by those tax revenues. "On balance, the record before us indicates that a local school board such as petitioner is more like a county or city than it is like an arm of the state ... it was not entitled to assert any Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in the federal courts."[7]
Substantive issues
Rehnquist then turned to the merits of the case. After recounting in some detail Doyle's history of intemperate behavior in his years at Mt. Healthy and the contact with the radio station, he rejected the board's argument that
Lastly Rehnquist considered Hogan's admission that while he read Pickering as mandating that Doyle be reinstated with tenure and back pay for the board's violation of his constitutional rights, there were certainly other reasons the board could have cited to justify the firing that were not constitutionally actionable. Since under state law the board did not even have to show cause for the nonrenewal, "it is not clear what the District Court meant by this latter statement." The only "plausible" meaning Rehnquist could divine was that the board could have fired Doyle anyway even if he had never called the radio station.[9]
In that case, Rehnquist went on, it would not necessarily have been a constitutional violation for an adverse action to have resulted even significantly from protected activity. The Court did not want to leave that reading in place, since it would allow a misbehaving employee to insulate themselves from adverse action by engaging in protected conduct.
The constitutional principle at stake is sufficiently vindicated if such an employee is placed in no worse a position than if he had not engaged in the conduct. A borderline or marginal candidate should not have the employment question resolved against him because of constitutionally protected conduct. But that same candidate ought not to be able, by engaging in such conduct, to prevent his employer from assessing his performance record and reaching a decision not to rehire on the basis of that record, simply because the protected conduct makes the employer more certain of the correctness of its decision.[9]
It was, Rehnquist wrote, necessary to establish a
Subsequent proceedings
On remand, Hogan did as the Supreme Court ordered. He concluded that "the Board has established by a preponderance of the evidence that Doyle would not have been renewed because of the incidents—exclusive of the radio incident—which had occurred during the year or so prior to the nonrenewal" and ruled in its favor. Doyle appealed this
A panel composed of the circuit's chief judge at the time,
Subsequent jurisprudence
Later cases that rely on Mt. Healthy have largely concerned the eponymous test derived from the case. The Supreme Court expanded its application to other areas of the law, for now leaving it to the appeals courts to wrestle with the specifics.
Supreme Court
Two years later, the Court was able to reinforce the "Mt. Healthy test" in another, very similar case. Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District came on appeal from the Fifth Circuit, which had upheld the firing of a Mississippi teacher for, in part, her regular and vehement complaints to her principal about the racially disparate impact of school-district policies in the wake of court-ordered desegregation. The appeals court distinguished the case from Pickering and Mt. Healthy by noting that her complaints, despite involving a matter of public concern, had been made privately.[26]
Rehnquist, again writing for a unanimous court, held that the context of the speech made no difference under the First Amendment; it was as protected as Pickering's letter and Doyle's telephone call. The Fifth Circuit, writing before the Supreme Court had decided Mt. Healthy, had been in much the same position with regards to the factual record with regards to the Supreme Court in Mt. Healthy. "while the District Court found that petitioner's 'criticism' was the 'primary' reason for the School District's failure to rehire her, it did not find that she would have been rehired but for her criticism." It remanded the case to the district court again to resolve that issue;[27] unlike Doyle, Givhan ultimately triumphed.[28]
Over the course of the 1980s the Court would extend the test to claims alleging other improper adverse employment action in the private sector as well. In
The Court extended the Mt. Healthy test to private-sector
Appeals courts
By 1992 the Fifth Circuit could assert that "the two-step burden-shifting rule ... has now become standard fare in discrimination cases" in the third and final appeal by a Mississippi newspaper alleging that local government withdrew legal advertising in retaliation for critical coverage.[33] The district court had found the first-ever application of the test to a case involving denial of public patronage "strained"; Judge John Robert Brown disagreed, saying it was" broad enough potentially to lend itself to a wide variety of fact patterns" and remanded the case.[34]
In a pair of cases, the
"In the aftermath of Mt. Healthy," wrote
There are obvious difficulties with this model, which the Supreme Court may one day address. The first is that when an employer asserts a Mt. Healthy defense in a political discrimination case, the trier of fact (absent a prior determination under state law) essentially becomes a kind of super-personnel board making determinations about whether particular personnel actions violated state or local personnel laws ... The second difficulty concerns whether the Supreme Court would in the end, once the illegality of the personnel action to be corrected had been established under local law, require an employer who had shown a consistently applied practice of remedying all such illegal appointments to show anything more.[40]
Since the jury instructions had not included a direct question as to whether they found that the defendants would have taken the same action without the political consideration, the First Circuit overturned the jury's finding for the plaintiffs and remanded the case for retrial with a proper jury instruction.[41]
