Meade v. Moraine Valley Cmty. Coll., 14–1217.

• Decision Date: 30 October 2014
• Docket Number: No. 14–1217.,14–1217.
• Citation: 770 F.3d 680
• Parties: Robin MEADE, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. MORAINE VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

770 F.3d 680

Robin MEADE, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.MORAINE VALLEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 14–1217.

United States Court of Appeals,

Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 8, 2014.

Decided Oct. 30, 2014.

Wayne B. Giampietro, Attorney, Poltrock & Giampietro, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

John B. Murphey, Attorney, Rosenthal, Murphey, Coblentz & Donahue, Chicago, IL, for Defendant–Appellee.

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Chief Judge.

In August 2013, Robin Meade wrote a letter to the League for Innovation in the Community College about her employer, Moraine Valley Community College. The letter was not complimentary. Meade, an adjunct faculty member at Moraine Valley, leveled multiple charges at the college regarding its poor treatment of adjuncts. These practices, she charged, harmed Moraine Valley's students. She signed the letter in her capacity as president of the Moraine Valley Adjunct Faculty Organization, a union representing the college's adjunct faculty. Two days later, Moraine Valley fired Meade. Its explanation for doing so was unusually frank: it sent her a written notice explicitly citing Meade's letter as the reason for its action. A few weeks later, the college warned Meade that it would regard her further presence on campus as criminal trespass.

Believing that Moraine Valley retaliated against her for exercising her right to freedom of speech and violated her due process rights, Meade sued the college in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Moraine Valley persuaded the district court to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The court first concluded that Meade's letter did not address matters of public interest and thus could not serve as the basis of a First Amendment retaliation claim. It rejected Meade's due process claim for lack of a cognizable property interest in her employment at the college. Both of these conclusions are incorrect, and so we must return this case to the district court for further proceedings.

I

Because this appeal comes to us from a dismissal for failure to state a claim, we construe Meade's complaint in the light most favorable to her and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. Park v. Ind. Univ. Sch. of Dentistry, 692 F.3d 828, 830 (7th Cir.2012). In August 2013, Meade received a one-page document that set out the schedule of the courses she was assigned to teach that autumn at Moraine Valley, a community college in Palos Hills, Illinois. At the top of the document were the words “EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT”; it then listed three classes along with their start and end dates (August 19 through December 20), as well as Meade's salary for the semester. At the bottom of the page, the words “employment agreement” appeared again, followed by two paragraphs of text. The text first noted that the agreement incorporated “[d]uly established and published Board policy,” which was to be binding on the signing parties (Meade and Moraine Valley's dean). It then stated that the document was “not a full-time employment contract” and added “Should the need for indicated service not materialize, this agreement automatically becomes null and void.” Finally, it said that the agreement could not “be considered a commitment on the part of the College for a future assignment.”

Shortly after receiving this document, Meade composed her letter to the League for Innovation in the Community College (LICC). Under the letterhead of the Moraine Valley Adjunct Faculty Organization (MVAFO), which she headed, Meade began by referring to a request the college had made to Meade and other union leaders to write letters supporting Moraine Valley's reapplication for the LICC board. Meade explained in some detail why she did not wish to do so. She accused the college of treating adjunct faculty as “a disposable resource” and “a separate, lower class of people.” As evidence, Meade cited the fact that the administration allocated more resources to full-time faculty and staff, often leaving adjuncts “to fend for themselves.” She also noted that adjuncts were teaching 60% of Moraine Valley's classes, meaning that student success rates depended more on adjunct instructors than their full-time equivalents. She criticized the college's decision to prohibit adjuncts from working on an hourly basis. As a result, Meade wrote, adjuncts could not spend extra time tutoring students. This contributed, she implied, to the problem of high failure rates in developmental classes at the college. Elsewhere in the letter, Meade wrote that the college was underpaying adjuncts, denying them access to health care, and denying them certain classes without explanation. All of this, Meade told LICC, “has created a chilling effect which affects adjunct performance and erodes the confidence the idyllic atmosphere and beautiful buildings and grounds strive to project.”

