Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, RETALIATION—6th Cir.: Dental school professor’s complaints about required COVID PPE did not involve matter of public concern, (May 5, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The adjunct professor complained that wearing the gowns, which were 99 percent polyester, put the health of faculty, staff, and students at risk.

An adjunct professor in the University of Michigan School of Dentistry did not speak on a matter of public concern when he complained about the heavy protective gear he and others who worked in the school’s dental clinic were required to wear as part of the university’s COVID-19 response, the Sixth Circuit found, explaining that his complaint at most involved his discontent with a new work requirement that might lead to patient endangerment. Nor did he engage in protected speech when he spoke against the required protective gear at a dental school meeting, said the court, granting summary judgment against his First Amendment retaliation claims. Judges White and Kethledge both filed concurring opinions (Stanalajczo v. Perry, No. 25-1690 (6th Cir. May 4, 2026)).

Protective equipment. As part of his duties as an adjunct clinical assistant professor, the plaintiff supervised students in the dental clinic one day per week. In the summer of 2022, the dental school, as part of its response to COVID-19, required faculty and students working in the clinic to wear a protective gown that was 99-percent polyester, safety glasses, a face shield, and a head covering. Because the dental school’s air-conditioning units were not cooling at their normal capacity due to a renovation project, the PPE became extremely uncomfortable for some individuals and several students passed out from overheating.

Email. In June 2022, the school’s director of safety and infection prevention sent an email to faculty, staff, and students who worked in the clinic with suggestions on how to prevent overheating, including taking frequent breaks and increasing fluid intake. The email also noted that the gowns the school had previously provided, which were more breathable, would not be regularly available due to environmental concerns.

Replying to the approximately 1,000 email recipients, the professor stated that the gowns were “ridiculous,” suggested that everyone “wear them around all day for hours and experience what we all have to experience... frankly wearing these gowns puts our health at risk,” and asked about the procedure for filing a health complaint.

Safety complaint. The next day, the professor filed a health complaint about the PPE with the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MiOSHA). Two weeks later, MiOSHA, agreeing with the dental school that the professor’s allegations did not describe a hazardous work condition but rather an individual comfort issue, declined to inspect the workplace. The professor then forwarded his complaint to all dental school faculty members and encouraged them to file their own complaints.

Town hall meeting. In July, the school scheduled a town hall meeting for faculty, staff, and students to discuss the protective gear. The school did not record the meeting so people could feel free to speak out. Approximately 45-50 people attended in person and 75 people, including the professor, attended on Zoom. The professor, who was the last to speak, called the person who started the meeting “rude” because she did not introduce herself; made comments about the PPE, the overheating problem, the number of complaints there had been about it, and his MiOSHA complaint; and expressed his concern that the protective gear “adversely affect[ed] the health and safety of the faculty, students and patients.”

Termination. The safety director subsequently complained about the professor’s unprofessional behavior, including that his “demeanor and words used during the meeting were unprofessional and incendiary.” During an investigation into the complaint, the professor refused to be interviewed. The investigator ultimately concluded that the professor’s email use and behavior at the meeting were unprofessional under university policies and recommended that he watch three educational videos on workplace behavior, demonstrate course completion, and write a summary of what he learned. When the professor refused, he was terminated.

Lower court proceedings. The professor then sued several dental school administrators alleging two counts of First Amendment retaliation under Section 1983—one for filing the MiOSHA complaint and one for his speech at the dental school meeting. The district court granted summary judgment against both claims.

MiOSHA complaint. Affirming the lower court’s judgment as to the professor’s claim based on his MiOSHA complaint, the Sixth Circuit found he could not show the complaint involved a matter of public concern entitled to First Amendment protection. In his complaint, the court observed, the professor wrote that the gear created “body overheating” and “heat illness,” that “[t]he school makes their employees wear [the PPE] while treating patients,” and that “employee health [is] sacrificed” because the dental school “ignore[d] complaints over the health of those working and providing care to patients.” These concerns, the court explained, expressed a personal interest in workplace conditions for the professor and those working with him and were not a comment on an issue of “political, social, or other concern to the community.”

