Speaking your mind to a police officer during a traffic stop is not free speech, according to the Tenth Circuit US Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel ruled Thursday that Colorado Springs, Colorado Police Officer Duaine Peters did nothing wrong in having Miriam Leverington fired from her job as a nurse at Memorial Health System for talking back after he wrote her a speeding citation.
Peters had been running a speed trap on an exit from Interstate 25 on December, 17, 2008. He pulled over Leverington and the interaction quickly became “less than cordial.” After being handed her ticket, Leverington told Peters that she hoped she never had him as a patient.
“I hope not too, because maybe I’ll call your supervisor and tell her you threatened me,” Peters fired back.
Leverington said her comments were not a threat, but after Peters called the human resources staff at the hospital Leverington’s employment was immediately terminated “because she had threatened a police officer.” Leverington sued on the grounds that Peters and the hospital had violated her right to free speech. Leverington argued that her words were meant to express the thought that Peters was being rude and she never wanted to interact with him ever again.
The appellate judges did not believe that Leverington, as a public employee, had free speech rights that applied in this situation. Only statements expressing a matter of “public concern” are protected under the court’s precedents.
“Her statement on its face indicated that her personal animus toward Peters could impact any possible future interaction with him that she might have as a nurse at Memorial,” Senior Judge David M. Ebel wrote. “This is precisely the kind of speech that that public-concern requirement is designed to ‘weed out.'”
The court proceeded to dismiss the complaint against Peters on the ground that Leverington’s statements were not constitutionally protected speech, which cleared Peters of wrongdoing. As a police officer, Peters enjoys qualified immunity as long as he is not engaging in illegal activity or violating constitutional rights.
“Here, even drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of Ms. Leverington, it is debatable whether a reasonable officer in Peters’s position would have considered her statement to be a threat,” Ebel wrote. “Accordingly, Ms. Leverington’s free-speech rights in this context were not clearly established, and Peters is entitled to qualified immunity on this basis.”
A copy of the decision is available in a 75k PDF file at the source link below.
Source: 
Leverington v. Colorado Springs (US Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, 5/8/2011)
[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]
I came into this story all ready to rage against the machine here in the comments but damn, that’s a pretty nasty thing to say. Definitely over the line. That said the cop is still kind of an asshole for doing that.
My sentiments exactly.
I can see this one going to the Supreme Court. Freedom of Speech isn’t the First Amendment by accident. While what she said was ill advised to say the least, ill advised speech is just as protected as any other form of speech.
The First Amendment only protects people from the government. Your employer can react how they choose even to ill-advised speech.
Was she on the road to termination for previous conduct? From the description above it sounds like the woman had a temper. If she had made a similar comment to a layperson and that layperson reported it, would it be grounds for summary dismissal? Or was it because the complaint came from a police officer, who is a representative of the government? Did the officer file a complaint or just call the woman’s boss? The question is more about this concept of “qualified immunity” than the ill-advised comments by this woman. Does “qualified immunity” allow any government official to basically drop a dime on someone who was rude to them? Shouldn’t the public be protected from such reprisals?
Jimal –
I was kind of thinking the same thing regarding that she might have already been on thin ice at work. At least to me, it seems that if everything had been good with her employer, the exchange would have went along the lines of ‘Hey, did you say this to a cop that pulled you over?’ ‘Yes, I was upset’ ‘OK, he called, be careful about what you say in the future’ and it would have been over with. If instead the hospital was already looking for a way to get rid of her, being able to list ‘threatened a police officer’ on the termination forms probably makes for an easier case if they needed to contest unemployment benefits.
She was probably a fairly crummy nurse that they were looking for an excuse to fire anyways. It’s fairly unlikely for people to just up and fire a vital and trustworthy employee over a vague statement like that. I’m guessing she wasn’t very cordial at work either.
First Amendment places limits on the government, specifically Congress. The hospital is not the government. The cop didn’t get her fired. He had no such power. The hospital fired her.
With regard to the comment that “the hospital is not the government” and therefore not subject to the 1st Amendment, in this case, it was a municipal hospital and therefore subject to the 1st Amendment.
All around, though, this case is chock full of special circumstances that make it far less interesting to the general public than it seemed at first.
What we have here is a nurse who’s telling someone that the care her patients receive may depend on whether they piss her off or not. As far as I’m concerned, that’s strike one through three. Adios and good riddance.
