In 1971, Fred Doyle, who had been teaching social studies for five years in the Mount Healthy City Schools, learned his contract had not been renewed, not only denying him tenure but any further employment with the district.

The superintendent's letter cited both an incident where he had made an obscene gesture to students and his sharing of a district dress code for teachers with a local radio station as displaying a "lack of tact".

He took a position with another district and filed suit under Section 1983, arguing his constitutional rights to free speech had been violated, per the Court's 1967 decision in Pickering v. Board of Education, another case involving an untenured teacher fired for speaking out in the media.

On the jurisdictional question, Rehnquist held that although the school district had been created by state law, it was primarily a local entity and thus beyond the reach of the Eleventh Amendment, its first ruling in that area in 86 years.

[1] The Court did not, however, decide the question of whether Doyle had been fired legally, since there were other incidents suggesting he had difficulties in his relationships with students and fellow teachers which the district had introduced into the record.

This has been criticized as allowing public employers a way to circumvent restrictions on taking adverse action against whistleblowers, and more generally as incompatible with the underlying principles of tort law.

He and two of the other fired teachers brought suit in federal court for the Southern District of Ohio, seeking reinstatement, back pay and $50,000 in punitive damages for violations of their civil rights under Section 1983.

Doyle relied on the Court's 1968 Pickering v. Board of Education decision, in which it unanimously held in favor of an untenured Illinois teacher fired for writing a letter skeptical of a school tax increase to a local newspaper, to assert his First Amendment rights against similar retaliatory action by the Mt.

First, as an "arm of the state", under the Eleventh Amendment, it was entitled to the same sovereign immunity since Ohio law did not consent to litigation against school districts for violations of constitutional rights.

[7] He felt Pickering gave him no leeway to decide whether Doyle would have been fired without leaking the memo, an act which he found had played "a substantial role" in the board's decision.

[5] When he was able to turn to the specifics of the case, Olinger reminded the justices that Hogan had agreed that, other than Doyle's contact with WSAI, the board had ample reason not to renew his contract.

Pressed by one of the justices, he admitted that he was not taking into account the difference it might have made over the course of several years of employment; however he said it was entirely possible that Doyle's potential top salary step at his new school would be higher than it might be at Mt.

Rather, it had been a response to the school district's late argument that it was not a person under Section 1983, and that he should have cross-appealed Hogan's ruling, in which he dismissed the case against the individual members as defendants, but did not because he did not expect that issue to arise again.

[18] But he begged the Court's indulgence because under Kenosha v. Bruno, another one of the cases following Monroe, if the school district had the same Eleventh Amendment immunity as a municipality Doyle could not seek equitable relief such as his reinstatement against the board as an entity;[19] he would have had to do it against the members personally.

"On balance, the record before us indicates that a local school board such as petitioner is more like a county or city than it is like an arm of the state ... it was not entitled to assert any Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit in the federal courts.

[21] In contrast to Roth, the Court had ruled that he had alleged enough facts to make an arguable case that the nonrenewal was retaliatory action for his speech on a matter of public concern, and so it would for Doyle.

Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District came on appeal from the Fifth Circuit, which had upheld the firing of a Mississippi teacher for, in part, her regular and vehement complaints to her principal about the racially disparate impact of school-district policies in the wake of court-ordered desegregation.

[26] Rehnquist, again writing for a unanimous court, held that the context of the speech made no difference under the First Amendment; it was as protected as Pickering's letter and Doyle's telephone call.

Healthy "suppl[ies] the proper analysis" in 1985's Hunter v. Underwood, finding Alabama's felony disenfranchisement laws were primarily meant to target black voters even if they also affected poor whites.

There, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote for a plurality that clarified the language it had used in Givhan: "A court that finds for a plaintiff under this standard has effectively concluded that an illegitimate motive was a 'but-for' cause of the employment decision.

"[31] The decision's imposition of a shift in the burden of proof from plaintiff to defendant once the former has proved that an improper reason motivated the adverse action was criticized in Anthony Kennedy's dissent as only narrowly applicable to such cases.

[32] By 1992 the Fifth Circuit could assert that "the two-step burden-shifting rule ... has now become standard fare in discrimination cases" in the third and final appeal by a Mississippi newspaper alleging that local government withdrew legal advertising in retaliation for critical coverage.

In Greenberg v. Kmetko it directed a district court to change its instruction to more closely match the test should the case be heard by a jury, even though it had granted qualified immunity to the defendants.

Since the employer's defense largely rested on the illegality of personnel moves by the outgoing NPP so that its members could keep their jobs, Lynch elaborated: There are obvious difficulties with this model, which the Supreme Court may one day address.

[41] In Tejada-Batista v. Morales, where a discharged Puerto Rico Special Investigations Bureau agent alleged retaliation by a superior for his contact with a local newspaper, then-Chief Judge Michael Boudin denied defendants' request that a Mt.

[42] Gene Carter dissented, arguing that the verdict should have been reversed since the evidence suggested one of the named defendants had no knowledge of anything but the domestic violence charge that was the stated reason Tejada had been fired.

Similarly, the court held that a jury instruction that a finding that the plaintiffs' political affiliations and activities were the "determinative factor" in the defendants' actions against them met the test's requirements.

It found that while that act was constitutionally protected, the balancing test established by Pickering v. Board of Education actually improved the MTA's case under Mt.

[49] "It is especially ill-suited to constitutional torts charging retaliation for the exercise of First Amendment rights" since it ensures that an employee who speaks out on a matter of public concern will have to consider the possibility that his or her employer will find some plausible reasons for taking action against him apart from his protected speech or other activity.

Healthy City School District Board Of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977) is available from: Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Leagle Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)