Leary v. Daeschner

• Decision Date: 19 November 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-6118.,01-6118.
• Parties: Mary Elizabeth LEARY and Glenda H. Williams, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Stephen DAESCHNER, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

349 F.3d 888

Mary Elizabeth LEARY and Glenda H. Williams, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Stephen DAESCHNER, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 01-6118.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: January 30, 2003.

Decided and Filed: November 19, 2003. Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206

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ARGUED: Daniel T. Taylor III, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellants.

Michael Keith Kirk, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee.

ON BRIEF: Daniel T. Taylor III, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellants.

Michael Keith Kirk, Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellee.

Before: BATCHELDER, MOORE, and CLAY, Circuit Judges.

MOORE, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which CLAY, J., joined. BATCHELDER, J. (pp. 911-14), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs-Appellants Mary Elizabeth Leary ("Leary") and Glenda H. Williams ("Williams") (collectively "Plaintiffs"), previously school teachers at the Atkinson Elementary School ("Atkinson") in Jefferson County, Kentucky, appeal the following district court orders: (1) the July 31, 2000 order granting summary judgment in favor of Defendant-Appellee Superintendent Stephen Daeschner ("Daeschner") and thereby dismissing Plaintiffs' First Amendment retaliation claims; and (2) the June 13, 2001 order denying Plaintiffs' motion to amend their complaint, dismissing their due process claims, and dismissing all remaining claims. In addition, Plaintiffs argue that the district court failed to provide them a trial by jury in violation of the Seventh Amendment. Plaintiffs allege in their complaint and amended complaint that they were transferred from Atkinson to another elementary school in the same district in retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights and that the last-minute hearing violated their right to due process. The district court granted summary judgment to Daeschner on Plaintiffs' First Amendment claims because Plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proof for establishing a First Amendment violation. The district court also denied Plaintiffs' motion to amend their previously amended complaint to add a demand for monetary relief because the deadline for filing amended pleadings had passed and Plaintiffs failed to show good cause excusing this late attempt to amend. The district court announced that Plaintiffs cannot reformulate their due process claims for injunctive relief as monetary damages claims based on breach of the Collective Bargaining Agreement ("CBA"). Finally, the district court denied Plaintiffs' Rule 59(e) motion to set aside or vacate the decision granting summary judgment in Daeschner's favor because the Plaintiffs did not provide the court with any new evidence justifying such a decision.

We now REVERSE the district court's grant of summary judgment to Defendant on Plaintiffs' First Amendment claims because there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Plaintiffs' transfers were in retaliation for their protected speech, and we REMAND for further proceedings. However, we AFFIRM the district court's denial of Plaintiffs' motion for leave to amend because Plaintiffs failed to show good cause for their failure to amend their complaint earlier and Defendant would suffer prejudice by allowing this amendment which would require the reopening of discovery at this late stage of the proceedings. We also conclude that the district court did not err when it failed to grant Plaintiffs' motion for a jury trial because the only claims remaining demand injunctive relief.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual History

Plaintiffs were school teachers at Atkinson, a troubled public elementary school in Jefferson County, Kentucky, consistently producing low performance test scores and placing in the lowest range for Kentucky public schools. Leary taught special-education students for sixteen years at Atkinson, while Williams, a fourteen-year veteran, taught reading to "at risk" children, part-time, in a program called Reading Recovery. Williams split her teaching time with her responsibility as the Jefferson County Teachers Association ("JCTA") representative for Atkinson. Plaintiffs' fellow teachers viewed Plaintiffs as staff leaders who often spoke out, on behalf of themselves and others, about issues affecting Atkinson, such as student discipline. Administrators at Atkinson viewed Plaintiffs differently, stating that they were neither dedicated leaders nor supportive of the administration, and that they resisted positive change.¹

