Meekins v. Thompson, et al

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_______________
m 00-31057
Summary Calendar
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BRENDA MEEKINS,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
VERSUS
ROBERT P. THOMPSON,
DIRECTOR, FAMILY INDEPENDENCE WORK PROGRAM;
LAURA PEASE,
DIRECTOR, FAMILY INDEPENDENCE WORK PROGRAM;
LAURA BECK,
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, FAMILY INDEPENDENCE WORK PROGRAM,
Defendants-Appellants.
_________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
(98-CV-2047-J)
_________________________
April 4, 2001
Before SMITH, BENAVIDES,
and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge:*
Brenda Meekins sued, among others,
* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has
(continued...)
*(...continued)
determined that this opinion should not be
published and is not precedent except under the
limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R.
47.5.4.

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2
Robert P. Thompson, Laura Pease, and Laura
Beck in their individual and official capacities
under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and 1985 for
alleged civil rights violations. Asserting qual-
ified immunity as a defense, those three
defendants appeal the denial of their motion to
dismiss for failure to state a claim. Because
the district court correctly found Meekins’s
allegations sufficient to survive the motion to
dismiss, we dismiss the appeal for want of
jurisdiction.
I.
Meekins was employed as a Family Security
Program Specialist II in the Family
Independence Work Program (“FIND”) of the
Louisiana Department of Social Services. Her
employment was terminated, so she sued,
complaining that her termination was
retaliatory, in violation of the First Amend-
ment.
Meekins’s original complaint sought in-
junctive and monetary relief, naming appellants
and other officials in their official capacities
only. The defendants, claiming qualified
immunity, filed a motion seeking either
dismissal or judgment on the pleadings, or
alternatively, a more definite statement of the
claims. In response, and pursuant to Schultea
v. Wood, 47 F.3d 1427 (5th Cir. 1995) (en
banc), the district court ordered Meekins to
submit a reply under FED. R. CIV. P. 7(a)
addressing qualified immunity.1 The court
found Meekins’s complaint, augmented by her
rule 7(a) reply, sufficient to assert a cause of
action under §§ 1981 and 1983 and denied the
motion to dismiss.
Meekins then filed a motion to amend her
complaint to assert claims against defendants
in their individual capacities, which a
magistrate denied, whereupon Meekins filed a
separate action in the district court, asserting
the individual capacity claims. The court
consolidated the actions and dismissed the
second action without prejudice.
Before consolidation, the defendants
perfected an interlocutory appeal to this court;
we dismissed the monetary claims on the
ground of sovereign immunity, leaving intact
the claims for injunctive relief. Meekins v.
Foster, No. 99-30583, at 6-7 (5th Cir. April 3,
2000) (unpublished). We declined, however,
to rule on the individual capacity claims, be-
cause they had not been consolidated with the
original action until after the defendants had
filed their notice of appeal. Id. at 6.
On remand and after consolidation,
defendants moved for dismissal of the
individual capacity claims, and the court
dismissed the claims against all defendants
except appellants, with respect to whom the
1 Schultea established the use of a rule 7(a)
reply to resolve the inherent conflict between the
Federal Rules’ notice pleading procedures and the
substantive right of qua lified immunity, which
requires that a plaintiff allege with particularity
those facts necessary to overcome a qualified im-
munity defense:
(continued...)
1(...continued)
When a public official pleads the af-
firmative defense of qualified immunity in
his answer, the district court may, on the
official’s motion or on its own, require the
plaintiff to reply to that defense in detail.
By definition, the reply must be tailored to
the assertion of qualified immunity and
fairly engage its allegations.
Shultea, 47 F.3d at 1433.