Also, given that the Supreme Court has NEVER held that the First Amendment protects threatening speech, I don’t think it would have protected this nurse’s little veiled threat either.
This lady’s argument is bogus either way.
Agreed with FreedMike. Threats aren’t free speach.
What’s the definition of toady?
I’m not a lawyer, but I do disagree based on my understanding of the law. The thing is that the case hinges on what a reasonable person (by the Supreme Court’s definition) defines as a threat. I think it’s entirely reasonable not to be threatened by a nurse basically saying she doesn’t want the police officer at her place of business. The officer may feel threatened by this, but if so, he was well with in his authority to arrest her.
I’m not saying he did anything intrinsically wrong by calling the hospital from a criminal standpoint, though if it really was a threat, he was committing two felonies by failing to arrest her: aiding and abetting, and obstruction of justice. Failure to arrest may in his jurisdiction also be a crime, or at least a gross violation of his department’s procedure. Personally, unless he can explain why he felt threatened but did NOT arrest her, I believe he committed a civil violation of the First Amendment by calling the hospital in what seems like an explicit effort to get her fired. This is EXACTLY the kind of business that the First Amendment is designed to prevent. The chain of law as I understand it goes like this: since Congress is not permitted to abridge free speech, and since federal law supersedes state, county, and municipal law on matters specifically enumerated in the Constitution, the cop can’t lobby your employer to take your job away because he doesn’t like what you’ve said.
The hospital technically did nothing civilly wrong unless she had a contract that did not allow it to fire her for this particular type of altercation.
All that said, the nurse is not blameless. If I worked in a burger joint, I’d still never tell a cop I wouldn’t want him as a customer, regardless of how douche-y the cop may or may not have been (his actual conduct pre-phone call was not clear from the context of the news). I’d tell the cop “Yes, sir (or ma’am),” “No sir (or ma’am),” “I understand, sir (etc.),” “No excuse, sir (etc.),” and “Am I free to go, sir (etc.)?”
Anything else tends to lead to bad things happening, fair or otherwise.
If she worked for me, I would NOT want her saying that sort of thing. It could open the hospital up to a lawsuit.
People need to think before they speak. Imagine if the situation were reversed and the cop was a patient and said “I hope I never get an emergency call to your house”.
You hit the nail on the head. Her employer, the hospital, has every right to expect a high level of professionalism from her, both on the job and off. A remark of this kind fails to meet the standard. If she had made the same remark to a clerk in a store and it came back to the hospital as a complaint, the hospital would still be within its rights to fire her and probably would have.
Furthermore, naming Peters in her suit is a legal defect. He didn’t fire her, the hospital did. He simply lodged a complaint and for this she has no legal recourse.
The First Amendment guarantees your right to free speech, not to holding a job. Move along people, there’s nothing to see here.
I think we are all becoming far too comfortable with the continued erosion of our privacy. Every week you hear about someone getting fired because of words or actions that took place out of the workplace. Between the 24/7 news cycle, social networking sites like facebook extending their tendrils into all facets of our lives, and surveillance cameras popping up everywhere I think a lot of people have forgotten that there should be a clear dividing line between our personal lives and our workplace.
If the police officer thought he had enough to arrest her for threatening an officer, he should have done so, and in which case a report could have been made to her employer, and if she were found guilty, being fired would have been reasonable. Instead, the officer decided to go for petty vengeance and called her boss because his feelings were hurt.
@NulloModo –
“Every week you hear about someone getting fired because of words or actions that took place out of the workplace.”
If the words have no impact on the workplace, then any employer who would take action against such an employee would not be doing the right thing.
But in this case, we have a nurse telling someone that the care she gives patients at her hospital might just depend on whether they piss her off or not…sorry, that’s strike one, two and three.
How is it that someone has a “privacy interest” in a conversation with a stranger, who, in this case happened to be a cop? By definition, such a conversation is not private.
Moreover, she is the one who dragged her job into the conversation. If she had never identified her employer and said something like, “I hope you have a blow-out when you’re chasing someone in your cop car” and the hospital fired her for that, that would be a much different case.
Although not one that implicates the First Amendment.
It’s the hospital’s right to terminate Leverington for any reason. Her freedom of speech only may have been infringed had Peters arrested her for her (in my view, non-threatening) comments.
