Kenneth Eggleston v. Ed Bieluch

203 F. App'x 257
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
DecidedOctober 3, 2006
Docket05-16256
StatusUnpublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 203 F. App'x 257 (Kenneth Eggleston v. Ed Bieluch) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kenneth Eggleston v. Ed Bieluch, 203 F. App'x 257 (11th Cir. 2006).

Opinion

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Kenneth Eggleston appeals the summary judgment entered against him in the lawsuit he brought against Ed Bieluch, the former sheriff of Palm Beach County, Florida. 1 The court found that by terminating Eggleston’s employment with the Sheriffs Office, Bieluch had violated neither Eggleston’s equal protection rights nor his First Amendment rights.

I.

On September 1, 1989, Eggleston was hired by the Sheriffs Office as a deputy in the road patrol division. In that position, Eggleston was at the bottom of the command structure. From highest to lowest rank, the structure is: sheriff, undersher-iff, colonel, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, corporal, deputy sheriff.

Off and on over the next decade, Eggle-ston worked under the supervision of Bie-luch while Bieluch was a sergeant and then lieutenant. The two men had a close working relationship and held each other in high regard. Bieluch personally signed off on Eggleston’s yearly evaluations from 1993 to 1995. In each of those evaluations, Bieluch agreed with the reviewer’s finding that Eggleston either met or exceeded expectations or was outstanding in all categories. Eggleston was promoted to sergeant in 1995.

In 1996, Bieluch asked Eggleston to help an associate of theirs in his campaign for sheriff of Palm Beach County, and Eggle-ston agreed. During the course of that campaign, Eggleston and Bieluch “were together all the time,” raising money and organizing campaign functions. Eggle-ston, who had never before participated in a political campaign, considered Bieluch a “mentor” and a friend.

The two remained close after Eggleston resigned, for reasons not related to this lawsuit, from the Sheriff’s Office in September 1999 at the rank of sergeant. Bie-luch, then a captain, asked for Eggleston’s assistance in his own campaign for sheriff during the November 2000 election. Eg-gleston managed Bieluch’s campaign, handling his meetings, television appearances and mailings. Eggleston claims that the two had an understanding that if the campaign was successful, Bieluch would appoint him undersheriff and groom him to be the next sheriff of Palm Beach County. He claims that Bieluch told him that he planned to retire after only one term.

Things initially went as planned. After winning the election, Bieluch asked the incumbent sheriff to hire Eggleston during the transition of administrations. Eggle-ston returned to the sheriff’s office as a captain in December 2000. After taking office in January 2001, Bieluch promoted Eggleston to the rank of undersheriff. As undersheriff, Eggleston was second-in-command, responsible for the day-to-day administration of the department and running it when Bieluch was absent. Because undersheriff is a political position which carries no protection under the Career Services Act, Eggleston could be removed from office at any time in Bieluch’s sole discretion.

*260 In July or August of 2001, at a meeting of the Command Staff, Bieluch announced that he planned to seek a second term as sheriff. Eggleston conceded that he was “shocked” by Bieluch’s change of plans and by his failure to speak with Eggleston privately about the decision before formally announcing it. Eggleston nonetheless insisted in his deposition that he “accepted it and moved on.” He said that “[a]t worst” Bieluch’s decision “would have delayed [his] ability to run for sheriff,” but it “didn’t change [his] day-to-day working relationship with [Bieluch].”

It was around this time that Eggleston and Bieluch’s relationship began to sour. In the fall of 2001 Eggleston began to voice his disagreement with Bieluch’s administration of the department, expressing his feelings both in private meetings with Bieluch and during Command Staff meetings. 2

Eggleston criticized four aspects of Bie-luch’s administration. First, he questioned Bieluch’s personnel decisions, telling Bieluch that promotions should not be awarded in the absence of exams or other uniform guidelines; pay grade changes should be reviewed because they were affecting morale; and unqualified individuals should not have been hired or appointed to certain positions. Second, Eggleston criticized Bieluch’s decision to make officers serving at the Eagle Youth Academy eligible for the state’s high-risk pension plan. Third, Eggleston challenged Bieluch’s handling of the department’s budget. He objected to the purchase of certain expensive items, including a helicopter and mobile command vehicle. He also questioned both Bieluch’s use of sole sourcing and his alleged failure to fulfill his campaign promise to provide quarterly budget deficit updates. Fourth, Eggleston opposed Bieluch’s expansion of take-home car privileges to include more civilians and corrections personnel.

Eggleston testified in his deposition that after he made his feelings known, Bieluch “beg[a]n to cut [him] out of the loop.” In the fall of 2001, Bieluch started to exclude Eggleston from meetings regarding department spending and the classification of the employees at the Eagle Youth Academy.

In December of 2001, Eggleston was recruited by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C. to run for Congress against Representative Mark Foley, a Republican. In December and January, local newspapers ran articles about Eggleston’s potential congressional bid and the possibility that he might run for sheriff against Bieluch if his congressional campaign proved unsuccessful. Eggleston and Bieluch dispute whether they ever actually discussed the articles. Eggleston claims that a “tension” and “coldness” developed in his relationship with Bieluch, and although it was “very bothersome,” it did not dissuade him from running. Bieluch does not recall discussing the articles with Eggleston. In any event, Eggleston formally launched his congressional campaign in late January.

On February 1, 2002, Bieluch asked for Eggleston’s resignation as undersheriff, explaining that he had lost confidence in him. Eggleston argued against Bieluch’s decision and asked Bieluch to reassign him to be a captain serving as District Commander over the congressional district in which he was seeking election. Bieluch eventually agreed to do that. Eggleston concedes that Bieluch warned him that he *261 could not use his office phone or pager for campaign purposes. Additionally, Eggle-ston concedes that Bieluch informed him that he would have to either take a leave of absence or resign from the sheriffs office if he qualified to run for Congress. Bie-luch claims that he also told Eggleston that he could not campaign on duty or while in uniform and could not use his official vehicle to travel to political events, but Eggleston denies that there were any such orders.

Bieluch and Eggleston also discussed the issue of “flex-time,” a practice where all members of the executive staff, including captains, track the overtime hours worked and use those hours for personal business during a workday, while still being considered “on duty” for pay purposes. None of the written policies or procedures of the department addressed the issue of flex-time. Bieluch explicitly told Eggle-ston that flex-time did not exist, but Eg-gleston asserted that “it’s always existed” and that he had accumulated 400 hours of flex-time as undersheriff.

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Bluebook (online)
203 F. App'x 257, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kenneth-eggleston-v-ed-bieluch-ca11-2006.