Rita Nethersole, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. William Bulger, et al., Defendants, Appellees, 287 F.3d 15 (1st Cir. 2002)

Plaintiff Rita Nethersole appeals from the district court judgment which dismissed her section 1983 claims against her employer, the University of Massachusetts ("UMass"), following her transfer to a new administrative position. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983; infra note 3.

In 1995, UMass appointed Nethersole, an African-American, as its state-wide associate vice-president for student affairs. As such, she was responsible, among other things, for promoting faculty/student diversity. During her early tenure, a UMass credit card disappeared. Subsequently it was used, without authorization, by a person whose identity remains unknown, to purchase a laptop computer. The UMass police launched an investigation.

Not long after the credit card fraud, UMass revised its admissions policies (e.g., by heightening GPA requirements and eliminating special admissions programs). Although the newly appointed UMass President, William Bulger, voiced approval of the revised policies, some minority faculty members reacted with expressions of concern that minority-student recruitment and admissions would be adversely affected. Nethersole conveyed these concerns to her supervisor, Vice President Joseph Deck, who warned her not to air her opinions. Later, Deck accused Nethersole of leaking information to opponents of the new admissions policies.

On April 1, 1996, Nethersole invited minority faculty and staff to meet and "discuss relevant issues and concerns and perhaps establish an action plan which will relate to our collective needs." The meeting took place on April 11. The following day, Nethersole transmitted an e-mail memorandum to UMass Executive Vice-President James Julian, requesting that UMass President Bulger meet with the minority faculty caucus to discuss their concerns regarding, inter alia, the UMass admissions and diversity policies.¹  Later in April, UMass informed Nethersole's counsel that it was considering whether to terminate Nethersole's employment "for cause," ostensibly a veiled reference to her suspected involvement in the November 1995 credit card fraud and related computer theft.

Thereafter, on September 26, 1996, UMass Vice-President Stephen Lenhardt advised Nethersole in writing that she was to be terminated, based on "credible evidence" derived through an ongoing investigation by the UMass police, that she had been involved in the November 1995 credit card fraud.²  Lenhardt informed Nethersole that the charges against her were to be aired at a pretermination hearing, which was subsequently held on October 4, 1996.

On November 22, 1996, Lenhardt sent Nethersole another letter, advising that notwithstanding "numerous concerns over the past months regarding [her] conduct," UMass was rescinding its termination decision "at this time," and reassigning her to its UMass-Boston campus as the Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies, with no reduction in salary. (Emphasis added.) The Lenhardt letter neither mentioned nor described the findings resulting from Nethersole's pretermination hearing. Nethersole regarded the announced transfer as a demotion.

In due course, Nethersole instituted the present action against, inter alios, UMass and its Board of Trustees, as well as Bulger, Julian, and Lenhardt, claiming that her November 1996 transfer to UMass-Boston constituted (i) retaliation for exercising her First Amendment right to free speech, see U.S. Const. amend. I, and (ii) a deprivation of her liberty or reputational interest, without due process of law, see id. amend. XIV. Additionally, Nethersole alleged that certain press comments were defamatory, hence actionable under state law.

In due course, the district court dismissed all the federal claims, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b) (6). Finally, the state-law defamation claim was dismissed due to lack of supplemental jurisdiction, see 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c) (3), and Nethersole appealed.

Nethersole contends that the amended complaint states an actionable First Amendment violation, under section 1983, in that it alleges retaliation for her exercise of free speech, viz., the April 12, 1996, memorandum to James Julian.³  She points to the suspicious circumstance that, within weeks of her memorandum, her attorney received notice that UMass was considering whether to terminate her employment "for cause." She reasons that notwithstanding the UMass attempt, some seven months later, to predicate its termination decision upon her alleged complicity in the November 1995 credit card fraud, the temporal proximity alone provides a sufficient circumstantial causal link between her exercise of free speech and the ensuing transfer. We agree.

We review the Rule 12(b) (6) ruling de novo, accepting all factual allegations in the complaint and drawing all reasonable inferences in Nethersole's favor. See Alternative Energy, Inc. v. St. Paul Fire and Marine Ins. Co., 267 F.3d 30, 33 (1st Cir. 2001). The dismissal is to be affirmed "only if, under the facts alleged, [Nethersole] cannot recover on any viable theory." Blackstone Realty LLC v. FDIC, 244 F.3d 193, 197 (1st Cir. 2001) (citation omitted).

Three inquiries must be undertaken in assessing whether the challenged employment action contravened the First Amendment right to freedom of speech: whether (i) the speech Nethersole engaged in can be considered that of a public employee on a matter of public concern, or merely related to matters primarily of concern to employees (e.g., internal working conditions); (ii) Nethersole's interest in speaking, as well as the public interest, outweigh any legitimate governmental interest in the efficient performance of its public function; and (iii) the speech was either a motivating or substantial factor in the adverse employment action. See Padilla-Garcia v. Guillermo Rodriguez, 212 F.3d 69, 78 (1st Cir. 2000); see also O'Connor v. Steeves, 994 F.2d 905, 911-13 (1st Cir. 1993).⁴  Unlike the first two criteria, which often involve issues of law amenable to resolution by the court, see Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 148 n. 7, 103 S. Ct. 1684, 75 L. Ed. 2d 708 (1983); Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568, 88 S. Ct. 1731, 20 L. Ed. 2d 811 (1968); O'Connor, 994 F.2d at 912; Gorman-Bakos v. Cornell Coop. Extension of Schenectady Cty., 252 F.3d 545, 557 (2d Cir. 2001),⁵  the "causation" or "motivation" element normally presents a factfinding responsibility for the jury. See O'Connor, 994 F.2d at 913; Shands v. City of Kennett, 993 F.2d 1337, 1343 (8th Cir. 1993).

