Sigsworth v. City Of AuroraSigsworth v. City Of Aurora
Patricia Witowski Supergan, City of Aurora Law Department, Aurora, IL, John B. Murphey (argued), Rosenthal, Murphey, Coblentz & Janega, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before WOOD, EVANS, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge.
Martin Sigsworth, an investigator with the Aurora, Illinois Police Department, represented his agency on a multi-jurisdictional task force formed to investigate gang activity in and around the Aurora area. When key targets in a drug raid managed to evade arrest, Sigsworth suspected that they had been tipped off by some of the task force‘s members. Sigsworth reported his suspicions to his supervisors, and he claims that in retaliation for this speech, he was removed from the task force and passed over for promotions. Sigsworth filed suit under
I. BACKGROUND
The following allegations are taken from the first amended complaint. Martin Sigsworth joined the Aurora Police Department in 1992. In 1998, while employed as a detective in the Investigations Division, he began working with various federal agencies on a task force focused on increasing cooperation among law enforcement agencies to combat gang and drug аctivity in the Aurora area. In 2002, the task force obtained numerous arrest warrants for suspected drug dealers and gang members and planned to conduct a large-scale operation to execute the warrants. According to Sigsworth, the day before the planned arrests, some of the task force‘s members “acted in a manner so as to provide general and specific notice of the impending raid.” Because of the “improper notice,” several of the targeted suspects were able to evade arrest.
After the botched raid, Sigsworth reported to his supervisors what he believed to be misconduct by the task force members which hampered exeсution of some of the warrants. The policy of cooperation among the organizations participating in the task force and other policies of the Aurora Police Department prompted him to complain of the procedural missteps of his task force colleagues. Defendant Chief of Police William Lawler, one of Sigsworth‘s supervisors, instructed him to remain silent about the circumstances surrounding the raid. A short time later, Sigsworth was removed from the task force and the associated investigation. Moreover, despite his rank at the top of the list of eligible candidates, Sigsworth was denied promotions to sergeant.
On June 16, 2005, Sigsworth filed his first amended complaint against the City of Aurora, the mayor, and various officials in the Aurora Police Department claiming that the defendants deprived him of his right to free speech under the First Amendment by retaliating against him for reporting the alleged misconduct.1 The defendants filed a motion to dismiss, which the district court granted after finding that Sigsworth‘s communications were not spoken as а citizen on a matter of public concern and, therefore, not entitled to protection under the First Amendment. Sigsworth‘s motions to file a second amended complaint were also denied, and he now appeals.
A. Sigsworth‘s First Amendment Retaliation Claims
We review de novo the district court‘s dismissal of Sigsworth‘s first amended complaint. See Chi. Dist. Council of Carpenters Welfare Fund v. Caremаrk, Inc., 474 F.3d 463, 471 (7th Cir. 2007). In doing so, we accept as true all well-pleaded factual allegations in the first amended complaint and construe all reasonable inferences from those facts in favor of Sigsworth. See id.
The First Amendment protects a public employee‘s right to speak as a citizen about matters of public concern under certain circumstances. See Garcetti v. Ceballos, 126 S. Ct. 1951, 1957, 164 L. Ed. 2d 689 (2006); Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 147-48 (1983); Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968). In such circumstances, an employer may not retaliate against an employee for engaging in protected speech. Massey v. Johnson, 457 F.3d 711, 716 (7th Cir. 2006). To ensure that public employee speech is afforded the proper constitutional protections, we have traditionally applied the balancing test first announced in Pickering v. Board of Education and clarified in Connick v. Myers and other subsequent cases. See, e.g., Schad v. Jones, 415 F.3d 671, 674 (7th Cir. 2005); Cygan v. Wis. Dep‘t of Corr., 388 F.3d 1092, 1099 (7th Cir. 2004). Under the Connick-Pickering test, а public employee can establish that his speech is constitutionally protected if (1) the employee spoke as a citizen on matters of public concern, and (2) the interest of the employee as a citizen in commenting upon matters of public concern outweighs the interest of the State as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees. See Schad, 415 F.3d at 674 (citing Connick, 461 U.S. at 147; Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568). Applying this test, the district court dismissed Sigsworth‘s First Amendment retaliation claims, concluding that Sigsworth did not speak on a matter of public concern because he failed to allege that he exceeded his normal duties when he disclosed the improper acts of thе task force members to his supervisors. The district court determined that because Sigsworth could not satisfy the first requirement of the Connick-Pickering test, his speech was not entitled to constitutional protection.
