42 USC § 1983 action alleging violation of First Amendment free speech rights; Evaluating whether a public employee’s discharge violates the First Amendment; Rose v Stephens; Pickering v Board of Educ; Whether plaintiff’s speech involved a “matter of public concern”; Whether “strict scrutiny” applied

The court held that defendant-administrative judge Cross’s decision to terminate plaintiff-Gaines’s employment as a domestic-relations court (DR Court) magistrate based on Gaines’s criticism of the court and another magistrate did not violate her right to free speech where “Gaines held a confidential, policymaking as a DR Court magistrate ” and the campaign advertisements at issue addressed matters related to politics and policy. Gaines was a magistrate for defendant-county common pleas court when she declared her candidacy for an upcoming vacancy on the DR Court bench. Another DR Court magistrate (and court administrator), nonparty-P, also declared her candidacy. “Gaines disseminated campaign literature advocating for her election over” P’s. The ads offended Cross, and when Gaines returned to work after losing the primary, Cross “terminated her employment as a magistrate.” Gaines sued under § 1983, alleging that defendants violated her First Amendment free speech rights. The district court dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. On appeal, the court applied the Rose two-part analysis for determining when a public employee’s discharge violates the First Amendment. It noted that the government has “a significant interest in operating an efficient workplace” as well as in having “‘employees who will loyally implement the’” elected officials’ policies. In Rose, it “held that these interests justify ‘the discharge of a policymaking or confidential employee on the basis of speech . . . related to politics or policy.’” It found here that Gaines’s speech involved politics or policy. By emphasizing in one mailer she and P’s “respective work schedules and casting her opponent’s court-appointed duties as trivial, she necessarily undermined the policy decisions of the DR Court’s administrative judge: Cross.” As to the second mailer, by implicating P’s “competency to render domestic-relations decisions for the court, the mailer necessarily criticizes [P’s] competence to do so as a magistrate. And this intrinsically speaks to a DR-Court policy decision: retaining [P’s] current appointment.” The court rejected her “counterarguments to Rose’s applicability” and her request to apply strict scrutiny. Rose and other cases “explicitly contemplate the termination of public employees’ employment for content-based—even viewpoint-based—reasons. Because Gaines served in a confidential or policymaking position, the government need not satisfy strict scrutiny.” Affirmed.