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[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 19-10761
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 9:18-cv-80672-DMM
BRIDGETTE BOTT,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
RIC L. BRADSHAW,
in his official capacity as Sheriff of Palm Beach County,
Defendant-Appellee.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
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(October 23, 2019)
Before TJOFLAT, WILLIAM PRYOR and JORDAN, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
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Bridgette Bott, a deputy in the Sheriff’s Office of Palm Beach County,
appeals the summary judgment against her amended complaint that the Sheriff, Ric
L. Bradshaw, disciplined her in retaliation for testifying against fellow officers in
violation of the Florida Whistleblower Act, Fla. Stat. § 112.3187(2), and for
engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The
district court ruled that Bott’s claim of retaliation under the Whistleblower Act
failed for want of causation because her disciplinarians were unaware of her
statements against other officers. The district court also ruled that Bott’s statements
that an officer damaged a convict’s ankle monitor and other officers assisted in a
cover up were made in the ordinary course of her duties and not protected by the
First Amendment. We affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
In our review of the summary judgment against Bott’s amended complaint,
we must construe the evidence in the light most favorable to her. See Hornsby-
Culpepper v. Ware,
906 F.3d 1302, 1311 (11th Cir. 2018). On July 11, 2012, the
Sheriff’s Office dispatched Bott to investigate an attempted suicide. Dispatch told
Bott that a woman “adv[ised] her boyfriend took a lot of antidepressants last night
and is now swinging the swifter at [her] because she wont tell him where his s-o
gun is.” Bott spoke with the couple briefly and did not inquire about the
boyfriend’s medication or his mental health. Bott classified the incident as a
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domestic dispute and drove home to wait for her shift to end at 6:30 a.m. At 6:22
a.m., the woman reported that her boyfriend had shot himself.
Sergeant William Brannin investigated the incident and concluded on
October 4, 2012, that Bott had been willfully negligent in her official duties. The
sergeant was troubled that Bott was “reticent and unapologetic” during her
interview. He reported that Bott said that she spent four minutes with the couple,
she considered normal the boyfriend’s demands for his gun, she found it
unnecessary to conduct a pill count, she thought her actions were “appropriate,”
and her only regret was failing to file a report. Captain Prieschl immediately
concurred in Sergeant Brannin’s conclusion that Bott had been willfully negligent.
On October 15, 2012, the Sheriff also concurred in that conclusion.
Meanwhile, on October 10, 2012, Bott was working overtime on a security
detail at John Goodman’s home while he was on bond pending the outcome of his
direct appeal of his criminal convictions. Goodman’s ankle monitor activated, and
the first officer to respond, Bott, observed that the device was “coming apart at the
seam where the box was attached at the strap.” Other officers arrested Goodman
for tampering with his monitor and transported him to jail to await a detention
hearing. Bott filed a report and made a statement to Detective Stephen Ultsh about
the incident.
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On October 12, 2012, Bott appeared for Goodman’s detention hearing. An
assistant state attorney dismissed Bott from the courtroom as an unnecessary
witness. Bott quarreled with the state attorney, but Bott eventually left the
courthouse without testifying. At the recommendation of Captain Michael Wallace,
a sergeant removed Bott from Goodman’s security detail.
On November 2, 2012, Captain Prieschl recommended that Bott be
disciplined for her “inexcusable” response to the emergency call and her
“disturbing and problematic” assessment of her conduct by suspending her for 40
hours without pay. On November 12, 2012, the Sheriff approved the
recommendation.
On November 7 and 8, 2012, Goodman’s defense attorneys deposed Bott,
and on December 18, 2012, she testified at Goodman’s bond revocation hearing.
The Sheriff’s Office compensated Bott for the working hours she spent at the
proceedings. During her deposition, Bott stated that it was “pretty common” for
her to testify, that she had testified “[a]t least 20 times” about her observations as a
deputy sheriff and the reports she prepared, and that providing testimony was an
essential job responsibility.
On December 21, 2012, Bott and her counsel attended a pre-disciplinary
hearing in which Captain Prieschl sustained the recommendation to suspend her
without pay. On January 14, 2013, the Sheriff approved Bott’s suspension.
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On May 17, 2013, Bott’s attorney sent the Sheriff a letter to “make [him]
aware of the facts . . . obviously not known to [him]” about Bott’s involvement in
the Goodman case and her removal from his service detail. The attorney described
Bott’s suspension as “retribution for her truthful testimony.” Bott also appealed to
the Hearing Review Board, but she withdrew her appeal.
Bott filed a complaint in a Florida court that the Sheriff violated the Florida
Whistleblower Act by disciplining her in retaliation for testifying that fellow
officers conspired to frame Goodman for tampering with his ankle monitor and for
testifying on Goodman’s behalf. See Fla. Stat. § 112.3187. Bott alleged that she
testified that Goodman told her his ankle monitor was making noise while he
showered, that she assumed the monitor malfunctioned, that another officer
damaged the device and blamed Goodman, and that other officers fabricated
evidence and testified against Goodman. For her testimony, Bott alleged, she was
disciplined by being removed from the Goodman detail and by being suspended
from work without pay for 40 hours.
