Teacher First Amendment Retaliation Claims

When a teacher brings a First Amendment retaliation claim, courts rely on Mt. Healthy City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977), to allocate the burdens of proof. If the employer and the employee do not agree about why the teacher was discharged or some other adverse employment action taken, the court will need to examine the teacher's claim that the reason was based on the fact that the teacher engaged in protected speech and the school's conflicting claim that it was for other reasons. To sort through this dispute, the court will rely on Mt. Healthy to allocate the burdens of proof.

Under Mt. Healthy, the burden is initially on the teacher to show by a preponderance of the evidence:

(1) the teacher's speech was constitutionally protected (under Garcetti, Connick, and Pickering); and
(2) the teacher suffered an adverse employment action (discharge, non-renewal, demotion, etc.); and 
(3) a causal connection exists between the teacher's speech and the adverse employment action (the speech was a substantial factor or a motivating factor for the school's adverse employment action).

If the teacher carries the burden on the above three elements of a retaliation claim, the burden shifts to the school to show by a preponderance of the evidence:

(4) the school would have reached the same decision even in the absence of the protected speech.

If the school can make such a showing, it is permitted to take the adverse employment action against the teacher despite its bad motive for taking such action.