OPINION OF THE COURT
Daniel Sattele appeals the District Court’s denial of his summary judgment *167 motion seeking qualified immunity in a suit brought by Allen Jones alleging that Sat-tele, among others, had retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. Because Jones did not allege that Sattele deprived him of a constitutional right — and because even if he had, that right was not clearly established at the time Sattele engaged in the alleged conduct — we conclude that Sattele is entitled to qualified immunity. We therefore reverse the decision of the District Court and remand for further proceedings.
I. Factual and Procedural History
In May 2002, Jones was hired as a special investigator for the Pennsylvania Office of Inspector General (“OIG”). 1 The OIG is responsible for investigating allegations of fraud, waste, misconduct, and abuse in executive agencies of the Commonwealth. At the time of the events at issue in this case, Sattele was an Investigations Manager at OIG and was Jones’s supervisor.
In mid to late-July 2002, Jones was given a lead role in the investigation of Steve Fiorello, the chief pharmacist at Harrisburg State Hospital. There was only one other person assigned to the investigation. A few weeks after the investigation began, Jones told Sattele that he was concerned about problems in the pharmaceutical industry that went beyond the Fiorello investigation — specifically that he believed the industry was routinely bribing state officials. Jones informed Sattele that he wanted to broaden the Fiorello investigation to include the entire pharmaceutical industry. Thereafter, Jones continued to inform Sattele about his concerns regarding the industry.
In response, Sattele told Jones to stay focused on the Fiorello investigation and not to investigate corruption in the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. Sattele subsequently removed Jones from his lead role in the Fiorello investigation in September 2002 2 because Jones had, in Sat-tele’s words, “lost focus.” Sattele based this conclusion on the fact that Jones continued to voice concerns about the entire pharmaceutical industry even after Sattele had told him to concentrate only on Fiorel-lo.
In October 2002, Dwight McKee, one of Jones’s colleagues at OIG, filed a complaint against other OIG employees, alleging that they had retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. In November 2002, an amended complaint was filed, joining Jones as a plaintiff and Sattele as a defendant. Jones brought a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, allеging that Sattele and the other defendants had also retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. Jones claimed generally that he was retaliated against — through intimidation and harassment by his supervisors — for complaining to his supervisors that public corruption investigations were being obstructed and delayed for reasons that were not legitimate.
In particular, at his deposition Jones identified three comments by Sattele that he perceived as harassment in retaliation for his refusаl to stop voicing his concerns about the pharmaceutical industry. 3 First, he testified that Sattele told him that
*168 Mac [McKee] was torpedoed. Some of the things that he got maybe he deserved, but a lot of them he didn’t. He was torpedoed. You keep your mouth shut.... Mac has been torpedoed, keep your mouth shut or the same thing can happen to you.
In a similar vein, Jones recalled that Sat-tele told him, in early October 2002, that if Jones could not adjust to the way OIG operated, he would have to leave his emрloyment there.
Second, Jones testified that Sattele told him to “quit being a salmon,” by which he meant that Jones should “quit swimming against the current with the pharmaceutical case.” (Sattele testified at his deposition that he told Jones to “go with the flow” and not “swim against the current” because he was concerned that Jones was not working with the lawyers in the office and was not operating within a “team concept.”)
Third, Jones related an incident that occurred in October 2002, after he had been removed as co-leader of the Fiorello investigation. Jones stated that thereafter he was not allowed to speak to anyone about the investigation without Sattele’s permission. He nevertheless went to pick up documents from Fiorello, the target of the investigation, while Sattele and another of his supervisors were out of the office. Jones testified that, when he got back, Sattele met him “first thing,” took him into a room with another OIG colleague, “and demanded to know why [he] went ... without [Sattele’s] permission to pick up papers.” Jones also stated that Sattele and his colleague accused Jones of having had an interview with the Director of the Department of Public Welfare, something Jones denied.