The Sheriff moved for summary judgment on the ground that Bott’s
complaint was untimely. The Florida court granted the motion in part and denied it
in part. The state court entered summary judgment against Bott’s claim of
retaliation based on her removal from the Goodman detail because she filed her
civil action more than 180 days after the personnel action. See Fla. Stat.
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§ 112.3187(8). The state court denied summary judgment to the Sheriff on Bott’s
claim of retaliation based on her suspension on the ground that a material factual
dispute existed about when the suspension became final.
After Bott filed an amended complaint that included a new claim of
retaliation for speech protected by the First Amendment, see 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the
Sheriff removed Bott’s action to the district court, see 28 U.S.C. § 1331. On
motion of the Sheriff, the district court struck Bott’s allegation of retaliation for
being removed from the Goodman detail in violation of the Whistleblower Act as
untimely. And the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Sheriff.
The district court ruled that Bott “failed to establish the causation element of her
prima facie case under the [Whistleblower Act]” because no “dispute of fact
existed as to whether the decision-makers involved in approving her suspension
were aware of [her] protected conduct.” The district court also ruled that Bott’s
claim under the First Amendment failed because her testimony in Goodman’s bond
revocation proceedings was “an ordinary part of [her] employment” and was given
“as a police officer personally involved in a dispute involving a specific instance of
supervision.”
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review de novo a summary judgment.
Hornsby-Culpepper, 906 F.3d at
1311. Summary judgment is appropriate when “there is no genuine dispute as to
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any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.
R. Civ. P. 56(a).
III. DISCUSSION
Bott makes two arguments for reversal. First, Bott argues that she
established a prima facie case of retaliation in violation of the Whistleblower Act.
Second, Bott argues that her testimony in favor of Goodman is protected speech.
The district court did not err by entering summary judgment in favor of the
Sheriff and against Bott’s complaint of retaliation under the Whistleblower Act.
Bott failed to establish a prima facie case of retaliation because her testimony in
Goodman’s bond revocation proceedings was not causally connected to her
suspension for negligently investigating a report of attempted suicide. See Griffin
v. Deloach,
259 So. 3d 929, 931–32 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2018) (listing a causal
connection as an element of retaliation under the Act). Undisputed evidence
established that neither Captain Prieschl, who recommended suspending Bott for
40 hours, nor the Sheriff, who approved Captain Prieschl’s recommendation, knew
of Bott’s involvement in the Goodman proceedings. Because Bott’s disciplinarians
were unaware of her testimony, they could not have suspended her to retaliate for
that testimony. See Fla. Dep’t of Children & Families v. Shapiro,
68 So. 3d 298,
306–07 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2011) (concluding the plaintiff’s claim of retaliation
failed for want of causation when the decisionmaker was unaware of the plaintiff’s
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protected conduct). It matters not that Bott wrote the Sheriff about the alleged
retaliation in May after her suspension became final in January because, as Bott’s
attorney stated, “the purpose of [the] letter [was] to make [the Sheriff] aware of the
facts . . . obviously not known to [him]” about Bott’s involvement in the Goodman
case.
Bott’s claim about retaliation based on being removed from the Goodman
detail in violation of the Whistleblower Act is not properly before us. The Florida
court ruled, and, after removal, the district court agreed, that Bott’s claim was
untimely because she filed her complaint more than 180 days after a supervisor
removed her from the detail. See Fla. Stat. § 112.3187(8). Bott makes no argument
that her claim was timely.
The district court also did not err by entering summary judgment against
Bott’s claim of retaliation in violation of the First Amendment. For her speech to
be protected, Bott had to prove that she “spoke as a citizen on a matter of public
concern.” See Garcetti v. Ceballos,
547 U.S. 410, 418 (2006). But Bott’s speech
was made in her role as an employee because it wholly “owes its existence to . . .
[her] professional duties.” See Abdur–Rahman v. Walker,
567 F.3d 1278, 1283
(11th Cir. 2009) (quoting
Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421).
Bott’s speech was intimately connected to a job to which she had been
assigned and to her responsibilities as a deputy sheriff. She testified as an
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employee of the Sheriff’s Office tasked with confining a defendant under house
arrest. She testified about an event that occurred while fulfilling her duty to ensure
the defendant complied with the conditions of his release, and she reported the
event first to her employer. Unlike the employee in Lane v. Franks whose
“ordinary job responsibilities did not include testifying in court proceedings,”
573
U.S. 228, 238 & n.4 (2014), one of Bott’s essential job duties entailed providing
testimony regarding her investigation of and interaction with criminal defendants.
And the Sheriff’s Office paid Bott for the time she expended testifying in the
defendant’s bond revocation proceedings. Because Bott made her “statements
pursuant to [her] official duties, [she] [was] not speaking as [a] citizen[] for First
Amendment purposes . . . .” See
Garcetti, 547 U.S. at 421.
IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the summary judgment in favor of the Sheriff.
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