The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA
EASTERN DIVISION
BETTY STREET,
Plaintiff,
v. Case No. 1:22-cv-614-CLM
TALLADEGA CITY BOARD OF
EDUCATION, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Betty Street was a Kindergarten teacher in the Talladega City
School System. During that time, Street alleges that she was harassed,
defamed, retaliated against, and denied a fair opportunity to publicly
speak against her mistreatment. So Street has sued four defendants: the
Talladega City Board of Education (“the Board”), Superintendent Tony
Ball, Principal Phillip Jenkins, and fellow Kindergarten teacher Caitlyn
Freeman.
The Board, Ball, and Freeman moved to dismiss Street’s claims
against them. (See Docs. 12, 13). The court entered a memorandum
opinion and corresponding order granting their motions to dismiss some
claims and denying their motions on others:
• The court denied Ball and Freeman’s motions to dismiss
Count 1 (defamation);
• The court denied Ball and Freeman’s motions to dismiss
Count 2 (false light);
• The court granted Ball and the Board’s motions to dismiss
Count 3 (First Amendment prior restraint);
• The court granted Ball and the Board’s motions to dismiss
Count 4 (First Amendment retaliation);
• The court granted the Board’s motion to dismiss Count 5 but
denied Ball and Freeman’s motions (hostile work
environment);
• The court granted Ball’s motion to dismiss Count 6 but denied
the Board’s (Equal Protection disparate treatment); and
• The court granted Ball, Freeman, and the Board’s motions to
dismiss Count 7 (Equal Protection retaliation).
Because Jenkins was not served when these Defendants moved to
dismiss, he now moves to dismiss Count 4 (First Amendment retaliation)
and Count 7 (Equal Protection retaliation) against him. (Doc. 31).
STATEMENT OF THE ALLEGED FACTS1
Betty Street, a white female, was hired by Talladega City Schools
to teach Kindergarten. While teaching, Street says she was harassed,
bullied, and subjected to inappropriate sexual comments. So Street filed
an EEOC complaint against the school principal, the Superintendent of
the school system, and the Talladega City Board of Education.
Street says that her plight got worse from there.
1. The resignation letter: Two weeks after the EEOC issued its right
to sue letter, new Superintendent Tony Ball told Street that he was
concerned about her teaching, even though Street had no negative
employment or performance records. Superintendent Ball told Street that,
because he was concerned, he wanted to observe her in the classroom.
Street requested that a witness be present for that observation, which she
says upset Ball. Even though the observation revealed no poor
performance, Ball required Street to observe other teachers in a different
system.
Superintendent Ball told the parent of a student that he wanted to
fire Street, but it was difficult because she had tenure. He also told that
1 Because the court considered a holistic account of events (including those involving Principal
Jenkins) in its memorandum opinion (doc. 24), the court restates those facts here.
parent that he wanted to hire black teachers because most students were
black.
At the same time, Superintendent Ball had Street’s fellow
Kindergarten teacher, Caitlyn Freeman, collect information on Street.
Freeman, in turn, enlisted students to spy on Street and report what was
happening in Street’s classroom. Freeman then falsely reported to
Superintendent Ball that Street had no control of her classroom.
Other teachers told Street that Freeman said she was going to “get”
Street on the last day of school. The school principal, Phillip Jenkins,
knew about the threats, but refused to act or tell Street about them. In
any event, Street took the threat of physical violence seriously because,
she says, Freeman had a record of threatening others with violence.
Freeman never attacked Street; instead, Freeman resigned. With
Principal Jenkins’ help, Freeman wrote a resignation letter that said she
(Freeman) suffered “emotional anguish and mental harassment, refusal
of collaboration, and continuous verbal abuse from Street.” She also wrote
that “as long as Street is an employee underneath Talladega City School
Systems, her constant harassment towards myself and others will keep
happening.”
Street says that Freeman, Superintendent Ball, and Principal
Jenkins all knew these statements were false. Yet the trio shared the
letter with Street’s co–workers, employees at other Talladega City
Schools, and the Administration.
Principal Jenkins didn’t stop there. He warned Street’s co-workers
to stay away from Street because she was a troublemaker, even though
Street had no negative employment history in her file. Altogether, this
caused Street to seek mental health treatment and request to transfer to
another school, which was ignored.