The Supreme Court has since provided further guidance as to when a public employee speaks as a citizen for First Amendment purposes. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Cоurt considered a First Amendment retaliation claim where the relevant speech was a memorandum from a deputy district attorney, Richard Ceballos, to his supervisors that raised concerns about misrepresentations contained in a search warrant affidavit and recommended dismissal of the case. 126 S. Ct. at 1959-60. Ceballos alleged that his emplоyer acted in retaliation by reassigning him to a trial deputy position, transferring him to another courthouse, and denying him a promotion. Id. at 1956. The Court found that Ceballos did not speak as a citizen, recognizing as the controlling factor in its determination that Ceballos‘s memorandum was written pursuant to his duties as a deputy district attorney. Id. at 1959. In light of this finding, the Court held that “when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.” Id. at 1960. The Court concluded that the deputy district attorney was not speaking as a citizen because he was merеly discharging his professional responsibilities when writing his recommendation memorandum. Id.
With Garcetti in mind, we turn to Sigsworth‘s claims of First Amendment retaliation. The thrust of Sigsworth‘s argument on appeal is that he sufficiently alleged First Amendment retaliation because his speech “constituted matters of the utmost concern to the public.” However, Garcetti requires that before analyzing whether an employee‘s speech is of public concern, a court must determine whether the employee was speaking “as a citizen” or, by contrast, pursuant to his duties as a public employee. 126 S. Ct. at 1960.2 We therefore engage in the balancing of public and private interests under Pickering and its progeny “[o]nly when government penalizes speеch that a plaintiff utters `as a citizen’ . . . .” Mills, 452 F.3d at 647-48. As we explain more fully below, Sigsworth was not speaking as a citizen when he reported to his supervisors his suspicions of misconduct by his colleagues.
According to Sigsworth‘s first amended complaint, the Aurora Police Department sought the assistance of the FBI, the ATF, and other task force agencies not only to supplement the Department‘s efforts, but also “to enhance and ensure a policy of [the] Aurora Police Department of cooperation with these other agencies.” Sigsworth alleges that “[t]his policy of enhanced cooperation . . . was furthered by orders to the Plaintiff to maintain communication” with the deputy chief of police. He then admits that “in furthеrance of the policy of cooperation,” he reported the alleged misconduct by the task force members to his supervisors. Sigsworth‘s allegations indicate that in reporting his suspicions, he was merely doing what was expected of him as a member of the task force charged with organizing and overseeing the planning and exeсution of the arrest warrants.
We recently held in Spiegla v. Hull, 481 F.3d 961, 963 (7th Cir. 2007), that a correctional officer who was responsible for maintaining the security of a prison by regulating and monitoring vehicle and foot traffic through the prison‘s main gate spoke pursuant to her official duties when she reported her immediate supervisor‘s breach of prison security policy to another supervisor. Similarly, Sigsworth reported that task force members broke the law, and, according to him, jeopardized the success of the operation and the safety of those involved in it. In accordance with the policy of cooperation and orders to communicate with the deputy chief of police, Sigsworth reported the observed misconduct connected to the operation that he had helped to conceive and for which he had supervisory responsibilities. Because Sigsworth‘s speech was part of the tasks he was employed to perform, he spoke not as a citizen but as a public employee, and that speech is not entitled to protection by the First Amendment. See Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at 1960 (“Restricting speech that owes its existence to a public employee‘s professional responsibilities does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private citizen.“). Failing to meet the first prong of the Connick-Pickering test, Sigsworth cannot advance his claims of unconstitutional retaliatiоn.
In reaching this conclusion, we note that the defendants agree that Garcetti is not a categorical rule that deprives public employee speech of First Amendment protection whenever that employee complains of work-related misconduct. And, even employees who face retaliation for speech cоnnected to a job duty may be entitled to protection under their state whistleblower statutes. See id. at 1962;
After the district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety, it denied Sigsworth‘s motion requesting leave to file a second amended complaint under
We begin with the district court‘s ruling on the
Sigsworth filed another motion, this time asking the district court to reconsider the denial of his first
Turning to Sigsworth‘s request to amend under
For the reasons stated above, the distriсt court‘s dismissal of Sigsworth‘s first amended complaint and denial of his motions for leave to file a second amended complaint are AFFIRMED.