Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District

Givhan v. Western Line Consol. Sch. Dist.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 7, 1978 Decided January 9, 1979
Full case name	Bessie Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District et al
Docket no.	77-1051
Citations	439 U.S. 410 (more) 99 S. Ct. 693; 58 L. Ed. 2d 619
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Case history
Prior	N.D.Miss. rev'd sub nom Ayers et al v. Western Line Consol. Sch. Dist, 555 F.2d 1309 (5th Cir., 1977).
Subsequent	Verdict for plaintiff, unreported
Holding
Teacher's private complaints to principal regarding racially disparate impact of school district policy, however intemperately expressed, were protected speech on a matter of public concern for which she could not be terminated by her public employer. Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
Majority	Rehnquist, joined by unanimous
Concurrence	Stevens
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amds. I, XIV

Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District, 439 U.S. 410 (1979), is a United States Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of public employees. The Court held unanimously in favor of a schoolteacher fired for her critical remarks in conversations with her principal. Justice William Rehnquist wrote the opinion, with a short concurrence by John Paul Stevens.

The petitioner, Bessie Givhan, had believed that various policies and practices of the newly integrated Western Line School District in Mississippi were meant to sustain school segregation. In private meetings with her new principal, she persistently complained about this. The principal in turn recommended the district not rehire her, citing those conversations as well as some other issues. She joined the ongoing desegregation lawsuit as an intervenor, alleging that her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to free speech and due process had been violated. The district court hearing the case agreed, but then the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision, holding that since she had not spoken publicly she was not entitled to constitutional protection, distinguishing her case from two other recent decisions in which the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of non-tenured teachers let go by their districts following critical statements by noting that in those cases, the criticism had been expressed in a public context.

Rehnquist's opinion rejected that distinction, calling the Fifth Circuit's reading too narrow. He further rejected its claim that Givhan had forced herself on an unwilling listener, since the principal had invited her in. Since the district had cited other, potentially permissible reasons for its action, the Court remanded the case to the district court to apply the Mt. Healthy test, from one of the other two cases involving teachers, and determine if the district had adequate reason to fire her other than the speech. Three years later, the lower court found that it did not, and ordered Givhan reinstated after a 12-year absence.^[1]

The Court has not had to significantly revisit the holding since then, and it has not been subject to much commentary or legal analysis. Four years later, in Connick v. Myers, its next case on the free speech rights of public employees, it began to limit Givhan and its predecessors by sketching out a test for whether the employee's speech was on a matter of public concern. In the early 21st century, its holding in Garcetti v. Ceballos, that speech made by employees pursuant to their job duties was not protected, appeared to some to complicate Givhan although the Court said it would not.^[2]