Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, RETALIATION—7th Cir.: School district talent officer entitled to qualified immunity in university administrator’s First Amendment retaliation claim, (May 29, 2026)

By Kathleen Kapusta, J.D.

The talent officer had complained to the administrator’s supervisor about the administrator’s social media posts criticizing the public school system.

Reversing a district court’s denial of summary judgment on the First Amendment retaliation claim of a Northwestern University administrator, who was responsible for placing student teachers in the Chicago public school system and who was fired after a school district talent officer alerted the university about her social media criticisms of the school system, the Seventh Circuit found the talent officer was entitled to qualified immunity. Case law, said the court, did not clearly establish the talent officer was violating the administrator’s rights. The court also found the school district’s board of education was not a proper party to the appeal and dismissed it from the appeal (Hayes v. Board of Education of the City of Chicago, No. 24-2890 (7th Cir. May 28, 2026)).

Email. In addition to her job placing Northwestern student teachers at Chicago public schools (CPS), the administrator was also a parent of a child enrolled in those schools. During her time at Northwestern, she endorsed criticisms of CPS on social media. At least one principal saw her posts and shared them with CPS’s chief talent officer. The talent officer then emailed the administrator’s supervisor stating that the posts were interfering with CPS and Northwestern’s work by “disparag[ing] CPS and question[ing] the motives and competence of [CPS’s] leadership.”

The talent officer also acknowledged her “undisputed right to express” her views and stated that “I will leave this in your hands to address as you believe appropriate.” He later added that the harm was hard to quantify but he did not think this was a “termination-worthy incident.” Nonetheless, the university fired the administrator.

Lower court proceedings. The administrator then sued the board and the talent officer for retaliation in violation of the First Amendment. The district court denied summary judgment against that claim, finding among other things, that there was a triable issue as to whether the talent officer’s email constituted an actionable retaliatory threat and that he was not protected by qualified immunity because the law clearly established “that sending a threatening email to an individual’s employer seeking to chill the employee’s constitutional rights violated the employee’s constitutional rights.”

Proper interlocutory appeal. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit first rejected the administrator’s assertion that the district court’s denial of qualified immunity to the talent officer at the summary judgment stage was not appealable. Where “the denial of qualified immunity at summary judgment turns exclusively on issues of law,” said the court, “that decision is immediately appealable.” And here, the court found that not only did the district court deny the defense as a matter of law, the board and talent officer fully adopted the administrator’s facts.

Proper party. The court next rejected the board’s argument it was a proper party on appeal because of its obligation to indemnify the talent officer for any damages. Finding that it did not need to decide whether an indemnification obligation is sufficient to confer jurisdiction, the court explained that because the talent officer was entitled to qualified immunity, the board did not need to be indemnified. Accordingly, it determined that the board was not a proper party to the appeal.

Qualified immunity. Turning to the merits, because the talent officer assumed without conceding that the administrator wins at the first step of the qualified immunity analysis, the court assumed without deciding that the talent officer’s emails could be construed as a violation of the administrator’s First Amendment right to free speech. Accordingly, it limited its review to the second step of the analysis, “whether the specific contours of the right, as defined by the district court, were clearly established at the time [the talent officer] complained to Northwestern about her speech.”

Clearly established. Explaining that the administrator had the burden to proffer “precedent that places ‘beyond debate’ the question of whether a public official’s emails to its business partner complaining of the partner’s employee’s speech constitute retaliatory threats or coercion in the first place,” the court found that none of the cases she relied on met that standard. Indeed, while she pointed to the Seventh Circuit’s 2011 Hutchins v. Clarke decision, the court found it undermined her position.

Hutchins. In that case, a sheriff’s department employee made disparaging statements on a radio show about the sheriff. In response, the sheriff called in to the same show, called the employee bitter, and said he had been disciplined for sexually harassing a coworker. The appeals court held that the sheriff did not violate the Constitution because his comments “pertain[ed] to a past disciplinary action and in no way intimate[d] any future disciplinary action against Hutchins.” Nor were the sheriff’s comments so embarrassing or ridiculing as to violate the First Amendment.

Noting that the sheriff’s conduct in Hutchins was arguably more harmful than the talent officer’s conduct here, the appeals court pointed out that it ultimately judged that conduct constitutional. Emphasizing the important differences between the facts of the two cases, the court explained that while the sheriff publicly lambasted his subordinate in retaliation for the subordinate’s speech, the talent officer notified the administrator’s supervisors about her posts and his concerns. And although Northwestern ultimately fired the administrator, the talent officer never urged that course of action. Rather, he told her supervisor it was up to the university to address the issue as it felt appropriate and later added that he did not think it was “a termination-worthy issue.”

While the administrator relied on two other decisions, the court found them similarly inapposite. “Even viewing the facts in the light most favorable to [the administrator],” the court found the facts of those two cases were not sufficiently analogous to have placed the talent officer on notice that his conduct constituted unlawful retaliation.

Novoselsky. For his part, the talent officer relied on the court’s 2016 decision in Novoselsky v. Brown in support of his qualified immunity defense. In that case, after a lawyer filed multiple lawsuits against a court clerk’s office, the clerk complained about the lawyer to the state bar, a private watchdog group, and the county board of commissioners. The clerk also issued a press release and held a press conference to discuss the lawyer. In the lawyer’s subsequent suit against the clerk asserting First Amendment retaliation, the appeals court found that, even assuming the lawyer’s speech was protected by the First Amendment, the clerk’s conduct did not constitute actionable retaliation. Unconstitutional retaliation by a public official, the court explained, “requires more than criticism or even condemnation,” and “[h]owever impolitic” the clerk’s statements may have been, they “did not rise to the level of threat, coercion, intimidation, or profound humiliation.”

In Novoselsky, the court pointed out, it granted qualified immunity because it determined that the clerk’s conduct did not violate the lawyer’s constitutional right, which is the first step of a qualified immunity analysis. But because the talent officer elected to challenge the district court’s decision at only the second step of qualified immunity, the court could not say he was entitled to qualified immunity for the same reasons as the clerk.

Relevance. Nonetheless, the court found Novoselsky relevant to the second-step inquiry into whether any prior case law clearly established the unconstitutionality of the talent officer’s action as it did not put him on notice that his conduct would violate the administrator’s constitutional right. Accordingly, the court found the administrator did not meet her burden to overcome the talent officer’s qualified immunity defense and it therefore reversed the district court’s decision.

The case is No. 24-2890.

Judge: Jackson-Akiwumi, C.

Attorneys: Michael P. Persoon (Law Offices of Michael Persoon) for Kathleen Hayes. Erica R. Seyburn, Chicago Board of Education Law Department, for Board of Education of the City of Chicago.

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