Thad Brockett worked in the Effingham County, Illinois Sheriff’s Department from July 1996 until December 2014. From 2012-2014, Brockett was promoted by Sheriff John Monnet to serve as Operations Sergeant, supervising and overseeing the jail, telecommunications, and court security personnel. Right around the time of Brockett’s promotion, Jim Niemann took office as Chairman of the Effingham County Board.
In Brockett’s telling, Niemann ascended to the Board with a desire to meddle with the operations of the Sheriff’s Department over the objections of Monnet, who Niemann publicly accused of mismanaging public funds and converting public property. It was well known around this time that Brockett was loyal to Monnet.
The meddling, according to Brockett, had consequences for his ability to supervise the jail. In 2013, after Brockett discovered inmate safety and security procedure violations, Monnet terminated two County correctional officers. But these officers were reinstated, per, Brockett, at the demand of the County and Niemann. Later in the year, Brockett investigated the same two correctional officers, collecting evidence that they sexually harassed female inmates to obtain or attempt to obtain sexual favors. Brockett reported his new findings, along with the original findings, to the Sheriff, the Effingham County Attorney, the Illinois State Police, the FBI, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, the Office of the Illinois Appellate Prosecutor, coworkers not in the chain of command in the Sheriff’s Department, and to members of the public. Niemann and the Board shielded the officers from discipline and prosecution.
The following year, Niemann, with the approval of the Board, began the process of removing Brockett from the Union, in order to more easily terminate his employment. When the new sheriff took office in early 2014, Brockett was terminated, with lack of funding given as the rationale. Brockett alleged that was pretextual, and that his termination was retaliatory – punishment for exercising his First Amendment rights by supporting Sheriff Monnet and reporting the correctional officers’ unlawful acts.
Brockett sued Niemann and the County pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging a claim of First Amendment retaliation. The district court determined first that Brockett’s speech pertained to matters personal to Brockett and not to matters of public concern, and second, that his speech was made pursuant to his official duties and not as a private citizen. For these reasons, the Court concluded that Brockett’s speech was not protected by the First Amendment. Brockett appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
In an unusually direct opinion, the Court denied the appeal, laying much of the blame for its deficiencies at the feet of Brockett’s lawyer, rather than the facts of the case. Failing “to provide this Court with anything more than the most cursory arguments,” Brockett’s attorneys did not address the basic elements of a First Amendment retaliation claim in their brief.
“He cites but one case on speech as a matter of public concern but only for the proposition that ‘political activity is protected by the First Amendment.’ Political speech is indeed protected by the First Amendment, but not always. The limitations on protections of that speech for public employees can only be determined by looking at the requirements of Pickering, Connick, Garcetti, and their progeny, and thus Brockett had to provide some argument that his speech satisfied the requirements of Pickering and Connick.”
Brockett’s primary argument is “that no case cited by the district court supports the district court’s position on this issue. But he does not tell us why those cases do not support the district court’s position, or, more importantly, which cases do support his argument. Likewise, he says that ‘there are no facts alleged in the amended complaint which support the district court’s conclusion.’ This is an odd argument, as it is Brockett’s duty to allege facts showing his entitlement to relief, and he fails to tell us which facts alleged in the complaint do that, and why. Brockett wholly ignores the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure requirement that his argument contain ‘appellant’s contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies.’
“Despite our holding, we must stress that there is no magic number of words, sentences or cases that a litigant must provide to the Court to defeat a motion to dismiss. We encourage concise and efficient briefing. But at the same time, if a litigant has come to the Court to assert that a district court judge erred when granting a motion to dismiss, that litigant must engage in a legal argument telling us why. Our adversarial system relies on counsel to advance arguments entitling them to relief.”
Brockett v. Effingham Cnty., Illinois, 116 F.4th 680 (7th Cir. 2024).