James Brown v. Marc Linder, No. 22-1463 (8th Cir. 2023)
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Plaintiff and Defendant both work for the State of Iowa. Plaintiff is a urologist at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics; Defendant is a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. After Defendant criticized Plaintiff’s expert testimony in a case unrelated to this one, Plaintiff sued Defendant under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, alleging that Defendant retaliated against him for engaging in constitutionally protected speech. The district court dismissed Plaintiff’s claim on multiple grounds, including that Plaintiff failed to allege plausibly that Linder’s conduct was under color of state law. Plaintiff argues that his complaint contains ample facts that together plausibly allege that Defendant acted under color of state law. These include that Defendant (1) identified himself as a state employee when he criticized Plaintiff in the newspaper articles, (2) relied on “the prestige of his official position with [UI] to gain credibility with his audience,” and (3) “used the instrumentalities and resources of the State of Iowa to facilitate his retaliatory conduct.”
The Eighth Circuit affirmed. The court agreed with the district court that Plaintiff failed to plead adequately that Defendant’s retaliatory actions were under color of state law. Contrary to Plaintiff’s insistence, our case law is clear that a state employee, merely by publicly identifying himself as such, does not act under color of state law. Further, even assuming that a public university professor acts in his official capacity or within the scope of his employment when he comments on public affairs, it would not necessarily follow that he acts under color of state law.
Court Description: [Gruender, with Loken and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Civil rights. Plaintiff failed to adequately plead that defendant's retaliatory actions were under color of state law; the bare assertion that defendant identified himself as a professor at the University of Iowa and acted within the scope of that employment when he criticized plaintiff for his testimony in an unrelated civil case is not enough to allege plausibly that defendant's conduct was state action.
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