That said, if you value your continued health, do not commit contempt of cop: they encounter enough murderous low-lives in routine traffic speed traps. If you have ever driven 10+ over, you qualify as one of these baby-killers, no question. Just bite your lip, take a deep breath and count to ten.
Carzzi, I don’t know if you intended sarcasm or not but you did make a very good point. I’ve run across police who act like they have stopped a major crime wave if they pull over someone going 10 miles over the limit.
I live in a small town and have been around a lot of police and most of them without fail were bullies in school and like the power of the badge. Either that or they were picked on and became a cop to get revenge on everyone who they think didn’t like them. There is the other catagory, using the badge to meet chicks to, but that by itself is the least common.
There are cops who are bullies, true. However, it’s not all of them, and we don’t know for sure that Peters was in this case.
You’re right, I’m a small town resident and here the chief himself is a bully and thug so he hires guys like him. Metropolitan area police are almost uniformly professional and courteous in my experience. But in small towns, the police take after their bosses.
This is a pretty narrow case that only really has to do with public employees and whether she was speaking on behalf of her employer in connection with her duties. The law is pretty amusing on this (a police officer selling sex tapes of himself) but it seems like the court got this one right. It sounds draconian at first glance, but it makes sense in that you don’t want cops to be able to tell people “If you get beat up, I’ll look the other way”, which is essentially what the court equated it to.
All seems ridiculous to me. Threat? It’s just blowing off steam. Geez, this country gets more and more unbelieveable every day.
John
“…a time to speak, a time to keep silent”
Free speech does not extend to lack of civility. Just because personal integrity doesn’t have much value with too many people nowadays, that’s no excuse. She was speeding. She got caught. She received a ticket. Be more mindful in the future. Move on, okay, and don’t be so wrapped up in yourself!
Hope that was worth it to her.
Yes, it does. It’s not ‘Freedom of Civil Speech’. If it’s protected speech, it’s protected whether it’s friendly or vile or angry or whatever.
Once again, the First Amendment provides protection from the government on free speech. Private sector employers, on the other hand, can restrict free speech. I’ve worked at companies in the past that specifically prohibited talking politics and religion.
This doesn’t even come close to an issue of free speech or wrongful termination. Barring a CBA or other employment contract, there is no law that says her employer cannot fire her for pretty much anything she says, protected or otherwise. “People who talk back to cops” are not a protected class.
Really? This woman is a nurse, and implied that the care she might give patients might vary if they do something to piss her off. That’s beyond unethical.
What if YOU piss her off and end up in her care?
I agree with the the hospital in this case 101%.
FreedMike, Ben Miner is on your side. You seem to be writing as though he disagrees with you.
So she “threatened a police officer”? So effing what, he “inconvenienced a nurse”. It’s not good when your job implies special protection, and it is also unconstitutional. But that ship set sail a long time ago.
http://www.judicialview.com/Court-Cases/Civil-Rights/Leverington-v-City-of-Colorado-Springs/12/29657
Her wording that “she hoped she never had him as a patient”, to me, implies that she hoped she never had to deal with that cop again. If she said that he had better hope she never had him as a patient, I’d agree that it was a threat. The comments that followed, with him threatening to call her superior and her saying that she wasn’t threatening him make me think that it was not, in fact, a threat.
I liken it to when my neighbor’s dog got loose and bit me while I was jogging one day. My comments, when telling my wife of the incident, were, “I hope that dog never gets loose again.” That is not a threat. If I’d said that the dog better hope it never gets loose again, it would be a different story. Taht would imply that I’d actively be looking to harm the dog when it got loose.
I think it is somewhat of a stretch to think that a nurse could actually threaten in this case. 1) I find it very unlikely she’d remember the name or be able to identify the policeman. 2) What are the odds she would ever actually care for this guy?
Exactly.
The only person who made a threat there was the cop.
Just another case to make a judge (and the whole system) look like idiots (and if you’re not in the government or rich — the constitution protections don’t seem to apply to you anymore anyway).
The woman was just blowing off steam.
It seems to me the cop is more concerned with ruining peoples lives than doing his job.