Further, said the court, not only did the professor file the complaint during an ongoing dispute with school administrators over the protective gear, he told a colleague that the complaint was an easy alternative to waiting for a response as “[w]ho wants their health sacrificed?” Moreover, rather than expressing concern with the safety or efficacy of protective gear in general, he protested the PPE provided that summer, complaining that the school was “more concerned with the waste disposable garments create than the continued health issues many employees and students” had suffered. “Those kinds of concern,” said the court, “even if justified, are not a matter of public concern within the meaning of the First Amendment.”

Finally, said the court, the complaint only used the word “patient” twice and both references were to clinic-worker concerns about their own comfort while treating patients and not to patient safety. Because the professor’s MiOSHA complaint did not discuss matters “directly affecting the health and safety of the public,” the court found he failed to show his speech involved a matter of public concern.

Speech during dental school meeting. As to the professor’s speech during the dental school meeting, while the district court found he failed to show he spoke as a private citizen rather than a public employee, the appeals court found it could instead resolve the case “on a more straightforward ground—[the professor’s] speech at the meeting did not involve a matter of public concern.”

Here, the court found that during the professor’s sparse deposition testimony, he never mentioned any public health or patient safety concerns. Instead, he testified that he made unspecified comments at the meeting about the PPE and how many people had complained about it, remarked that students and staff members thanked him for speaking out about this topic, and noted that the clinic suffered from a shortage of faculty. “So, like his speech in the MiOSHA complaint,” said the court, “the ‘point’ of [his] meeting speech, as described by his testimony, involved merely clinic worker concerns about their own protective gear,” which did not address a matter of public concern.

And while the district court did not resolve the legal question whether his speech addressed a matter of public concern, it did conclude that he was “was addressing the sub-standard conditions in his workplace and complaining that, among other things, the Dental School was not treating its employees properly.” In short, the court observed, his speech concerned the “working conditions” of those who worked in the clinic. Nor did he meaningfully contest the district court’s characterization of his meeting speech, said the court, noting that his brief described his speech as expressing “his concern... for the health and safety of the staff at large.”

Further, as with the MiOSHA complaint, the court found the context here showed that the concern about overheating could not be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community. Rather, he spoke about required protective gear amidst an ongoing dispute with dental school administrators. He never questioned whether the clinical environment required some sort of protective gear or whether the gear was effective in preventing disease transmission and his generalized references to “patient safety” in the declarations were not enough to show that the point of his speech was to convey that a “patient endangerment situation existed at the present moment.”

“As unfortunate and frustrating as the conditions might have been for those who worked in the clinic, a dispute about discomfort caused by required protective gear in a clinical setting does not rise to the level of public concern,” the court concluded, affirming the district court’s judgment on this ground.

Larsen concurrence. In a separate concurrence, Judge Larsen agreed that the professor’s speech did not address a matter of public concern but wrote separately to express some reservations about the district court’s alternative holding that his speech was not protected because he “spoke at the forum in his capacity as a Dental School employee, not as a private citizen.” Judge Larsen emphasized that “it is the speech’s subject matter, not its setting, that leads me to that conclusion.”

White concurrence. In a short concurrence, Judge White saw “no reason to believe that the district court would not have analyzed the case differently had [the professor] spoken on a matter of clear public concern,” and thus she found “it unnecessary to engage with hypotheticals, including the one posed by the concurrence.”

The case is No. 25-1690.

Judge: Larsen, J.

Attorneys: Frank J. Lawrence (Law Office of Frank Lawrence) for Mark Stanalajczo. Timothy H. Howlett (Dickinson Wright) for Brandon Perry, Lynn Johnson, Jacques Nor, Dan Chiego, Alexandre DaSilva, Darnell Kailger, Tae-Ju Oh, and Berna Saglik.

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