Education – Principal – First Amendment

Where a plaintiff filed a complaint while placed on paid leave from her position as a principal of an elementary school, a judge’s decision to dismiss the complaint should be affirmed despite the plaintiff’s claim that the defendants violated her freedoms of speech and association.

“For years, Shannon Blick successfully served as a well-liked principal of an elementary school in the Ann Arbor Public School District. In 2019, however, the school district placed her on paid leave to investigate her role in a custodian’s over-billing scheme. The leave lasted two years, and the school district then terminated Blick’s contract. Blick brought this suit while still on leave. She alleged that various officials violated her freedoms of speech and association under the First Amendment. She also brought race discrimination, due-process, and conspiracy claims against these officials. The district court rejected Blick’s First Amendment claims at the summary-judgment stage, and it dismissed the other claims on the pleadings.

“Blick renews all claims on appeal. Although we find some of the district court’s reasoning open to debate, Blick has not shown a reversible error. She argues that the school district violated the First Amendment by imposing a prior restraint that barred her from speaking during her leave and by taking harmful actions against her in retaliation for her speech. But her lawyers leave us in the dark about what she wanted to say (for purposes of her ‘prior restraint’ claim) or what she did say (for purposes of her ‘retaliation’ claim). Blick also relies on adverse actions (such as the termination of her contract) that occurred after she filed her operative complaint. But we cannot consider these later events because her lawyers did not file a supplemental pleading to bring them into the case. And Blick’s opening brief merely regurgitates much of her response to the school district’s motion to dismiss. By doing so, it ignores several grounds on which the district court relied to dismiss Blick’s claims. This ‘cut and-paste’ briefing strategy thus does not preserve Blick’s challenges to much of the district court’s motion-to-dismiss decision. We affirm.”

Blick v. Ann Arbor Pub. Sch. Dist.; MiLW 01-108141, 23 pages; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; Murphy, J., joined by McKeague, J., Larsen, J.; on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit; William G. Tishkoff for appellant; Anne-Marie V. Welch for appellee .

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