Alessandra Nicole Rogers v. Stanton Riggs, et al.

This Court, in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018) and United States v. Nat’l Treasury Emples. Union, 513 U.S. 454, 115 S. Ct. 1003 (1995) stated that the Garcetti/Pickering analysis was not intended for application to questions of Group Speech, where the breadth of matters of public concern are substantially enlarged and those comprising only private concern substantially shrunk. This Case presents the Question: Is a petition written, signed and circulated outside of work by 45 current and former county employees and delivered to their elected officials, a matter of Group Speech under Janus, or as the lower court ruled, not a matter of public concern under the Garcetti/Pickering line of cases, which this Court has never applied to Group Speech? The second question presented here is whether the mention of a legal test in a prior court order can provide sufficient notice to the non-movant to trigger the prospective duty to respond to an argument not raised by the movant in summary judgment.