Wildman v. Marshalltown School District, 00-2204

• Decision Date: 15 February 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-2204,00-2204
• Citation: 249 F.3d 768
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2001) REBECCA WILDMAN, A MINOR, BY HER MOTHER AND NEXT FRIEND; DENISE WILDMAN, PLAINTIFFS - APPELLANTS, v. MARSHALLTOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT; CHRIS ROWLES; JERRY STEPHENS; GEORGE FUNK, DEFENDANTS - APPELLEES. Submitted:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 768

249 F.3d 768 (8th Cir. 2001)

REBECCA WILDMAN, A MINOR, BY HER MOTHER AND NEXT FRIEND; DENISE WILDMAN, PLAINTIFFS - APPELLANTS, v. MARSHALLTOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT; CHRIS ROWLES; JERRY STEPHENS; GEORGE FUNK, DEFENDANTS - APPELLEES.

No. 00-2204

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: February 15, 2001

Filed: May 7, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

Before Wollman, Chief Judge, Bright, and Morris Sheppard Arnold, Circuit Judges.

Bright, Circuit Judge.

Rebecca Wildman appeals from the district court's ¹ summary judgment dismissal of her action. Wildman filed this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and 1988 as a high school student against the school principal, school athletic director, varsity girls' basketball coach, as well as the school district, alleging that they violated her rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment when they conditioned her continued participation on the sophomore basketball team on her apologizing to her teammates for writing a letter which criticized the varsity coach. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

We take the facts in the light most favorable to Wildman. In January 1998, Wildman was a sophomore student at Marshalltown High School in Marshalltown, Iowa, and a member of the school's basketball team. Wildman hoped to play on the varsity team and she testified that Coach Rowles, the high school girls' varsity basketball coach, promised in conversations with her before the season that he would promote her to the varsity team. When the promotion never materialized, Wildman testified that she "became frustrated and decided to write a letter to [her] teammates" and that her "purpose was to find out what they thought of the situation and Coach Rowles." She composed a letter on her home computer and distributed it to her teammates in the school's locker room on Saturday, January 24, 1998. The letter stated:

To all of my teammates:

Everyone has done a great job this year and now is the time that we need to make ourselves stronger and pull together. It was a tough loss last night but we will get it back. We have had some bumps in the road to success but every team does and the time is here for us to smoothen it out. Everyone on this team is important whether they think so or not. After watching last nights [sic] Varsity game and seeing their sophomores play up I think and I think [sic] that some of you are think [sic] the same thing. I think that we have to fight for our position. Am I the only one who thinks that some of us should be playing Varsity or even JV? We as a team have to do something about this. I want to say something to Coach Rowles. I will not say anything to him without the whole teams [sic] support. He needs us next year and the year after and what if we aren't there for him? It is time to give him back some of the bullshit that he has given us. We are a really great team and by the time we are seniors and we ALL have worked hard we are going to have an AWESOME season. We deserve better then [sic] what we have gotten. We now need to stand up for what we believe in!!!

J.A. at 44. She included below her statement a poem about geese in flight titled "We Makes Me Stronger."

The following week, Wildman's sophomore team coach received a telephone call from Charlotte Baltes, a parent of one of Wildman's teammates, who expressed concern about the letter her daughter brought home from the locker room. Coach Rowles received a copy of the letter from another player's parent, Diana Swanson, who worked as the attendance secretary at the high school. Both coaches, who stated in their depositions that they were alarmed by the letter's tone and language, met with athletic director Funk and principal Stephens to discuss how to handle the matter. On January 29, 1998, the coaches met with Wildman alone to discuss the letter with her. They told her the letter was disrespectful and demanded that she apologize to her teammates. ² Wildman claims that they did not ask her to explain what she hoped to accomplish with her letter. She contends that she did not advocate a strike or boycott but that the school did not give her a chance to explain herself before setting the condition for her continued participation in the basketball program. The coaches gave her twenty-four hours to apologize, and, if she did not, she would not be allowed to return to the team. Wildman refused to apologize and did not practice with the team or play in the season's remaining six games. She also complains that she was not invited to attend the post-season awards banquet and that Coach Rowles declined to give her a participation award because "she did not finish the season." Following the school year, Wildman and her family moved to another school district where she enrolled in high school.

On September 2, 1999, Wildman brought this suit for damages. On November 2, 1999, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. On April 6, 2000, the district court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, holding that Wildman's letter materially interfered or substantially disrupted a school activity. The district court declined to exercise federal jurisdiction over Wildman's state statutory free speech claim and dismissed that claim without prejudice. Wildman appeals the summary judgment dismissal of her action.

II. DISCUSSION

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. See Mumford v. Godfried, 52 F.3d 756, 759 (8th Cir. 1995). The moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law when the record, viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322-23 (1986); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249-50 (1986).

For reversal, Wildman argues that the First Amendment prevents the school from disciplining her for distributing a letter which was a personal communication to other students containing her personal expression. Both parties agree that, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969), students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Tinker involved an attempt by high school students to wear black armbands on school property to symbolize their protest against the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court struck down school authorities' efforts to discipline this expression of opinion (suspending the students from school until they would come back without their armbands) and stated that "undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome the right to freedom of expression." Tinker, 393 U.S. at 508.

However, this right to express opinions on school premises...