All defendants moved for summary judgment in August 2003, and the District Court granted the motion with respect to all defendants except Sattele in February 2004. As for Jones’s claims against Sat-tele, the District Court determined, based on the three comments identified by Jones, that (1) “with respect to Mr. Sat-tele, Mr. Jones has presented evidence that could lead a reasonable jury to conclude that his requests to investigate the pharmaceutical industry were a substantial or motivating factor in the retaliatory harassment or intimidation he may have suffered” and (2) it could not decide whether Sattele had qualified immunity absent a factual determination as to whether Sattele’s conduct constituted retaliatory harassment. In its decision, the District Court also determined that Jones was not disciplined in connection with voicing his concerns about the pharmaceutical industry and that “[a]t no time during his employment has Mr. Jones’s job classification, pay, or benefits been reduced or altered.” Sattele now appeals from the denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds.
II. Jurisdiction & Standard of Review
The District Court had federal question jurisdiction over Jones’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331. We have appellate jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and the collateral order doctrine.
See Doe v. Groody,
We exercise plenary review over the District Court’s conclusions of lаw in its qualified immunity analysis.
Doe,
We note also that at this stage of the litigation we are looking at the facts as presented by Jones, i.e., Satelle’s statements were retaliatory, rather than the exercise by Satellе of appropriate supervisory limits on Jones’s performance of his assignment.
III. Discussion
Qualified immunity insulates government officials performing discretionary functions from suit “insofar as ‘their actions could reasonably have been thought consistent with the rights they are alleged to have violated.’”
Id.
at 148 (quoting
Anderson v. Creighton,
Sattele contends that he is entitled to qualified immunity because (1) his three statements to Jones about his work on the Fiorello investigation did not deprive Jones of his First Amendment rights, and (2) even if Jones did allege a violation of a constitutional right, that right was not clearly established at the time Sattele made the comments. We address еach argument in turn.
A. Did Sattelle Violate a Constitutional Right of Jones?
“A public employee has a constitutional right to speak on matters of public concern without fear of retaliation.”
Brennan v. Norton,
In this context, the key question in determining whether a cognizable First Amendmеnt claim has been stated is whether “the alleged retaliatory conduct was sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his First Amendment rights.... ”
Id. at
235 (internal quotation marks omitted). The effect of the alleged conduct on the employee’s freedom of speech “ ‘need not be great in order to be actionable,’ ” but it must be more than
de minimis. Id.
(quoting
Bart v. Telford,
Sattele does not dispute the District Court’s conclusion that Jones sufficiently alleged that he was speaking out on a matter of public concern. Sattele does argue, however, that the District Court’s conclusion (by pointing to the three statements Sattele made to Jonеs, the latter alleged a retaliatory harassment claim under the First Amendment) was incorrect. In particular, Sattele contends that his three allegedly retaliatory comments were trivial and insufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his First Amendment rights. We agree.
Despite our holding in
Suppan
that a plaintiffs allegation of a “campaign of retaliatory harassment” by a public employer as a result of the plaintiffs speech created a cognizable First Amendment claim even without an alleged causal connection to a change in the plaintiffs terms of employment, not every critical comment — or series of comments — made by an employer to an employee provides a basis for a colorable allegation that the employee has been deprived of his or her constitutional rights.
See Suarez Corp. Indus. v. McGraw,
Sattele’s statеments to Jones in the fall of 2002 were all aimed at getting Jones to focus on the investigation to which he was assigned — looking into the activities of a particular person in a particular state agency — instead of focusing on Jones’s own wide-ranging concerns about the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, something that OIG was not investigating. There is no question Sattele’s statements were critical of Jones’s job performance, and they may be construed as reprimands for Jonеs’s continued expressions of concern about potential corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. However, even looking at the record in the light most favorable to Jones (as we must at this stage in the proceedings), we cannot conclude that Sattele’s comments, taken together, would have deterred a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his First Amendment rights.
In
Suppan,
the plaintiffs allegedly were subjected to repeated chastisements and threats from their superiors оver a period of more than a year based on their membership in a union' negotiating team, and they alleged that they were given low ratings on their promotion eligibility evaluations in retaliation for those activities.
Because Jones has not alleged the deprivation of a constitutional right, Sattele is entitled to qualified immunity. For the sake of completeness however, we now turn to the second prong оf the qualified immunity analysis and determine whether — assuming that Jones had sufficiently alleged the violation of a constitutional right — that right was clearly established at the time of Sattele’s alleged conduct.