In Tejada-Batista v. Morales, where a discharged Puerto Rico Special Investigations Bureau agent alleged retaliation by a superior for his contact with a local newspaper, then-Chief Judge Michael Boudin denied defendants' request that a Mt. Healthy instruction be allowed, as it was "not on point" since he did not feel they had introduced enough evidence to support a claim that there were permissible reasons to take adverse action.[42] Gene Carter dissented, arguing that the verdict should have been reversed since the evidence suggested one of the named defendants had no knowledge of anything but the domestic violence charge that was the stated reason Tejada had been fired.[43]
Judge Juan R. Torruella, in Rodriguez-Marin v. Rivera-Gonzalez, another of the political cases, characterized the Mt. Healthy test as an affirmative defense.[44] In that case, not only did the court find that it was insufficient for the defendants to merely introduce evidence that would be sufficient for a jury to find that they had other reasons to take action against the plaintiffs, they had to show that a reasonable jury could have found for them. Similarly, the court held that a jury instruction that a finding that the plaintiffs' political affiliations and activities were the "determinative factor" in the defendants' actions against them met the test's requirements.[45]
In 2011, the Second Circuit affirmed a successful use of the Mt. Healthy defense in a case where it had found one constitutionally protected speech act was a motivation for the adverse action. The plaintiff in Anemone v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority was the former head of security for the agency, who claimed his attempts to root out corruption in the agency had been ignored or frustrated by his superiors. At one point he had discussed it with a reporter from The New York Times, which eventually published a story about the allegations.[46]
Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote for a panel that took two years to decide the case. It found that while that act was constitutionally protected, the balancing test established by Pickering v. Board of Education actually improved the MTA's case under Mt. Healthy, since although it was speech on a matter of public concern it was disruptive to the MTA's operations since it breached the confidentiality the plaintiff was required to maintain about security matters and internal investigations as part of his job duties. Even if it had not been so disruptive, the court held, his record of insubordination and deception of several of the defendants was enough reason for him to have been disciplined and fired—indeed he had even admitted he believed his job to be in jeopardy before he had contacted the Times.[46]
Analysis and commentary
Three years after the decision, E. Gordon Gee, then a professor at West Virginia University College of Law, described it as a turning point in First Amendment jurisprudence.
Before Mt. Healthy, once a First Amendment violation was found, the Court proceeded no further in its analysis. Rather, freedom of speech, considered by the Court to be the core of all freedoms, was surrounded by stringent protections, which, when violated, supported awards of at least nominal damages, even where no actual harm could be shown. There were those who would have protected First Amendment rights at nearly any cost—the late Justice Hugo Black being the prime example. But, such a position has been abandoned for a new position in which First Amendment rights are not seen as absolute; the Court now perceives other considerations as also important.[47]
He anticipated the later efforts of the First and Seventh circuits in working out how to implement the Mt. Healthy test: "The major effect of Mt. Healthy will be felt, and struggled with, in the trial courts. [It] provides little guidance ... on the amount and type of evidence required of the plaintiff to shift the burden of proof to the defendant."[48]
Some
Sheldon Nahmod of
Other commentators have focused on the Eleventh Amendment aspects. New York lawyer Anthony J. Harwood reads the decision as establishing, along with the 1979 case Lake County Estates v. Tahoe Regional Planning Board,[54] a test to determine when a political subdivision is not an arm of the state and thus does not enjoy the state's sovereign immunity.
Viewed together, Lake County and Mount Healthy identify two subsets of factors relevant to the definition of a political subdivision. The first subset relates to whether the state, in creating the entity, intends that the entity partake of the state's immunity. This grouping includes the state's categorization of the entity as either an independent entity or an arm of the state, and the state's litigation behavior toward the entity. The second subset relates to whether the structure of the entity and its relationship to the state indicate that the entity exercises policy-making powers free from state control. Express provisions making the state liable for judgments against the entity and extensive state funding evince state control. By contrast, an entity's authority to levy taxes and issue bonds without obligating the state indicates that the entity is independent.[55]
Despite the existence of this test, however, he notes that lower courts have generally followed
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases involving the First Amendment
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 429
Notes
- University of Texas; it was at the time considered obscene in the Cincinnati area. The girls responded with the more universally recognized raised middle finger. Brief for Respondent, Mount Healthy (No. 75-1278), 1976 WL 181614, at *7, as cited at Hornbeck, William (October 26, 2013). "An Unhealthy Inquiry: First Amendment Retaliation Goes to Prison". American Criminal Law Review. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
- ^ A year later, in Monell v. Department of Social Services of the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978), the Court took up that question and decided that municipalities were persons under Section 1983, overruling Monroe v. Pape.
