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''Waters v. Churchill'', 511 U.S. 661 (1994), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees in the workplace. By a 7–2 margin the justices held that it was not necessary to determine what a nurse at a public hospital had actually said while criticizing a supervisor's staffing practices to coworkers, as long as the hospital had formed a reasonable belief as to the content of her remarks and reasonably believed that they could be disruptive to its operations. They vacated a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in her favor, and ordered the case remanded to district court to determine instead if the nurse had been fired for the speech or other reasons, per the Court's ruling two decades prior in ''Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle''. The case had first been brought by Cheryl Churchill, a nurse in the obstetrics ward at McDonough District Hospital, operated by the city of Macomb, Illinois. During a dinner break one night in early 1987, she had been talking with another nurse who was considering transferring to obstetrics. In that conversation she made statements critical of cross-training practices recently implemented by the hospital's nursing supervisor, Cindy Waters, and referred to personal issues between the two. Another nurse who overheard the conversation believed Churchill's comments about Waters had dissuaded her interlocutor from the transfer, and reported it to Waters. After an investigation in which Churchill alleged she was never asked about what she had said, she was fired. There were four separate opinions. Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for a four-justice plurality that the government has a lower obligation to respect constitutional rights when it acts as employer rather than as the sovereign. Accordingly, in that situation it should not be required to meet a due process standard greater than the reasonableness of its own finding of fact. David Souter added a short concurring opinion qualifying the plurality, which he said was in fact a majority,〔''Waters v. Churchill'', , 685–86, (1994), Souter, J., concurring.〕 with his insistence that in such cases the government must demonstrate that its understanding of what the employee said was not only a reasonable belief but a truthful one. Antonin Scalia concurred as well, but harshly criticized O'Connor's opinion. He read it as requiring a procedural handling of every possible adverse personnel action where First Amendment rights might be implicated, providing "more questions than answers". John Paul Stevens' dissent argued that the First Amendment required that the lower court determine exactly what Churchill had said before ruling on whether it was protected. Outside commentators have also been critical of the decision, since it might discourage whistleblowers. In addition to echoing Stevens' concerns, they have seen it as abandoning any concern for the truth, imposing a heavy burden on a plaintiff, relying on an overly narrow conception of the public's interest, and possibly discouraging people from entering public service. The decision resulted in a lower court changing its ruling in a high-profile case involving controversial academic Leonard Jeffries. == Dispute == Churchill had been hired as a part-time nurse at McDonough in 1982, and promoted to full-time status three years later. She worked for the next two years in the obstetrics ward. She had generally received favorable performance evaluations until Waters became her supervisor in the middle of 1986.〔''(Churchill v. Waters )'', 977 F.2d 1114, 1115, (7th Cir., 1992)〕 That happened a few months after Kathy Davis took over as the hospital's vice president of nursing. Waters had been implementing Davis's policy of cross-training, under which nurses were in areas overstaffed on a particular shift were reassigned to departments that needed more nurses. Churchill was one of several employees who had voiced objections to the way the policy was being implemented. She and other critics feared that it was primarily being used to address staffing shortages without providing adequate training, with detrimental effects on patient care.〔''Churchill'', 977 F.2d at 1116–17〕 Churchill's criticisms had been long voiced by one of the hospital's obstetricians, Dr. Thomas Koch. During a 1982 malpractice suit he had blamed a stillbirth on nursing shortages created, he alleged, by hospital policies, and had continued the criticism since then. Churchill and he became friends and allies, with her providing inside information on nursing policies that he then used to criticize the administration. She believed this incurred her the enmity of administrators who were by summer of 1986 keeping a file of criticisms of Koch made by Davis and nursing supervisor Cindy Waters.〔''Churchill'', 977 F.2d at 1117〕 That August, an incident occurred that bore out Churchill and Koch's concerns, and began the sequence of events that led to the lawsuit. During a difficult delivery, Koch called for a "Code pink" emergency, indicating danger to the life of mother and/or child. A probationary nurse, Mary Lou Ballew, did not know how to properly signal the emergency and did not alert all the necessary personnel. Churchill responded and helped Koch prepare for an emergency Cesarean section.〔''Churchill'', 977 F.2d at 1118〕〔''(Churchill v. Waters )'', 731 F.Supp 311, 312–313 (C.D. Ill., 1990)〕 After the surgery, Churchill was completing paperwork in the delivery room when Waters looked in on a patient in the early stages of labor Churchill had been attending to across the hall. She ordered Churchill to check on that patient. Churchill responded "You don't need to tell me what to do", and then complied with the order. Koch was very upset by this interference. At a meeting the next day with Waters and Stephen Hopper, the hospital's president and chief executive officer, he criticized Waters' conduct and the effect of the cross-training policies.〔 Churchill was later given a written warning for insubordination; she chose not to either make a written response or file a grievance, which she had the right to do, as she "did not want to make mountains out of molehills". Waters' annual evaluation of Churchill was overall positive, but noted an increasing antipathy toward her.〔''Churchill'', 731 F.Supp at 313.〕 In January 1987, a cross-trainee, Melanie Perkins-Graham, mentioned to Churchill over dinner during a meal break, with Koch present, that she was considering transferring to obstetrics. The exact nature of the ensuing conversation was central to the ensuing dispute.〔 Since the break room was located immediately behind the main nurse's station in obstetrics, others overheard all or part of it. Ballew, whose work-related absences from the nurses' station limited her exposure to the conversation, and head nurse Jean Welty, were among them. The next morning Ballew told Davis that Churchill had spent 20 minutes "knocking the department" and specifically criticizing Waters and Davis, saying the former was trying to get her fired and the latter "was going to ruin this hospital". After the conversation, Ballew claimed, Perkins-Graham was no longer interested in transferring.〔''Waters'', 511 U.S. at 665, O'Connor, J.〕 The morning afterwards, Davis asked Perkins-Graham to tell her about the conversation.〔 Perkins-Graham told her that Churchill "had indeed said unkind and inappropriate negative things about Cindy Waters" and confirmed the complaints about the ward and the criticism of Davis. Davis decided to fire Churchill for what she considered continued insubordination, but did not do so until after she had consulted with Waters, Hopper and the hospital's personnel director. Churchill appealed to Hopper, her only recourse under the hospital's employee policy, but after a meeting with her and the personnel director he told her that the negative evaluation the month before counted as a second written warning and thus her termination had followed the proper process.〔''Churchill'', 977 F.2d at 1119〕 Waters took her case to federal court. Her suit in the Central District of Illinois in Peoria named Waters, Davis, Hopper and the hospital as defendants. She alleged violations of her First Amendment right to free speech and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process under Section 1983, and breach of contract under Illinois law.〔''Churchill'', 731 F.Supp at 312.〕 No trial was actually held. After all witnesses had been deposed, Judge Michael M. Mihm considered motions for summary judgement, granting them for the defense. Churchill appealed, and won a reversal. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Waters v. Churchill」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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