B. Assuming Sattele Violated a Constitutional Right of Jones, Was that Right Clearly Established at the Time of the Alleged Conduct?
“‘[C]learly established rights’ are those with contours sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.”
McLaughlin v. Watson,
Before Sattele allegedly engaged in the conduct at issue in this case, we held, as discussed at Section 111(A),
supra,
that a public employee states a First Amendment claim by alleging that his or her
*172
employer engaged in a “campaign of retaliatory harassment” in response to the employee’s speech on a matter of public concern, even if the employee could not prove a causal connection between the retaliation and an adverse employment action.
Suppan,
In
Suppan,
however, we gave little guidance as to what the threshold of actionability is in retaliatory harassment cases. Instead, we merely held that such a claim existed.
Suppan,
Baldassare
also does not further Jones’s argument that his First Amendment right to be free from retaliatory harassment was clearly established at the time of Sattele’s alleged conduct. That case involved a straightforward retaliation claim brought under the First Amendment in which the plaintiff alleged a direct causal connection between his speech on a matter of public concern and his demotion,
see Baldassare,
*173
We did touch on the retaliatory harassment theory again in our
Brennan
decision, noting once more that “a plaintiff may be able to establish liability under § 1983 based upon a continuing course of conduct even though some or all of the conduct complained of would be
de minim-is
by itself or if viewed in isolation.”
Moreover, as discussed at Section 111(A),
supra,
we also stated in
Brennan
that courts have not found violations of employees’ First Amendment rights “where the employer’s alleged retaliatory acts were criticism, false accusations, or verbal reprimands.”
Accordingly, beсause of the dearth of precedent of sufficient specificity (and factual similarity to this case) regarding a public employee’s First Amendment right to be free from retaliatory harassment by his or her employer at the time of Sattele’s conduct, we cannot say that the constitutional right Jones alleged Sattele violated was clearly established. Sattele is therefore entitled to qualified immunity under the second, as well as the first, prong of our Saucier analysis.
IV. Conclusion
The three comments made by Sattele in response to Jones’s voicing of his concerns about potential corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, although critical of Jones’s speech, were all intimately related to Jones’s job performance and would not have deterred a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his or her First Amendment rights. As the District Court found, the comments were also unaccompanied by any change in Jones’s employment benefits or wages. We cannot conclude, based оn this factual situation, that *174 Jones alleged a deprivation of a constitutional right.
Moreover, even if there had been such a deprivation, Jones’s constitutional right to be free from a campaign of retaliatory harassment was not clearly established at the time of Sattele’s alleged conduct. Suppan (and Baldassare to the extent it is applicable), although they were decided before the events at issue in this case, did not define the bounds of a retaliatory harassment cause of action with sufficient specificity, nor were their facts sufficiеntly similar to those alleged here, such that Sattele would have been on notice that his conduct was constitutionally prohibited.
Accordingly, Sattele is entitled to qualified immunity, and we reverse the contrary decision of the District Court and remand for further proceedings.
Notes
. Jones had previously been employed by OIG. He left that position in 1991.
. Jones was still assigned to that investigation even though his role had changed.
.Jones also identified a fourth incident that he alleged was harassment, involving Henry Hart, another defendant. Hart, however, is not a party to this appeal, and as that incident is not relevant to our decision, we do not discuss it here.
. Sattele contends that there is no factual dispute preventing us from exercising jurisdiction over this appeal, and Jones does not dispute that position.
. Moreover, we note that even if
Baldassare
were relevant to determining whether Jones’s right to be free from retaliatory harassment was clearly established at the time of Sattele’s alleged conduct, that case would nоt necessarily put a reasonable official in Sattele’s position on notice that making comments such as Sattele's would violate the First Amendment. Under the traditional retaliation analysis articulated in
Baldassare,
the second inquiry, after the plaintiff has established that he or she was engaging in activity protected by the First Amendment, is whether the plaintiff's "interest in the speech outweighs the state's countervailing interest as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it prоvides through its employees.”