Cite as: 511 U. S. 661 (1994)
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
viewed Waters' and Davis' written reports of their conversations with Ballew and Perkins-Graham, and had Bernice Magin, the hospital's vice president of human resources, interview Ballew one more time. Supplemental App. of Defendants-Appellees in No. 91-2288, at 108, 139-142. After considering all this, Hopper rejected Churchill's grievance.
Churchill then sued under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, claiming that the firing violated her First Amendment rights because her speech was protected under Con-nick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138 (1983). In May 1991, the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois granted summary judgment to petitioners. The court held that neither version of the conversation was protected under Connick: Regardless of whose story was accepted, the speech was not on a matter of public concern, and even if it was on a matter of public concern, its potential for disruption nonetheless stripped it of First Amendment protection. Therefore, the court held, management could fire Churchill for the conversation with impunity. App. to Pet. for Cert. 45-49.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed. 977 F. 2d 1114 (1992). The court held that Churchill's speech, viewed in the light most favorable to her, was protected speech under the Connick test: It was on a matter of public concern—"the hospital's [alleged] violation of state nursing regulations as well as the quality and level of nursing care it provides its patients," id., at 1122—and it was not disruptive, id., at 1124.
The court also concluded that the inquiry must turn on what the speech actually was, not on what the employer thought it was. "If the employer chooses to discharge the employee without sufficient knowledge of her protected speech as a result of an inadequate investigation into the employee's conduct," the court held, "the employer runs the risk of eventually being required to remedy any wrongdoing
667
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007