Betty Grooms, a Missouri clerk of court, sued Judge Steven Privette and his wife Alice Bell in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, raising claims of First Amendment discrimination and retaliation, as well as substantive due process violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court dismissed all of Grooms’s claims, concluding that the defendants did not violate clearly established First Amendment rights or substantive due process rights, and Grooms appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Factual Overview

Grooms, a Republican, defeated Bell, a Democrat, in an election for Oregon County Circuit Clerk. Bell remained employed as a Deputy Clerk under Grooms. Three years later, Bell married Privette, a Republican and the Presiding Judge for a judicial circuit encompassing Oregon County.

After the marriage, Grooms experienced several conflicts with Bell and Privette. Bell allegedly disobeyed Grooms’s instruction to train another Deputy Clerk. When Grooms attempted to replace Bell as Privette’s courtroom clerk for a civil case based on a recommendation from the Office of State Courts Administrator (OSCA), Privette rejected the request and warned he would have the sheriff remove Grooms from his courtroom if she persisted.

Tensions escalated when Bell resigned and announced she would run for Circuit Clerk as a Republican. Around the same time, Privette ordered Grooms to prepare a spreadsheet listing over three years of criminal cases with specific information about bills of costs, dates, and reimbursement amounts. Grooms prepared the spreadsheet working with OSCA, but Privette rejected it three times.

Privette then appointed a prosecutor to pursue criminal contempt charges against Grooms. After unsuccessful attempts to dismiss the proceedings or recuse Privette, Grooms petitioned the Missouri Supreme Court, which issued a writ of prohibition requiring dismissal of the contempt motion. The Court reasoned that Grooms’s alleged misconduct did not threaten the court’s functioning as a judicial tribunal. Meanwhile, Grooms won reelection after Bell dropped out of the race.

Grooms subsequently filed her federal lawsuit, claiming the contempt proceedings cost her over $39,000 in litigation expenses.

Legal Analysis

First Amendment Claims:

The Eighth Circuit considered whether Bell and Privette were entitled to qualified immunity on Grooms’s First Amendment claims. The court noted that qualified immunity shields officials unless their conduct violates “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”

The court acknowledged that the First Amendment prohibits government discrimination or retaliation based on political affiliation when such affiliation is not an appropriate job requirement. However, the court determined that Grooms failed to identify any action that qualified as discriminatory or retaliatory under clearly established law.

Following Eighth Circuit precedent, the court explained that a government employee asserting First Amendment discrimination or retaliation must show she suffered an “adverse employment action” – a material change in employment terms or conditions that would “chill a person of ordinary firmness” from engaging in constitutionally protected activity.

The court found it at least unclear whether Privette’s initiation of contempt proceedings constituted an adverse employment action. Despite the prosecution, Grooms enjoyed uninterrupted employment, with no changes to pay, benefits, job duties, or future career prospects. The Missouri Supreme Court dismissed the contempt motion, and Grooms won reelection.

The court similarly rejected Grooms’s characterization of other incidents (Bell’s failure to train another clerk, Privette’s refusal to replace Bell as courtroom clerk, and Privette’s requests for spreadsheets) as adverse employment actions, finding them to be isolated incidents or routine aspects of employment rather than material changes to employment terms.

The court concluded that even considering all actions together, Bell and Privette’s conduct did not rise to the level of an adverse employment action under clearly established First Amendment law.

Substantive Due Process Claims:

The court swiftly dismissed Grooms’s substantive due process claim, finding it lacked a central element: a serious deprivation of an interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

To prevail on a substantive due process claim, the plaintiff must show a “protected life, liberty, or property interest” and conduct by the defendant that “shocks the conscience.” The court rejected Grooms’s argument that she was deprived of property or liberty interests in her terms as Circuit Clerk, noting she served her entire first term, won reelection, and has served her second term without interruption.

The court found that any interference with Grooms’s job performance was far less than conscience-shocking, characterizing Bell’s and Privette’s actions as “ordinary incidents” and frustrations of public employment rather than “brutal and inhumane” conduct that violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

Finally, the court rejected Grooms’s claim that the contempt prosecution tainted her reputation, citing precedent that “interest in reputation alone is neither liberty nor property guaranteed against state deprivation without due process of law.”

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of both Grooms’s First Amendment and substantive due process claims.