Exacerbating Atkinson's academic woes were its divisive faculty and its glaring student-discipline problem. Because the Atkinson faculty was not cohesive, the school struggled to make decisions on everything from reading-program selection to curriculum choices. From the administration's perspective, too many academic decisions were made individually rather than collectively as an institution. Strong faculty commitment to particular programs developed which made it difficult for the administration to suggest alternative approaches. The long-standing student discipline issues concerned teachers school-wide. Some teachers, such as Leary, were vocal in their complaints about discipline² and took action by compiling signatures on a petition that proposed changes to Atkinson's discipline policies.³

Under Principal LaDita Howard's ("Howard") leadership, Atkinson set out to change its poor reputation and institutional problems by embracing new programs and procedures to improve academic success. One such program involved what Jefferson County Public Schools ("JCPS") called Dialogue Teams. These teams, comprised of district-level administrators, would meet with a school's faculty and principal to discuss plans for improvement and to evaluate success. The particular team involved with evaluating Atkinson was headed by Assistant Superintendent for District Wide Instruction, Freda Meriweather ("Meriweather"), whose primary responsibilities consisted of supervising the JCPS elementary-school principals and developing school improvement initiatives.⁴ One of the team's first tasks involved evaluating the three reading programs in use at Atkinson and then recommending to Howard and her staff that one program be used consistently throughout the school. Ultimately, the school accepted this advice and chose to reject all other reading programs in favor of the "Success for All" program.

Atkinson's academic troubles allowed it to qualify under the Kentucky Education Reform Act ("KERA") to receive a Distinguished Educator or "Highly Skilled Educator," a school-district employee with a proven record of success in aiding troubled schools. Between 1998-99, Meriweather enlisted the help of Distinguished Educator Nancy Bowlds ("Bowlds") to work with Atkinson's faculty and principal over an extended period of time and advise them of how the school's academic performance might be improved.

In the spring of 1999, Atkinson contacted Dr. Sharon Davis, Director of Exceptional Child Education ("ECE"), to evaluate the ECE programs designed for the special education students. The evaluation was completed and resulted in a recommendation for Atkinson to adopt the "collaborative model."⁵ Meanwhile in April 1999, Howard gave notice that she was resigning as Atkinson's principal at the end of the school-year. This resignation sparked discussions between Meriweather and her Dialogue Team to anticipate the needs of Atkinson in the wake of Howard's departure. In addition to the recruitment and retention of a talented principal, the team believed that faculty changes also were necessary to ensure support for the school's chosen principal and new programs: "Success for All" and the ECE "collaborative model." Both programs required faculty support: "Success for All" needed a high percentage of faculty acceptance before a grant would issue, and the "collaborative model" required substantial backing because it involved a drastic change. The Dialogue Team concluded that four or five teachers would need to be transferred before the start of the 1999 school-year.⁶

After the Dialogue Team made this decision to transfer teachers, Meriweather asked Howard and Bowlds each to compose a list of four to five teachers that they recommended for transfer because they thought the teachers would resist change and progress at Atkinson. Howard's list did not include the current Plaintiffs; Bowlds's list, however, included Leary. After Meriweather received Howard's and Bowlds's lists, Meriweather called Howard to determine whether she agreed with Bowlds that Leary belonged on the list. Howard agreed, allowing Leary to be added to her list because Howard believed that Leary, the ECE-team leader, would not embrace the new "collaborative model."⁷ Bowlds included Leary on her initial list for a variety of reasons, most important of these was Leary's failure to accept leadership by attending monthly district meetings even though she was the ECE-team leader. In addition, Leary was accused of yelling at students, fellow teachers, and administrators.

Once Meriweather learned that Williams intended to return for the 1999-2000 school-year, she contacted Howard and Bowlds again and asked if they agreed that Williams also should be on the transfer list. Both Bowlds and Howard agreed that Williams was a proper candidate for transfer because: (1) she was in a leadership position but failed to lead, (2) she failed to participate in a grant-writing process for an early-literacy program, and (3) she continuously questioned the principal's authority, decisions, and judgment. Moreover, Williams's status as a part-time employee made her a desirable candidate for transfer.

These proposed transfers were supplied to the Dialogue Team, which then selected five teachers to transfer; amongst those selected were Leary and Williams. These names were then delivered to Daeschner as...