2. The School Board Meeting: Street wanted to publicly tell the
School Board about these incidents and discuss the mental health and
physical safety of employees in the district. In compliance with Board
policy, Street wrote a letter to the Board that detailed what she wanted to
say during the meeting.
The Board subsequently restricted what topics Street could discuss
and prevented her from bringing a witness. Superintendent Ball
threatened to sue Street if she named anyone during her remarks.
Later, Superintendent Ball admitted to Street that he knew
Freeman’s letter was backwards; that Freeman was the bully, not Street.
Ball asked Street not to speak at the meeting because her remarks would
reflect badly on him.
But Street was determined to speak. So Superintendent Ball left
Street off the agenda and closed the meeting to public entry. Despite
Board meetings usually being broadcast on Zoom, the Board streamed this
meeting on YouTube instead. The YouTube stream failed, so members of
the public couldn’t watch it.
When Street started to read her preapproved letter, the Board chair
stopped her and did not allow her to continue speaking. Street requested
to read her full letter at a future board meeting, but the Board, through
Superintendent Ball, denied that request.
3. The complaint: The next month, Street complained to the
Alabama Department of Education that Ball, Jenkins, and Freeman
harassed her. To the court’s knowledge, nothing has come of that
complaint. In the months that followed, three of Street’s black co-workers
told Street that Freeman told them to “throw out the race card” if
anything happened between them and Street. And a new teacher told
Street that she was instructed not to talk to her.
So Street sued the Board, Ball, Freeman, and Jenkins. She alleges
Libel, Slander, and Invasion of Privacy/False light claims against Ball,
Freeman, and Jenkins in their individual capacities. She brings one First
Amendment claim for prior restraints against the Board and Ball in his
official and individual capacities, and another First Amendment Claim for
retaliation against Ball, Jenkins, and the Board. She brings a hostile work
environment claim against the Board, and Ball, Jenkins, and Freeman in
their individual capacities. And she brings two Equal Protection claims—
one for disparate treatment against the Board and Ball in his individual
capacity, and another for retaliation—against Ball, Jenkins, Freeman,
and the Board.
The court dismissed Street’s
• First Amendment claim for prior restraints against the Board
and Ball,
• First Amendment claim for retaliation against the Board and
Ball,
• hostile work environment claim against the Board,
• Equal Protection claim for disparate treatment against Ball,
• Equal Protection claim for retaliation against Ball, Freeman,
and the Board.
Jenkins now moves to dismiss Street’s First Amendment retaliation
claim and her Equal Protection retaliation claim against him. (Doc. 31).
STANDARD OF REVIEW
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a plaintiff must
provide “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader
is entitled to relief.” To survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the “[f]actual allegations [in the complaint] must
be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Bell Atl.
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (citation omitted). This
“requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of
the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Id. (citation omitted). “To
survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual
matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its
face.’ Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550
U.S. at 570).
DISCUSSION
A. Official Capacity Claims Against Jenkins
Principal Jenkins argues that the official capacity claims against
him should be dismissed as redundant of the claims against the Board.
“Because suits against a municipal officer sued in his official
capacity and direct suits against municipalities are functionally
equivalent, there no longer exists a need to bring official-capacity actions
against local government officials, because local government units can be
sued directly.” Busby v. City of Orlando, 931 F.2d 764, 776 (11th Cir.
1991). As the circuit court reasoned in Busby, “[t]o keep both the City and
the officers sued in their official capacity as defendants in this case would
have been redundant and possibly confusing to the jury.” Id.
As stated in our memorandum opinion addressing the Board, Ball,
and Freeman’s motions to dismiss (doc. 24), because these claims are
“functionally equivalent” to the claims against the Board, keeping them
would be redundant and could confuse the jury. And Street has presented
no new argument that would merit reconsideration of the court’s decision.
(See Doc. 17, pp. 2-3; Doc. 24, pp. 5-6; Doc. 35, pp. 3-4). So circuit precedent
requires the court to DISMISS all claims against Jenkins in his official
capacity also.
