Skidmore v. The Regents of the University of California

Background

Allison Skidmore was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an animal-rights activist whose research concerned wildlife trafficking. In March 2020, she reposted an Instagram item about China’s alleged recommendation of bear bile as a COVID-19 treatment and added highly offensive comments about Chinese people, China, and COVID-19 on her private Facebook page.

University faculty members learned of the post. The Environmental Studies Department and faculty members issued three statements condemning the post as hateful, xenophobic, racist, or violent. Skidmore alleged that these statements caused online harassment, shunning, threats to her academic progress and career, and other harm. The university investigated whether formal discipline was appropriate but did not formally discipline her; the preliminary investigation concluded that her post was protected speech and was not a credible threat or targeted harassment.

Skidmore sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims against government officials for violating constitutional rights, alleging violations of her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. She also brought a California false-light invasion-of-privacy claim. In an earlier round of the case, the court dismissed the Regents of the University of California with prejudice based on sovereign immunity and found that the claims against the individual defendants were inadequately pleaded, while allowing amendment.

Motions and legal standards

The individual defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. They argued, among other things, that qualified immunity protected them from the § 1983 claims. Qualified immunity generally protects government officials from civil damages unless the plaintiff shows both a constitutional or statutory violation and violation of a right that was clearly established at the time.

The defendants separately moved to strike the false-light claim under California’s anti-SLAPP statute. An anti-SLAPP motion is a procedure for challenging claims based on protected speech or petitioning activity. At the second step of that procedure, the plaintiff must show that the claim is legally sufficient and has a probability of success. Skidmore opposed both motions and sought permission to file a Second Amended Complaint.

Federal claims

The court granted the motion to dismiss the two § 1983 claims based on qualified immunity. The court chose to analyze the second qualified-immunity question first: whether the defendants violated a constitutional right that was clearly established in April 2020. It therefore did not decide whether the alleged conduct actually violated Skidmore’s constitutional rights or whether the alleged shunning and harm to future employment created a protected property interest.

The court said Skidmore framed the right too generally by pointing to her right to post on a private Facebook page and her alleged interest in future employment. The relevant question had to concern the defendants’ particular conduct. The court described the issue as whether it was clearly established in April 2020 that university professors violated a student’s constitutional rights by speaking to the university community about a social-media post they considered racist and xenophobic and its effects on that community.

The court found that Skidmore identified no case clearly establishing such a right. It distinguished the cases she cited because they involved different conduct, including concrete disciplinary measures. Here, according to the allegations, the defendants did not impose formal discipline; the alleged de facto discipline arose from their statements. The court stated that Skidmore had a First Amendment right to express her views on her Facebook page, but could not use that right to prevent the professors from exercising their own First Amendment rights to respond.

False-light claim

The court granted the motion to strike the California false-light claim. It found that the faculty statements concerned a public issue and therefore constituted protected activity under California’s anti-SLAPP statute.

Applying the pleading standard, the court held that the statements were protected opinions rather than provably false factual statements. In particular, terms such as “racist,” “xenophobic,” and “hateful” lacked precise meanings and could reflect differing viewpoints. The statements also quoted portions of Skidmore’s Facebook post, allowing readers to decide whether the post was objectionable in those ways. Because the statements were opinions, the court concluded that they could not support a false-light claim.

The court also held that the academic-freedom doctrine protected the professors’ public comments as academics speaking to the university community about a matter of public concern. The court rejected Skidmore’s argument that this protection did not apply because her post was private, made outside school hours, and unrelated to school activities. The court further considered the defendants’ factual anti-SLAPP challenge and found that Skidmore had not presented affirmative evidence showing a probability of prevailing, despite having already received an opportunity for discovery.

Motion to amend and disposition

The court denied Skidmore’s motion for leave to amend. She sought to add allegations concerning the faculty members’ alleged retaliatory motive, alleged plans for tacit punishment, her timely receipt of her Ph.D., and her unsuccessful applications for academic positions. The court found that she had not shown the required good cause for seeking amendment after the scheduling-order deadline.

The court also found the proposed amendments futile. The new allegations did not change its qualified-immunity analysis or its conclusions that the statements were protected opinions and fell within the academic-freedom doctrine. Skidmore’s timely graduation did not show concrete academic discipline, and her job-search allegations did not identify additional actions by the defendants, such as negative references or interference with applications.

The order granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss without leave to amend, granted the motion to strike Skidmore’s false-light claim, and denied Skidmore’s motion for leave to amend. The court stated that judgment would issue. It also set a procedure for any later motion by the defendants seeking attorneys’ fees incurred in moving to strike the state-law claim.