Women never forget. In case you don’t believe me, the link below tells the story of a Charlotte NC nurse who was attending to her former high school rival and more than likely killed her with anesthesia. Apparently the victim had “stolen” the nurse’s boyfriend back in high school 30 years ago, and when the victim was in recovery from plastic surgery the nurse got her revenge. Fascinating story.
http://cedarposts.blogspot.com/2011/05/looney-tunes-nurse-gets-away-with.html
If you don’t think women remember every slight, you have not been married.
Uhh, this was a cop this woman presumably met once. They didn’t spend 4 years of high school together. Huge difference.
I’m actually married to a nurse. You won’t believe what jerk patients will do to her. I imagine her comment related to him being an even bigger asshole when he’s sick in a hospital bed.
+1.
I would take her statement as a “I hope I don’t have to deal with you again- especially not at my job” not a threatening “If you ever end up in the hospital you’ll be sorry.”
I think she lost her job over semantics. If she was my employee, I wouldn’t have fired her just based on this one thing.
In recent years I have read of several cases where people were fired for things they posted on Facebook. This nurse appears to have made a similar error, though in a different context.
It is unwise to say things which reflect poorly on your employer or on your ability to do your job. If what you say is unnecessary or brings your judgement into question, you may find yourself out of a job. Odds are your boss values his reputation more than he values your services.
A cop can get me fired?
WTF is happening in this country, anyway?
Cops are civil servants, not gestapos.
I hope for a nice long lawsuit that costs this city dearly.
Police do not and should not have this ‘power’.
“..don’t fire me, bro!”
This didn’t necessarily happen because it was a cop. It may have happened because she said something involving her employer that someone could take as a threat.
If she had said the same thing to a waitress who gave her bad service, she could be in the same type of trouble. Even if she didn’t intend to threaten, it certainly could have been taken that way and put her employer in a bad light.
Any person could potentially get someone fired because of something that was said.
I remember a few years ago being stopped by a Washington State Patrol officer who turned out to be a snide little asshole. So I not only got the ticket but had to put up with his attitude. I bit my tongue….
A wise choice, and one I wish I had made more often. ;)
Maybe the hospital had been trying to get rid of her anyways and this was the way out they were looking for. Even if the cop was being jerk, completely inappropriate way to let him know that and very unprofessional.
Obey.
Meet the norm or be cast aside.
And I believe there are several ways the nurse’s words could be interpreted.
Cop was, in my opinion, a weenie.
A member of the cult of “victimhood.”
And I remain convinced that USA society is perverted, sick, disgusting, vile and I wish I was financially able to escape it in some manner or form.
Best?
Ability to escape all cultures/societies/etc. and exist in a near-hermit-like manner.
Get out of my compound and do not enter my regime.
There is a five minute video on the web about why you should never talk to the police. You have nothing to gain. You can just add this as a postscript.
The most brilliant legally-educated minds back up your assertion.
However, the vast majority of USA citizens have been brainwashed/indoctrinated to, at the least, talk at least initially about matters that… “just can NOT harm me.”
WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The truly knowledgeable and those with self-assurance (and often higher up the socio-economic hierarchy) will remain TOTALLY mute when involved with law enforcement in ANY way manner or form.
VERY VERY VERY few… a MINUTE almost zero percentage of commoners can or will remain MUTE.
It IS difficult.
But, sadly, in a worst case scenario, a mere ONE word could conceivably lead to your false prosecution, false incarceration…..and, even….
well, the world of conjecture is wide and proof is difficult to ascertain.
Also, NEVER EVER talk within jail.
Also hard to do. Even if one only mumbles about the most innocuous subjects/topics.
There IS, too often, a survival factor within a jail/prison etc.
I suppose one must use their best judgment.
Perhaps the environment demands minimal talk but, still, NEVER discuss your case.
Best route is sit silent. Avoiding looking at others.
FROWN.
Anger seething within.
Say nothing.
Let others believe you are a nut case ready to erupt Krakatoa-like.
If bothered, threatened… decide if it is best to erupt!!!!
Best to do that as a last resort and only if you believe survival requires it.
And if so… make every shot a “kill shot.”
Odds are the above events are unlikely to occur but….it DOES happen….
even to decent, law-abiding moral folks.
Heed, you mere commoners.
Reality is often what your intense indoctrination declaring otherwise can be deadly to you.
Keep your mouth SHUT!!!!!!!!!!!
The legal system, in general, as is the many USA governments and bureaucracies…
from my decades of “research” and life experience….
your enemy.
Exceptions exist but seldom is anything in life an absolute.
