Kate Adams worked for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office (Department). On New Year’s Eve in 2013, Adams received two text messages containing racist images from a number Adams did not know. She in turn sent those images to two friends, and texted one friend that “Some rude racist just sent this!!”. That friend responded, “That’s not right.” The messages Adams sent were intended for a purely private audience of friends in the context of social exchanges during “a friendly, casual text message conversation.”
Adams’s friendships with the two deteriorated. In 2015, Adams was promoted to Assistant Chief of Police for the City of Rancho Cordova. In 2019, Adams learned of potential misconduct on the part of one of the friends, and reported the misconduct. That “friend” learned that Adams had reported her, and several anonymous, unsubstantiated misconduct reports were then filed against Adams. The Department promoted Adams to Chief of Police for the City of Rancho Cordova in March 2020.
In July 2020, Adams filed a formal complaint of harassment and retaliation against that “friend” with the County’s Equal Employment Opportunity office. During the investigation, that “friend” provided print-outs of the text messages that Adams had forwarded in 2013, but did not provide any surrounding text commentary. The Department also investigated. During the Department’s investigation, the other friend provided his cell phone which still had the 2013 texts.
Following the investigation, the Department gave Adams a choice to either resign or be “terminated and publicly mischaracterized as a racist.” An attorney for the County told her that if she agreed to resign, the investigation would never become public; however, if she refused to resign, “the investigation would fuel a ‘media circus’” in which she would be labeled a racist. She chose to resign in September 2021.
In March 2022, the President of the Sacramento chapter of the NAACP published an open letter stating that Adams had sent racially charged pictures to Sheriff’s Department employees. The Sacramento Bee then published an article repeating the open letter’s allegations. As a result of the publicity, Adams resigned from her longtime adjunct teaching position at a local university, and two prospective employers declined to consider her.
Adams sued the County and the Sheriff in U.S. District Court. She alleged a variety of claims, including deprivation of the right to free speech under the First Amendment and “First Amendment conspiracy”. The district court dismissed the two free speech claims, finding that the speech was not about a matter of public concern. Adams filed an interlocutory appeal on the free speech claims only.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal. The First Amendment prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to retaliatory actions for their protected speech. In evaluating a public employee’s First Amendment rights, the initial inquiry is whether the statements substantially address a “matter of legitimate public concern.”
The Ninth Circuit examined the plain language, form, and context of the two text messages, and concluded that Adams was commenting on a personal matter, and not making a public comment. The Court found that Adams’s texts and distribution of the images spoke only of her exasperation at being sent the images, which is an issue of personal—not public—concern. The Court held that the private text messages between friends, forwarding racist images, and complaining about them, was not a “matter of legitimate public concern” within the meaning of Pickering v. Board of Education.
In a sharp dissent, Circuit Judge Callahan stated that Adams should have the chance to hold the County accountable for its harsh reaction to her speech. Her dissent opined that the public concern test should be applied leniently because Adams’s speech was not a workplace grievance, had no arguable impact on her employer, and touched on matters of social or political concern. The dissent concluded that the majority adopted an overly strict approach to public employee free speech claims, and cited to several supporting decisions.
Adams v. County of Sacramento, 2024 US App. LEXIS 22846 (9/9/24).