Background
Kathleen Hayes, a college administrator who placed student teachers in Chicago Public Schools, posted criticisms of the school district on social media. Matthew Lyons, the district’s Chief Talent Officer, emailed Hayes’s supervisors expressing concern about her posts but did not explicitly demand her termination. Hayes sued Lyons and the Board for First Amendment retaliation. The district court denied summary judgment on the retaliation claim, ruling that the law clearly established Lyons’s conduct was unconstitutional. Lyons appealed the denial of qualified immunity.
The court’s reasoning
The Seventh Circuit assumed without deciding that Lyons’s conduct violated the First Amendment but held that the right was not clearly established at the time of his actions. The court found that no precedent placed the question of whether such emails were unlawful beyond debate. Cases like Hutchins v. Clarke and Novoselsky v. Brown did not provide sufficient notice because the officials in those cases engaged in more direct threats or coercion. The court also dismissed the Board of Education from the appeal, ruling that it was not a proper party to an interlocutory appeal of an individual official’s qualified immunity defense.
What it means going forward
School officials may communicate concerns about employee speech to employers without facing immediate liability for qualified immunity, provided the communication does not rise to the level of a direct threat or coercion clearly established by prior case law.
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