References
- ^ Harwood, Anthony J.; "A Narrow Eleventh Amendment Immunity for Political Subdivisions: Reconciling The Arm of the State Doctrine with Federalist Principles"; 55 Fordham L. Rev 101, 105 (1986). Retrieved February 5, 2014.
- ^ a b Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 281-282 (1977), Rehnquist, J.
- ^ a b c Mt. Healthy at 283.
- ^ Mt. Healthy at 283n1.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Argument of Philip S. Olinger". Oyez Project. November 3, 1975. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ^ Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968).
- ^ a b c d e f g h Mt. Healthy, 276–280.
- ^ Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972).
- ^ a b c d Mt. Healthy, 284–286.
- ^ Doyle v. Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education, 529 F.2d 524 (6th Cir., 1975)
- ^ Alyeska Pipeline Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240 (1975)
- ^ 425 U.S. 933 (1976)
- ^ Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961)
- ^ Weathers v. West Yuma County School District, 387 F.Supp. 552 (D.Colo., 1974)
- ^ Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890)
- ^ Aldrich v. Youngstown, 106 Ohio St. 342, 140 N.E. 164, 27 A.L.R. 1497
- ^ Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971)
- ^ a b c d "Argument of Michael Gottesman". Oyez Project. November 3, 1975. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
- ^ Kenosha v. Bruno, 412 U.S. 507 (1973)
- ^ Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977)
- ^ Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972)
- ^ Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U.S. 596 (1944)
- ^ Parker v. North Carolina, 397 U.S. 790 (1970)
- ^ Mt. Healthy, 286–87
- ^ a b Doyle v. Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education, 670 F.2d 59 (6th Cir., 1982)
- ^ Ayers v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 555 F.2d 1309 (5th Cir., 1977)
- ^ Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 439 U.S. 410 (1979)
- ^ Hudson, David L. (June 8, 2006). "Teacher taught Miss. schools a free-speech lesson". First Amendment Center. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
- ^ National Labor Relations Board v. Transportation Management Co., 462 U.S. 393 (1983)
- ^ Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), 471 U.S. 232, Rehnquist, J.
- Brennan, J.
- ^ Hopkins, at 272–295, Kennedy, J., dissenting. "The burden shift properly will be found to apply in only a limited number of employment discrimination cases. The application of the new scheme, furthermore, will make a difference only in a smaller subset of cases," at 290–91.
- ^ North Mississippi Communications, Inc. v. Jones, 951 F.2d 652 (5th Cir., 1992)
- ^ Jones, at 654.
- ^ Greenberg v. Kmetko 840 F.2d 467, 475 (7th Cir., 1988)
- ^ Gooden v. Neal, 17 F.3d 925, 929 (7th Cir., 1994)
- ^ Gooden at 930–934
- ^ Allen v. Iranon, 283 F.3d 1070, 1074–1079 (9th Cir., 2002)
- ^ Sanchez-Lopez v. Fuentes-Pujols, 375 F.3d 121, 130 (1st Cir., 2004)
- ^ Sanchez-Lopez, 131–32.
- ^ Sanchez-Lopez, 136–38.
- ^ Tejada-Batista v. Morales, 424 F.3d 97, 102 (1st Cir., 2005)
- ^ Tejada-Batista, 103-109.
- ^ Rodriguez-Marin v. Rivera-Gonzalez, 438 F.3d 72, 81 (1st. Cir., 2006)
- ^ Rodriguez-Marin at 83.
- ^ a b Anemone v. Metropolitan Transportation Authority, 629 F.3d 97 (2nd Cir., 2011)
- BYU Law Rev. 1980 (2). Provo, UT: J. Reuben Clark Law School: 155, 165. Retrieved February 8, 2014.
- ^ Gee, 267.
- Mercer Law Review51.2 (2000): 583-601, 585. Retrieved February 9, 2014.
- ^ Wells, 596–598.
- ^ Carey v. Phipus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978)
- ^ McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co., 513 U.S. 352 (1995).
- ^ Hahmod, Sheldon; "Mt. Healthy and Causation-in-Fact: The Court Still Doesn't Get It!", 51 Mercer Law Review 603–619, 2000. Retrieved February 9, 2014.
- ^ Lake County Estates Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Board, 440 U.S. 39 (1979)
- ^ Harwood, 106.
- ^ Lincoln County v. Luning, 133 U.S. 529 (1890).
- ^ Harwood, 118.
Further reading
- Roth, Mitchell; "The Effect of Mt. Healthy City School District v. Doyle upon Public Sector Labor Law: A Union Perspective" 10 J.L. & Educ. 517 (1981).
- Koerner, John; "Between Healthy and Hartman: Probable Cause in Retaliatory Arrest Cases"; 109 Colum. Law Rev. 4, 755–797 (2009).
External links
Text of Mt. Healthy City School District Board Of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977) is available from: Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Leagle Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)