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3
court denied the motion to dismiss, reasoning
that
after a fair reading of the Complaint as a
whole and plaintiff’s Schultea reply,
plaintiff has sufficiently alleged facts to
state a claim for violation of her civil
rights. She alleges that she was fired be-
cause she spoke out about welfare and
welfare reform, and was critical of the
way the state handled welfare reform.
II.
Although the denial of a motion to dismiss
is normally not appealable, we review de novo
the denial of a motion to dismiss on qualified
immunity grounds; such a denial is considered
an appealable collateral order when rendered
on an issue of law. Shipp v. McMahon, 234
F.3d 907, 910 (5th Cir. 2000), petition for
cert. filed (U.S. Mar 5, 2001) (No. 00-1392).
We do not have jurisdiction in this posture to
review the evidentiary sufficiency of the alle-
gations, however. Steadman v. Tex. Rangers,
179 F.3d 360, 365 (5th Cir. 1999) (stating that
we have jurisdiction to review only “legal” is-
sues under the collateral order doctrine and
noting that “[a]n order is not ‘legal’ where it
resolves a fact-related dispute of ‘evidence
sufficiency.’”), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1115
(2000).
A motion to dismiss under rule 12(b)(6) “is
viewed with disfavor and is rarely granted.”
Shipp, 234 F.3d at 910 (quoting Kaiser
Aluminum & Chem. Sales v. Avondale
Shipyards, 677 F.2d 1045, 1050 (5th Cir.
1986)). Surviving a motion to dismiss is
generally not a high hurdle for a plaintiff: We
liberally construe the complaint in favor of the
plaintiff, and we take as true all facts in the
complaint; a motion to dismiss should not be
granted “unless it appears beyond doubt that
the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in
support of his claim which would entitle him to
relief.” Anderson v. Pasadena Indep. Sch.
Dist., 184 F.3d 439, 443 (5th Cir. 1999)
(quoting Blackburn v. City of Marshall, 42
F.3d 925, 931 (5th Cir. 1995)).
With respect to claims against which
qualified immunity can be a defense, however,
we require a heightened standard of pleading,
whereby the plaintiff must allege specific
conduct giving rise to a constitutional
violation. Id. Such allegation “must be
pleaded with factual detail and particularity,
not mere conclusionary allegations.” Jackson
v. Widnall, 99 F.3d 710, 715-16 (5th Cir.
1996) (quotation marks omitted). Specifically,
“the plaintiff must identify defendants who
were either personally involved in the
constitutional violation or whose acts are
causally connected to the constitutional
violation alleged.” Woods v. Edwards, 51
F.3d 577, 583 (5th Cir. 1995). In addition, the
plaintiff must allege a violation of a “clearly
established constitutional right.” Shipp, 234
F.3d at 911.2
A plaintiff who states a First Amendment
claim sufficiently alleges the violation of a
clearly established right. Kennedy, 224 F.3d at
377. The plaintiff must establish that the
asserted protected speech addressed a matter
of public concern; if he does so, “the court
2 If a plaintiff alleges facts sufficient to show
that the defendants violated a clearly established
right, the court must inquire “whether the
defendants’ conduct was objectively reasonable in
light of ‘clearly established’ law at the time of the
alleged violation.” Kennedy v. Tangipahoa Parish
Library Bd. of Control, 224 F.3d 359, 377 (5th
Cir. 2000). Appellants, however, contend only that
Meekins has failed to show that they violated a
clearly established right, so the second stage of the
inquiry is not before us.

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4
must strike ‘a balance between the interests of
the [employee], as a citizen, in commenting
upon matters of public concern [against] the
interest of the State, as an employer, in
promoting the efficiency of the public services
it performs through its employees.’” Click v.
Copeland, 970 F.2d 106, 111 (5th Cir. 1992)
(quoting Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S.
563, 568 (1968)).
Appellants contend that they fired Meekins
for insubordination and inappropriate contact
with Southern University of New Orleans
(“SUNO”) and other potential contractors un-
der the FIND program. Meekins disagrees
with the characterization of her contact with
SUNO, contending that her relationship with
it constituted protected activity under the First
Amendment, because she participated “in pub-
lic speech on issues of welfare reform and
welfare related matters at [SUNO] . . . .”
Moreover, Meekins contends in her complaint,
the true reason for her dismissal was her
refusal to participate inSSand, more
importantly, disclosure ofSSthe misconduct of
Appellants, the managers of the FIND
program: “Thompson, Pease, and Beck have
conspired to unlawfully terminated [sic] plain-
tiff from her position because she exercise [sic]
rights protected by the First Amendment to the
United States Constitution and because she
has been a whistleblower and has complained
of illegal practices of the Department’s Office
of Family Support Orleans Region.”
Appellants argue that Meekins’s claims al-
lege facts insufficient to overcome the
qualified immunity defense. Specifically, they
argue, Meekins has shown neither that she en-
gaged in a protected activity nor that her in-
terest in pursuing that activity outweighs the
government’s interest, as required by Picker-
ing. Meekins, however, has alleged, inter
alia, that she was fired in retaliation for
revealing the misconduct of the officials in the
FIND program.3 In her rule 7(a) reply, she
sets forth many specific allegations of
misconduct and alleged attempts to report that
misconduct to higher officials, to buttress her
claim of whistleblower retaliation.
A public employee has “a clearly
established right to speak on matters of public
concern, on matters of public safety, and on
matters of official misconduct.” Kennedy, 224
F.3d at 376 (citations omitted) (compiling
cases). Likewise, allegations of corruption, if
true, “are matters of public concern and
outweigh the government’s interest in efficien-
cy.” Breaux v. City of Garland, 205 F.3d 150,
157 n.10 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 121 S. Ct. 52
(2000).
Although Breaux focused on the objective
truth of the plaintiff’s allegations in finding
that they were matters of public concern, that
case was decided after a jury trial. In the
context of a motion to dismiss, we must accept
as true Meekins’s allegations of misconduct.
Thus, her claims not only allege speech on a
matter of public concern; they also, at least for
purposes of the motion to dismiss, establish by
their nature that Meekins’s interest outweighs
the government’s. Meekins also has alleged
that all three appellants were intimately
involved both in the purported misconduct and
in her allegedly improper termination, meeting
the requirement that the named defendants be
somehow causally connected to the alleged
constitutional violation.
3 We need not address whether Meekins’s other
alleged protected speechSSher discussions of
welfare reform at SUNOSSrelated to a matter of
public concern, because we find that her allegations
of whistleblower retaliation are sufficient.

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Meekins therefore alleges sufficient facts to
survive the motion to dismiss. On remand, the
district court may find that Meekins’s al-
legations of misconduct and retaliation have no
evidentiary support; we have no jurisdiction,
however, to address that issue now. We may
reverse the order only if Meekins did not
allege facts that, if true, would defeat a
qualified immunity defense. She has done so,
and we therefore are without jurisdiction to
entertain this appeal.
DISMISSED.

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