{"id":505,"date":"2024-05-01T01:42:23","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T01:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/eighth-circuit-affirms-denial-of-qualified-immunity-to-mayor-and-police-chief-of-missouri-city-in-first-amendment-retaliation-lawsuit-brought-by-former-police-officers\/"},"modified":"2024-05-01T01:42:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T01:42:23","slug":"eighth-circuit-affirms-denial-of-qualified-immunity-to-mayor-and-police-chief-of-missouri-city-in-first-amendment-retaliation-lawsuit-brought-by-former-police-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/eighth-circuit-affirms-denial-of-qualified-immunity-to-mayor-and-police-chief-of-missouri-city-in-first-amendment-retaliation-lawsuit-brought-by-former-police-officers\/","title":{"rendered":"Eighth Circuit Affirms Denial of Qualified Immunity to Mayor and Police Chief of Missouri City in First Amendment Retaliation Lawsuit Brought by Former Police Officers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri\u2019s denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity to two individual defendants who had been sued for First Amendment retaliation under Section 1983. The decision hinged on whether a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the plaintiffs\u2014two former police officers\u2014spoke as citizens on matters of public concern when they complained in writing to the mayor about the police chief.<\/p>\n<p>The case, <em>Noon v. City of Platte Woods, Missouri<\/em>, 94 F.4th 759 (8th Cir. 2024), is the second federal lawsuit involving the termination of appellees Thomas Noon and Christopher Skidmore, both former police officers for the city\u2019s police department. During their employment, Noon and Skidmore raised several concerns about Police Chief James Kerns, culminating in their sending a \u201ccomplaint packet\u201d to Mayor John Smedley and the city\u2019s board of aldermen. The complaint packet included a list of complaints about Kerns\u2019s leadership, noted \u201cover 180 violations\u201d of the police department\u2019s standard operating procedures, and concluded by stating, \u201cIt is our belief that our oath of office to serve the community requires this action.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri\u2019s denial of summary judgment based on qualified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[465,618,620,616,610,384,611,609,613,303,614,617,621,615,612,619],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-affirms","tag-amendment","tag-brought","tag-chief","tag-circuit","tag-city","tag-denial","tag-eighth","tag-immunity","tag-lawsuit","tag-mayor","tag-missouri","tag-officers","tag-police","tag-qualified","tag-retaliation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}