B. Individual Counts
Count 4: First Amendment, retaliation
Street alleges that Principal Jenkins violated her First Amendment
right by retaliating against her for filing an EEOC complaint and writing
a letter to the Board about her mistreatment.
For a public employee to sue their government employer under the
First Amendment, “the employee must show that he or she spoke as a
citizen on a matter of public concern.” Borough of Duryea, Pa. v.
Guarnieri, 564 U.S. 379, 386 (2011) (citing Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138,
147 (1983)). “If an employee does not . . . address a matter of public
concern, ‘a federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review
the wisdom of a personnel decision taken by a public agency allegedly in
reaction to the employee’s behavior.’” Id. “When there is a personal
element to the speech, complaints of wrongdoing within a public agency
may not constitute speech on a matter of public concern.” Stanley v. City
of Dalton, Ga., 219 F.3d 1280, 1288 n.13 (11th Cir. 2000) (citing Maggio
v. Sipple, 211 F.3d 1346, 1352 (11th Cir. 2000); Morgan v. Ford, 6 F.3d
750, 754 (11th Cir. 1993)). So to state a valid claim that Jenkins retaliated
against her for exercising her First Amendment rights, Street must
establish that she was speaking on a matter of public concern.
As stated in the court’s memorandum opinion addressing the Board,
Ball, and Freeman’s motions to dismiss (doc. 24), neither Street’s letter to
the Board nor her EEOC complaint involved matters of public concern.2
And she alleges exactly the same speech and exactly the same claim
against Jenkins here. While allegations of discrimination may constitute
a matter of public concern in other instances, the primary purpose of
Street’s allegations here are to support her own employee grievance.
Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, 420 (2006) (citing Connick, 461 U.S. at
154); see also Maggio, 211 F.3d at 1353.
Street says that her claims against Jenkins stem from his alleged
retaliation against her for filing her EEOC complaint. Street says that
Jenkins stated she had performance problems, helped Freeman draft her
resignation letter accusing Street of bullying, helped share that letter
with third parties, and labeled her a troublemaker to other teachers—all
despite her having no previous disciplinary actions or performance issues.
(Doc. 35, p. 9). Even if these actions constituted an adverse employment
action, which the court does not decide today, Street has failed to allege
that her speech (i.e., her complaint to the EEOC) involves a matter of
2 “Despite her allegations that some members of the public were involved, the root of her
complaints to the Board and to the EEOC were that she was mistreated by the Board and its
employees. While that may be true and sufficient to establish other claims, the content, form,
and context of her speech fail to establish that she was speaking on a matter of public concern.”
(Doc. 24, p. 10).
public concern. So Street’s First Amendment claim against Jenkins must
fail.
Count 7: Equal Protection, retaliation
Street also brings a claim under §1983 alleging that Principal
Jenkins retaliated against her for filing an EEOC complaint of gender
discrimination. As stated in the court’s memorandum opinion addressing
the Board, Ball, and Freeman’s motions to dismiss (doc. 24), a claim of
gender-based retaliation “simply does not implicate the Equal Protection
Clause.” Watkins v. Bowden, 105 F.3d 1344, 1354 (11th Cir. 1997); see
also Ratliff v. DeKalb Cnty., Ga., 62 F.3d 338, 340 (11th Cir. 1995) (“[N]o
clearly established right exists under the equal protection clause to be free
from retaliation.”). And Street has presented no new argument that would
merit reconsideration of the court’s decision. (See Doc. 17, pp. 24-25; Doc.
24, pp. 16-17; Doc. 35, pp. 9-10). So Street’s Equal Protection retaliation
claim against Jenkins fails.
CONCLUSION
For these reasons, the court GRANTS Jenkins’ motion to dismiss
Count 4 (First Amendment retaliation) and Count 7 (Equal Protection
retaliation) against him. (Doc. 31).
These claims and corresponding defendants remain before the
court:
e Count 1 (defamation): Freeman, Ball, and Jenkins
e Count 2 (false light): Freeman, Ball, and Jenkins
e Count 5 (hostile work environment): Freeman, Ball, and Jenkins
e Count 6 (disparate treatment): the Board
DONE and ORDERED on February 8, 2024.
Loe fe Hay
/
COREY L. MAZE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE