Ricciuti v. Gyzenis, 834 F.3d 162

Background

Rebecca Ricciuti, a Madison patrol officer, created an "overtime matrix" on her own initiative alleging supervisors assigned unnecessary overtime, costing taxpayers ~ $100,000 in 2008. She shared it with local officials and a public critic.
Chief Nolan initiated an internal affairs inquiry after the matrix circulated and sent a departmental reminder about restrictions on dissemination of information.
Ricciuti met twice with Nolan; a dispute at the second meeting led Nolan to report alleged insubordination to the Police Commission. The Commission voted unanimously to fire Ricciuti without stating a reason.
Ricciuti sued the Town, the acting chief, and police commissioners for First Amendment retaliation, claiming she was terminated for speaking as a citizen on a matter of public concern.
The district court denied defendants’ summary judgment motion, concluding that accepting Ricciuti’s version of disputed facts, her speech was protected and the individual defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity. Defendants appealed only on qualified immunity grounds.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Ricciuti’s speech was made "pursuant to official duties" under Garcetti	Ricciuti: she prepared the matrix on her own time, using public information and spoke to officials and citizens as a private citizen	Defendants: the speech related to her job and thus was within official duties and unprotected per Garcetti	Court: Accepting Ricciuti’s version of facts, a reasonable jury could find the speech was not made pursuant to official duties; thus it could be protected speech
Whether the speech addressed a matter of public concern	Ricciuti: schedule/overtime misuse implicated public finances and governance, a public concern	Defendants: speech was a private workplace grievance, not public concern	Court: Under plaintiff’s facts, speech concerned public matters and was not categorically private grievance (district court findings accepted on appeal)
Whether government’s interest in efficient service outweighed Ricciuti’s First Amendment interest (Pickering balance)	Ricciuti: her speech’s public-value outweighed any claimed disruption	Defendants: speech was disruptive to department efficiency and justified dismissal	Held: Genuine factual disputes exist about balance; not resolved for qualified immunity on summary judgment
Whether individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity	Ricciuti: law was clearly established that public employees cannot be fired for citizen speech on public matters; no objective reasonableness defense applies on these facts	Defendants: reasonable officers could believe their actions lawful under Garcetti; Weintraub and other narrower readings would support them	Court: On plaintiffs’ factual version, the law was clearly established and no reasonable officer could have believed firing was lawful; qualified immunity denied

Key Cases Cited

Ricciuti v. Gyzenis, 832 F. Supp. 2d 147 (D. Conn. 2011) (district court opinion denying summary judgment on First Amendment and qualified immunity grounds)
Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001) (two-step qualified immunity framework)
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731 (2011) (qualified immunity requires violation of a clearly established right)
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009) (courts may decide prongs of qualified immunity in either order)
Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563 (1968) (balancing public employee speech against government efficiency)
Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006) (speech pursuant to official duties is not protected)
Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 (1983) (distinguishing public concern from private workplace grievances)
Weintraub v. Bd. of Educ., 593 F.3d 196 (2d Cir. 2010) (employee speech can be within job scope if it is part-and-parcel of duties)
Taravella v. Town of Wolcott, 599 F.3d 129 (2d Cir. 2010) (qualified immunity may apply if belief in lawfulness was objectively reasonable)
Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972) (government may not deny benefits based on constitutionally protected interests such as speech)