02-2479 Wainscott v. Henry

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“The fact that Wainscott wears the badge of a city employee cannot, in these circumstances, take his statement outside the First Amendment context. This is especially true given the content of his statement. It was a vague remark which revealed no privileged or sensitive information and was made in direct response to a situation evolving before him. David Bennet, the waste disposal employee, had not been given an exact location of where to deliver the dumpster. It appeared to Wainscott that even such a simple task as this could not be properly handled by the city, prompting this remark. Thus, his motivation was to express his displeasure with how the city was handling its day to day affairs. Wainscott, as a taxpayer, had obvious reasons to be concerned that the municipality was being run in an incompetent fashion. The underlying circumstances and the speaker’s motivation both reveal that the statement dealt with a matter of public concern in which Wainscott spoke more like a citizen than a disgruntled employee.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Lee, J., Bauer, J.