October 11, 2011, the Seventh Circuit issued its opinion in Greene v. Doruff et al. In that case, the plaintiff, Greene, worked as a clerk in the prison library where he was in inmate. Doruff accused Greene of copying and highlighting an opinion during working hours and taking an opinion without checking it out. Greene proved that he in fact checked it out properly. However, the photocopy issue triggered a disciplinary hearing and the hearing officer ordered Greene be confined to his cell for 14 days and that the copies be destroyed. Greene filed a suit claiming he had been punished for exercising his freedom of speech. The District Court granted summary judgment for the defendants because Greene failed to establish that the “challenged action would not have occurred but for the constitutionally protected conduct.”
The Seventh Circuit applied the Mt. Healthy “motivating factor” to first amendment claims and clarifies that Gross did not overturn Mt. Healthy. Therefore, a plaintiff need only show “that a violation of his First Amendment rights was a ‘motivating factor’ of the harm he is complaining of, and that if he shows this the burden shifts to the defendant to show that the harm would have occurred anyway—that is, even if there hadn’t been a violation of the First Amendment—and thus that the violation had not been a ‘but for’ cause of the harm for which he is seeking redress.”
Read the opinion here: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/C20QTAAE.pdf
The Seventh Circuit applied the Mt. Healthy “motivating factor” to first amendment claims and clarifies that Gross did not overturn Mt. Healthy. Therefore, a plaintiff need only show “that a violation of his First Amendment rights was a ‘motivating factor’ of the harm he is complaining of, and that if he shows this the burden shifts to the defendant to show that the harm would have occurred anyway—that is, even if there hadn’t been a violation of the First Amendment—and thus that the violation had not been a ‘but for’ cause of the harm for which he is seeking redress.”
Read the opinion here: http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/C20QTAAE.pdf
RSS Feed