Meade sent her letter to LICC on August 20, 2013. On August 22, she received a notice of job termination from Andrew Duren, Moraine Valley's executive vice president. Duren told Meade that LICC had sent a copy of her letter to the college, and the college did not like what it saw. The letter was “replete with misrepresentations and falsehoods,” Duren wrote, along with “irresponsible rhetoric” that was “disruptive and not consistent with the best interests of the College.” Duren added that the letter was not responsible advocacy on behalf of Meade's union, but rather “a personal attempt to falsely discredit” the college and undermine its relationship with LICC. Because this behavior did not coincide with the college's best interests, Duren wrote, Meade's job there was terminated effective immediately. A little over two weeks later—the record is silent about what happened in the interim—Meade received an email from the chief of Moraine Valley's police force announcing that any future visits she made to the college campus would be considered criminal trespass.

Meade responded to these events by suing Moraine Valley. Her complaint set out three theories, two of which concern us here. (The district court dismissed without prejudice a third claim under Illinois law; Meade has not appealed from that ruling.) First, Meade alleged that her firing and banishment from campus were in retaliation for her exercise of her First Amendment right to free speech (applicable to the state through the Fourteenth Amendment). Second, she contended that her employment contract for Fall 2013 created a property interest, which Moraine Valley revoked without due process. As we noted earlier, the district court granted Moraine Valley's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and Meade now appeals.

II

We review a district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)de novo. Batson v. Live Nation Entm't, 746 F.3d 827, 830 (7th Cir.2014).

Meade begins her appeal with her retaliation claim, and so do we. Meade's ability to press this claim depends on whether the speech that prompted her termination was constitutionally protected. Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 418, 126 S.Ct. 1951, 164 L.Ed.2d 689 (2006). The first part of that inquiry, and the one the district court found dispositive, asks whether Meade's speech related to a matter of public concern. Id. A teacher such as Meade cannot be fired for exercising her right of free speech on such matters. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ. of Twp. High Sch. Dist. 205, Will Cnty., 391 U.S. 563, 574, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968). If, however, Meade's overall point in writing the letter was to express a purely personal grievance, then the First Amendment will not help her. Kristofek v. Vill. of Orland Hills, 712 F.3d 979, 986 (7th Cir.2013); see also Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 147, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). The Supreme Court has defined “public concern” to mean “legitimate news interest,” or “a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public at the time of publication.” City of San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 83–84, 125 S.Ct. 521, 160 L.Ed.2d 410 (2004) (per curiam). In deciding whether Meade's letter fits this description, we consider its content, its form, and the context in which it was written. Connick, 461 U.S. at 147–48, 103 S.Ct. 1684. Of these three considerations, content is the most important. Chaklos v. Stevens, 560 F.3d 705, 714 (7th Cir.2009). We also must take care not to place undue weight on Meade's apparent motive in writing her letter, in particular whether it was personal or not. Rather, we look at “the overall objective or point ” of the letter to determine whether it discussed matters of public concern. Kristofek, 712 F.3d at 985. (One side note: although Garcetti held that a public employee's statements made pursuant to her official duties cannot provide the basis for a retaliation claim, see 547 U.S. at 421, 126 S.Ct. 1951, Moraine Valley concedes that Meade had no employer-imposed duty to write her letter.)

Applying these standards, we have no trouble concluding that Meade's letter discussed several matters of public concern. In fact, the letter contained almost no content personal to Meade. Although she informed LICC that she had turned down Moraine Valley's request to support its reapplication as an LICC board member, she said nothing about her own experiences or gripes. Rather, she emphasized that she was writing as the head of a union whose members were concerned about the way the college treated them as a group. The letter's multiple references to the difficulties facing all Moraine Valley's adjuncts remove it from the realm of the purely personal. And Meade is not alone in expressing concern about the treatment of adjuncts. Colleges and universities across the country are targets of increasing coverage and criticism regarding their use of adjunct faculty. See, e.g., Sydni Dunn, Colleges Are Slashing Adjuncts' Hours to Skirt New Rules on Health–Insurance...