This free information is provided by your shanty-dwelling likely future dumpster dining reject of society.
As I have rejected USA society in so many ways.
The best advice during a traffic stop or any interaction with the police – answer their questions but don’t volunteer any more information than you need to and always be polite and cooperative.
Even if the officer is being rude, it’s best just to deal with him/her politely then complain to a supervisor at a later time.
Complaining to a supervisor does no good at all, supervisors hire the cops they want and that are like them. In a small town a bully chief hires bully police, that’s just the way it works.
+1
I had a similar situation happen to me when I was a young patrol officer. I stopped to take my meal break at a Waffle House. I was minding my own business when I overheard one of the cooks talking loudly and profanely about how much he hated cops. I let it go. He continued to get louder and more obnoxious. I called my waitress over, got my check, and asked her what her name and what the jagoff’s name was. She told me, I left her a big tip and went back to work.
The next morning I called the resturant and spoke to the manager. I told him what had happened, gave him both my waitress’s name and the jagoff’s name, and asked him what Waffle House’s corporate response would have been if they had an employee loudly and profanely shooting their mouths off about blacks or jews where all the other customers could hear.
Needless to say the jagoff was fired. As he should have been.
Now, what did I not do? I didn’t confront him and lose my cool. I didn’t go out to my car, run him, find out how many warrants he had outstanding or what his criminal history was and then come back in and charge him. i didn’t wait around the corner for him to get off and then pull him over for a bunch of bogus traffic offenses. I did what any other customer in this country has every right to do: I complained to his boss and he suffered the consequences for being a jackass.
Same situation here. If the nurse had gotten into a conflict with a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker and said the same thing those people would have had every right to make a complaint to her superiors. Why wouldn’t the cop?
If you were a metermaid and I was a cook ranting profanely about guys in your line of work, would you be as hurt? Would you still try to get me fired? Would your metermaid position have as much weight as a cop’s? Didn’t you act just because you knew your position as a cop has more weight and doesn’t that make you a bully? Should you get a ‘metal’ because you avoided unwarranted direct contact and acted passive-aggressively instead?
Not the same situation at all. There was absolutely no interaction between you and the cook. The cook’s actions were unprovoked and unwarranted and, frankly, way, way, way worse than the situation with the nurse and the cop. Plus, you don’t know what the cop could have said or did to make the nurse say that she hoped she didn’t have him as a patient.
Oh, the irony: Of the nurses who work with my partner, at least half are married to…you guessed it, police officers!
However, it’s easy to see why she was fired. The healthcare industry – and hospitals in particular – strive to present this romanticized image of being staffed with nothing but selfless professionals, who will go to any length to provide care for the sick and injured. This nurse took a metaphorical piss on the “Florence Nightingale” image.
In a related rant, speed traps are just that… traps. I pass them on a regular basis going to and from work. They’re just a money maker and it’s not for our safety when they cause backups and endanger us all for pulling some guy over for going 11 to 15 mph over like 90% of the rest of the traffic is. Not the LEOs fault I’ll admit, but it’s not something I’d feel great about doing (other then it’s probably better then dealing with real criminals).
Nice. So the cop felt “threatened.” Riiight. I’m surprised that no one has observed that the cop’s response was itself a threat, and one which he carried out. Why is his threat ok, but hers is not?
Christ, people, she was angry. People say stupid things that they’d never do when they’re angry. One would expect a cop, of all people, would be well aware of this. When a customer hoses up a million-dollar deal (which happens in my line of work every month or two), my business partner reflexively rants and raves and threatens to hop on a plane and go throat-punch somebody, or chop off their balls, or any number of other popular ways to vent. Do I rush to the phone and call the FBI? Of course not, because I’m not some pansy-ass hand-wringer who thinks we should all be polite little taxpaying robots, lined up neatly in rows and doing as we’re told. But incredibly, I’m starting to believe there are people who might do exactly this.
He was an asshole, she was a bitch, that should have been the end of it. But police have been almost literally sanctified along with the rest of the machinery of state, and he knew there would be no repercussions if he played out the “mine is bigger” game.
He is laughing about the outcome. Her life is probably ruined.
And most of you seem to think this is somehow an equitable conclusion.
Appalling.
+1 – although I would say the police are more sanctified than most public sector workers. The media is quite happy to run down teachers etc.