By Anthony Rice
In De Le Garza, a First Amendment retaliation claim survived summary judgment when there was independent testimony that the Sheriff did not hire the plaintiff, the only candidate for School Resource Officer, because of the plaintiff’s political stance.
De La Garza was the Sheriff’s opponent and incumbent in the last election for Sheriff. Following the election, De La Garza was the sole candidate for School Resource Officer, yet the Sheriff refused to hire him because, according to independent testimony, the Sheriff said he “like[d] [his] job and don’t want to give anyone a base of operations to run against [him]”. Nonetheless, the lower court granted the Sheriff’s summary judgment, thereby dismissing De La Garza’s First Amendment retaliation claim.
On appeal counsel for the Sheriff argued that summary judgment was justified in similar cases. However, the court countered by stating that
In none of those cases did the plaintiff have the direct evidence of retaliatory motive that De La Garza can point to in the form of trustee Mollicone’s testimony that Brumby stated he did not want to hire De La Garza because “I like my job and don’t want to give anyone a base of operations to run against me”.
Because De La Garza had direct testimonial evidence that the failure to hire was retaliatory, the court reversed the lower court’s decision favoring the Sheriff.
