Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: REHNQUIST
• Citation: Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 439 U.S. 410, 99 S.Ct. 693, 58 L.Ed.2d 619 (1979)
• Decision Date: 09 January 1979
• Docket Number: No. 77-1051,77-1051
• Parties: Bessie B. GIVHAN, Petitioner, v. WESTERN LINE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL DISTRICT et al

439 U.S. 410

99 S.Ct. 693

58 L.Ed.2d 619

Bessie B. GIVHAN, Petitioner,

v WESTERN LINE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL DISTRICT et al.

No. 77-1051.

Argued Nov. 7, 1978.

Decided Jan. 9, 1979.

Syllabus

After petitioner was dismissed from her employment as a teacher, she intervened in a desegregation action against respondent School District seeking reinstatement on the ground, inter alia, that her dismissal infringed her right of free speech under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In an effort to justify the dismissal, the School District introduced evidence of, inter alia, a series of private encounters between petitioner and the school principal in which petitioner allegedly made "petty and unreasonable demands" in a manner variously described by the principal as "insulting," "hostile," "loud," and "arrogant." Concluding that the primary reason for the dismissal was petitioner's criticism of the School District's practices and policies, which she conceived to be racially discriminatory, the District Court held that the dismissal violated petitioner's First Amendment rights and ordered her reinstatement. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that under Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811; Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570; and Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471, petitioner's complaints and opinions were not protected by the First Amendment because they were expressed privately to the principal, and because there is no constitutional right to "press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient." Held : A public employee does not forfeit his First Amendment protection against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech when he arranges to communicate privately with his employer rather than to express his views publicly. Pp. 413-417.

(a) Pickering, Perry, and Mt. Healthy do not support the Court of Appeals' conclusion that private expression is unprotected by the First Amendment. The fact that each of those cases involved public expression by the employee was not critical to the decision. Pp. 414-415.

(b) Nor is the Court of Appeals' view supported by the "captive audience" rationale, since the principal, having opened his office door to petitioner, was hardly in a position to argue that he was the "unwilling recipient" of her views. P. 415.

(c) Respondents' Mt. Healthy claim, rejected by the Court of Appeals, that the decision to terminate petitioner would have been made even if her encounters with the principal had never occurred called for a factual determination that could not, on the record, be resolved by that court, since it was not presented to the District Court, Mt Healthy having been decided after the trial in this case. Pp. 416-417.

555 F.2d 1309, vacated in part and remanded.

David Rubin, Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

J. Robertshaw, Greenville, Miss., for respondents.

Mr. Justice REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner Bessie Givhan was dismissed from her employment as a junior high English teacher at the end of the 1970-1971 school year.¹ At the time of petitioner's termination, respondent Western Line Consolidated School District was the subject of a desegregation order entered by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Petitioner filed a complaint in intervention in the desegregation action, seeking reinstatement on the dual grounds that nonrenewal of her contract violated the rule laid down by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 419 F.2d 1211 (1969), rev'd and remanded sub nom. Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 396 U.S. 290, 90 S.Ct. 608, 24 L.Ed.2d 477 (1970), on remand, 425 F.2d 1211 (1970), and infringed her right of free speech secured by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In an effort to show that its decision was justified, respondent School District introduced evidence of, among other things,² a series of private encounters between petitioner and the school principal in which petitioner allegedly made "petty and unreasonable demands" in a manner variously described by the principal as "insulting," "hostile," "loud," and "arrogant." After a two-day bench trial, the District Court held that petitioner's termination had violated the First Amendment. Finding that petitioner had made "demands" on but two occasions and that those demands "were neither 'petty' nor 'unreasonable,' insomuch as all the complaints in question involved employment policies and practices at [the] school which [petitioner] conceived to be racially discriminatory in purpose or effect," the District Court concluded that "the primary reason for the school district's failure to renew [petitioner's] contract was her criticism of the policies and practices of the school district, especially the school to which she was assigned to teach." App. to Pet. for Cert. 35a. Accordingly, the District Court held that the dismissal violated petitioner's First Amendment rights, as enunciated in Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), and Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968), and ordered her reinstatement.

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. Ayers v. Western Line Consol. School Dist., 555 F.2d 1309 (1977). Although it found the District Court's findings not clearly erroneous, the Court of Appeals concluded that because petitioner had privately expressed her complaints and opinions to the principal, her expression was not protected under the First Amendment. Support for this proposition was thought to be derived from Pickering, supra, Perry, supra, and Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 97 S.Ct. 568, 50 L.Ed.2d 471 (1977), which were found to contain "[t]he strong implication . . . that private expression by a public employee is not constitutionally protected." 555 F.2d, at 1318. The Court of Appeals also concluded that there is no constitutional right to "press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient," saying that to afford public employees the right to such private expression "would in effect force school principals to be ombudsmen, for damnable as well as laudable expressions." Id., at 1319. We are unable to agree that private expression of one's views is beyond constitutional protection, and therefore reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment and remand the case so that it may consider the contentions of the parties freed from this erroneous view of the First Amendment.

This Court's decisions in Pickering, Perry, and Mt. Healthy do not support the conclusion that a public employee forfeits his protection against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech if he decides to express his views privately rather than publicly. While those cases each arose in the context of a public employee's public expression, the rule to be derived from them is not dependent on that largely coincidental fact.

In Pickering a teacher was discharged for publicly criticizing, in a letter published in a local newspaper, the school board's handling of prior bond issue proposals and its subsequent allocation of financial resources between the schools' educational and athletic programs. Noting that the free speech rights of public employees are not absolute, the Court held that in determining whether a government employee's speech is constitutionally protected, "the interests of the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern" must be balanced against "the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees." 391 U.S., at 568, 88 S.Ct., at 1734. The Court concluded that under the circumstances of that case "the interest of the school administration in limiting teachers' opportunities to contribute to public debate [was] not significantly greater than its interest in limiting a similar contribution by any member of the general public." Id., at 573, 88 S.Ct., at 1737. Here the opinion of the Court of Appeals may be read to turn in part on its view that the working relationship between principal and teacher is significantly different from the relationship between the parties in Pickering,³ as is evidenced by its reference to its own opinion in Abbott v. Thetford, 534 F.2d 1101 (1976) (en banc), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 954, 97 S.Ct. 1598, 51 L.Ed.2d 804 (1977). But we do not feel confident that the Court of Appeals' decision would have been placed on that ground notwithstanding its view that the First Amendment does not require the same sort of Pickering balancing for the private expression of a public employee as it does for public expression.⁴

Perry and Mt. Healthy arose out of similar disputes between teachers and their public employers. As we have noted, however, the fact that each of these cases involved public expression by the employee was not critical to the decision. Nor is the Court of Appeals' view supported by the "captive audience" rationale. Having opened his office door to petitioner, the principal was hardly in a position to argue that he was the "unwilling recipient" of her views.

The First Amendment forbids abridgment of the "freedom of speech." Neither the Amendment itself nor our decisions indicate that this freedom is lost to the public employee who arranges to communicate privately with his employer rather than to spread his views before the public. We decline to adopt such a view of the First Amendment.

While this case was pending on appeal to the Court of Appeals, Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, supra, was decided. In that case this Court rejected the view that a public employee must be reinstated whenever constitutionally protected conduct plays a "substantial" part in the employer's decision to terminate. Such a rule would require...