The district court dismissed the amended complaint due to its failure sufficiently to allege that Nethersole's opposition to the new UMass admissions policies was a motivating factor in the later UMass decision to relieve her of her position as the associate vice-president for student affairs responsible for promoting faculty/student diversity. As the rationale for its Rule 12(b) (6) dismissal, the district court pointed to the seven-month lapse between the April memorandum Nethersole transmitted to Julian and her ensuing transfer in November.

In section 1983 cases asserting a First Amendment claim, the plaintiff need only allege facts sufficient to enable a reasonable inference that the employer retaliated, at least in part, in response to constitutionally protected speech. Once the plaintiff alleges — and thereafter proves — that such retaliation was "a" motivating factor, the burden shifts to the defendants to demonstrate, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the adverse employment action would have obtained regardless of the protected conduct engaged in by the plaintiff; e.g., here, by reason of the suspicions relating to the November 1995 credit card fraud. See Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 287, 97 S. Ct. 568, 50 L. Ed. 2d 471 (1977); Beattie v. Madison Cty. Sch. Dist., 254 F.3d 595, 601 (5th Cir. 2001). The allegations in the amended Nethersole complaint meet that minimal pleading standard, entitling Nethersole to conduct discovery regarding the section 1983 causation element.

First, we assess the April 1996 Nethersole memo in the context of the events which allegedly preceded it, particularly her discussions with Vice President Deck, and Deck's explicit warning that Nethersole refrain from voicing publicly her concerns regarding diversity. Further, Deck questioned Nethersole's loyalty as a team player, charging that she leaked information to opponents of the new admissions policies supported by incoming President Bulger.⁶  Thereafter, UMass excluded Nethersole from all policymaking discussions relating to the new admissions policies, even though faculty/student diversity issues constituted a prime focus of her employment.

Second, although seven months passed between the April memo and Nethersole's transfer, at the preliminary Rule 12(b) (6) stage in the proceedings the temporal disparity does not compel the conclusion, as a matter of law, that Nethersole's diversity concerns could not have played some role in the UMass decision to replace her as associate vice-president for student affairs, a position which specifically entailed responsibility for diversity issues. Notwithstanding unsubstantiated accusations that Nethersole was complicit in the computer theft, which arguably would have made her unfit for any position at the university — rather than a mere job transfer—UMass transferred Nethersole from a position in which she was directly involved with diversity policy to a more peripheral position outside the president's office. Thus, the thematic link between the substance of Nethersole's speech and the particular corrective action taken by UMass diminishes the evidentiary significance of the seven-month time lapse, especially since UMass noted in November 1996 that its concerns with Nethersole had extended "over the past months." (Emphasis added.)

Further, the Nethersole complaint alleged no uninterrupted seven-month retaliatory lapse. Rather, it asserted that, within a matter of weeks following Nethersole's April 1996 memo, UMass announced that it was considering terminating her employment. "[C]lose temporal proximity between two events may give rise to an inference of causal connection." Hodgens v. Gen. Dynamics Corp., 144 F.3d 151, 168 (1st Cir. 1998). Although the ostensible basis for the UMass announcement related to the UMass police investigation into the November 1995 computer theft, Nethersole's ongoing opposition to the new admissions policies represents a potential intervening cause. See Springer v. Seaman, 821 F.2d 871, 876 (1st Cir. 1987) (noting that proximate causation issue in § 1983 action, including viability of asserted superseding causes for employment decision, normally generates jury issue). In reviewing a Rule 12(b) (6) dismissal, we may neither ignore the allegation of temporal proximity, nor presume that it is a mere coincidence.

Finally, although UMass claims that its employment action was motivated solely by Nethersole's conduct in relation to the computer theft investigation, the amended complaint questions UMass's credibility in this regard. UMass first announced Nethersole's termination in September 1996, due to "credible evidence" that she was involved in the computer theft. Nevertheless, two months later, without releasing any findings arrived at during her pretermination hearing, UMass implicitly acknowledged that the evidence disclosed at the termination hearing was insufficient to warrant termination, while vaguely stating that it had "numerous concerns over the past months regarding [Nethersole's] conduct," and implicitly threatening her with future termination (viz., "the University has decided not to terminate you at this time") (emphasis added).

Among the inferences arguably suggested by these allegations are the following: (i) UMass trumped up the credit card fraud charges as a cover for its attempted First Amendment retaliation; (ii) its lingering "concerns" included Nethersole's propensity to question the existing UMass diversity policies; and (iii) the UMass threat, along with her transfer to a position which no longer involved diversity matters, were designed to chill future protected speech by Nethersole on these matters. Absent an opportunity to conduct appropriate discovery, however, the paper trail UMass created in documenting the UMass police investigation, as well as its pretermination decisionmaking process, remain within the control of UMass.

Given the facts alleged in the complaint, we understand the district court's inclination to believe that the strength of Nethersole's First Amendment claim is open to considerable doubt, especially as concerns the causation element. Nevertheless, a complaint need not set forth all evidentiary facts, given that discovery proceedings may yet prove fruitful. Thus, while appellees may well decide to submit a summary judgment motion following further proceedings on remand, at the present stage of the proceedings, the dismissal for failure to state a claim was inappropriate.⁷ 

The district court order dismissing the First Amendment claim in the amended complaint, and dismissing the state-law claims for lack of supplemental jurisdiction, is hereby vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings on all such claims, consistent with this opinion. The order dismissing the due process claim in the amended complaint is affirmed. Costs to appellant.

SO ORDERED.