Ceballos v. Garcetti
| Decision Date | 22 March 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-55418.,02-55418. |
| Citation | 361 F.3d 1168 |
| Parties | Richard CEBALLOS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gil GARCETTI; Frank Sundstedt; Carol Najera; County of Los Angeles, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Humberto Guizar and Luis Carillo, Montebello, CA, for the Plaintiff-Appellant.
Cindy S. Lee and Adrian Barrio, Glendale, CA, for the Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; A. Howard Matz, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-00-11106-AHM.
Before: REINHARDT, O'SCANNLAIN, and FISHER, Circuit Judges.
Richard Ceballos filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 contending that he was subjected to adverse employment actions by his supervisors at the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office in retaliation for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. He also asserts that the county fails to train, supervise, and discipline its district attorneys regarding such unlawful retaliation.
The district court granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of the individual defendants — the District Attorney (in his individual capacity), the then-Head Deputy District Attorney, and Ceballos's immediate supervisor — on the basis of qualified immunity, and granted a separate motion for summary adjudication in favor of the county defendants — the county and the District Attorney (in his official capacity) — on the basis of Eleventh Amendment immunity. Given that the disputed facts must be resolved in Ceballos's favor and that all inferences that may reasonably be drawn must also be drawn in his favor, we reverse the district court's rulings. We hold that, for purposes of summary judgment, qualified immunity was not available to the individual defendants because the law was clearly established that Ceballos's speech addressed a matter of public concern and that his interest in the speech outweighed the public employer's interest in avoiding inefficiency and disruption. Because the Eleventh Amendment does not apply to political subdivisions of the state, the county could ordinarily not assert sovereign immunity, although in this case it could do so if such immunity applied to the District Attorney. Whether the District Attorney, when acting in his official capacity, is entitled to such immunity depends on whether he was performing a state or a county function when he took the alleged actions with respect to Ceballos. We hold that in most respects he was acting in the latter capacity. Thus, he is not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity, and neither is the County.
Ceballos has been a deputy district attorney since 1989. In 1997 or 1998 he was assigned to the District Attorney's Office's Pomona Branch and about a year later was promoted to calendar deputy, with supervisory responsibilities over two to three deputy district attorneys. In late February 2000, a defense attorney in People v Cusky, a case then being prosecuted by the District Attorney's Office, told Ceballos that he believed that one of the arresting deputy sheriffs may have lied in a search warrant affidavit. He asked Ceballos to investigate. Ceballos was supervising the deputy district attorney assigned to the case, but he decided to investigate the allegations himself. After reviewing the relevant documents in the case and visiting the crime scene, Ceballos determined that the affidavit of the deputy sheriff had, at the least, grossly misrepresented the facts.
Ceballos discussed the problems arising from this investigation with others in the Office, including his immediate supervisor, Carol Najera and the then-Head Deputy District Attorney, Frank Sundstedt. Everyone agreed that the validity of the warrant was questionable. On March 2, 2000, Ceballos sent Sundstedt a memorandum discussing his determination that the affidavit was falsified and recommending that the case be dismissed. Sundstedt instructed Ceballos to revise the memorandum to make it less accusatory of the deputy sheriff. Ceballos rewrote the memorandum, and a meeting was held on March 9 with representatives from the Sheriff's Department, Sundstedt, Najera, Ceballos, and another deputy district attorney.
Following the meeting with the Sheriff's Department, Sundstedt was not certain that Cusky should be dismissed and decided to proceed with the case pending the outcome of a motion challenging the search warrant, which had already been filed by the defense.1 Ceballos informed defense counsel that he believed the affidavit contained false statements, and defense counsel subpoenaed him to testify at the hearing. Ceballos told Najera that pursuant to Brady v. Maryland and other case law, he was obligated to turn over to the defense the memoranda he had prepared regarding his opinion of the legality of the search warrant. Ceballos contends that Najera instructed him to edit the memorandum to include statements by only one detective and to limit his in-court testimony. When Ceballos testified at the hearing on the motion, the Cusky court sustained the prosecution's objections to several questions defense counsel asked him. Ceballos maintains that, as a result, he was unable to tell the court certain of his conclusions (and the reasons therefor) regarding the accuracy of the warrant. The defendant's motion was denied, and the prosecution proceeded. Having testified for the defense, Ceballos was removed from the Cusky prosecution team.
Ceballos alleges that Garcetti, Sundstedt, and Najera retaliated against him for submitting the memorandum regarding the Cusky warrant, for otherwise reporting to or discussing with other persons the allegations of misconduct by the deputy sheriff, and for testifying truthfully at the court hearing. He alleges that the defendants took a number of retaliatory actions against him: (1) they demoted him from his position of calendar deputy to that of trial deputy; (2) Najera "threatened" him when he told her that he would testify truthfully at the hearing; (3) at the hearing itself Najera was "rude and hostile" to him; (4) Sundstedt "gave [him] the silent treatment"; (5) Najera informed him that he could either transfer to the El Monte Branch, or, if he wanted to remain in the Pomona Branch, he would be re-assigned to filing misdemeanors, a position usually assigned to junior deputy district attorneys;2 (6) the one murder case he was handling at the time was reassigned to a deputy district attorney with no experience trying murder cases;3 (7) he was barred from handling any further murder cases; and (8) he was denied a promotion.
Ceballos filed a complaint in the district court pursuant to § 1983 against Najera, Sundstedt, and then-District Attorney Gil Garcetti in their individual capacities, as well as against Garcetti in his official capacity and the County of Los Angeles. He sought lost wages and other compensatory damages as well as injunctive relief. The county defendants moved for summary adjudication, which the district court granted on the ground that the Eleventh Amendment barred the action. Ceballos amended his complaint, and the individual defendants moved for summary judgment, which was granted on the ground that they were protected by qualified immunity. The district court declined to exercise jurisdiction over Ceballos's state law claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Ceballos appeals.
Ceballos argues that the district court erred in holding that the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Public officials are entitled to qualified immunity for acts that do not violate "clearly established ... constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Rivero v. City & County of San Francisco, 316 F.3d 857, 863 (9th Cir.2002). When considering a defendant's motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity, we must first determine whether, when the facts are taken in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and the inferences are drawn in his favor as well, these facts and inferences establish that the official's conduct violated a constitutional right. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). If so, we must next consider whether the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged improper act. Id. If the right was clearly established, we ask finally whether despite this fact, the official's unconstitutional conduct constituted a reasonable mistake of fact or law. Id. at 199, 121 S.Ct. 2151. Then, unless the constitutional error is excused on that ground, summary judgment must be denied.
Ceballos contends that he exercised his First Amendment right to free speech in alleging that a deputy sheriff included false statements in the Cusky search warrant affidavit. The parties appear to dispute to whom Ceballos spoke about the alleged misconduct. Ceballos asserts that he told Sundstedt and Najera, other persons in the District Attorney's Office, Sheriff's Department personnel, the Cusky judge, and defense counsel about the untruthful affidavit. The defendants state that Ceballos "sent the memorandum to one person, Sundstedt," the Head Deputy District Attorney, but do not expressly dispute Ceballos's assertion that he spoke to the others as well. It is unclear whether the defendants contend that Ceballos's memorandum is all that is relevant here or that the other speech to which Ceballos refers did not occur. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that, for purposes of summary judgment, Ceballos's allegations of wrongdoing in the memorandum constitute protected speech under the First Amendment; accordingly, we need not determine...
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