Diane Miller v. JOHN K. WEINSTEIN, Treasurer, County of Allegheny

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 08-4246
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DIANE MILLER,
Appellant
v.
JOHN K. WEINSTEIN, Treasurer, County of Allegheny;
ALLEGHENY COUNTY
___________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Civil No. 2-06-cv-00224)
District Judge: The Honorable Joy Flowers Conti
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Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
October 30, 2009
Before: SMITH, FISHER, and NYGAARD, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: November 9, 2009)
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OPINION OF THE COURT
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NYGAARD, Circuit Judge.

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Diane Miller appeals the decision of the District Court granting summary judgment
in favor of both Allegheny County and John K. Weinstein, who is the Treasurer of
Allegheny County. Because our opinion is wholly without precedential value, and
because the parties and the District Court are familiar with its operative facts, we offer
only an abbreviated recitation to explain why we will affirm the order of the District
Court and declare this appeal to be wholly frivolous.
Miller, a Christian, argues that Weinstein and Allegheny County violated the Free
Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution because Weinstein fired her
for observing the Christian holiday of Good Friday in 2005. Yet, Miller acknowledges
that she was not discharged for her religious observance. Instead, her own testimony
points to an inflammatory email that she wrote to Weinstein, after the fact, as the cause of
her dismissal. The District Court properly distinguished Miller’s email from her religious
observance conduct. Moreover, we find her claims meritless that disciplinary action in
the form of a reprimand letter and a threat of docked pay for her unexcused absence from
work on Good Friday substantially burdened her free exercise of religion. For these
reasons, the District Court did not err in dismissing this claim.
Miller also contends that Weinstein and Allegheny County violated the Free
Speech Clause of the First Amendment by firing her in retaliation for the email that she
sent to Weinstein complaining about losing a day’s pay for her unexcused absence on
Good Friday. We disagree. In the email Miller complained of the docking of her pay,

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We acknowledge that Miller’s pay was never, in fact, docked. We refer here1.
only to Miller’s words in her email.
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which is a matter of private concern that is not subject to First Amendment protection.
Moreover, the defendants were justified in viewing the remainder of the email as a
potential criminal violation, given Miller’s offer of a bribe in exchange for the return of
her docked pay. Therefore, we conclude that the District Court properly ruled that there1
was no need to even engage the balancing test established in Pickering v. Board of
Education, 391 U.S. 563, 574 (1968).
Regarding Miller’s claim that defendants violated her rights under the Petition
Clause of the First Amendment, there is no question that Miller’s email does not
constitute a “petition” sufficient to evoke the protections of this clause. With regard to
her official grievances filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the
Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and other previous grievances, the District
Court correctly distinguished Miller’s pure speculation from the favorable inferences of
facts required at summary judgment. The record was devoid of any evidence of a causal
link between her grievance claims and her termination. Temporal proximity alone is
insufficient. The District Court properly dismissed the claim.
Finally, Miller’s political patronage discrimination claims are also meritless. As
with her Petition Clause claim, Miller’s assertion that her failure to buy a $250 fund-

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raiser ticket caused her employment termination is supported only by imagined
connections rather than bona fide inferences of facts on the record.
For all of these reasons, we will affirm the order of the District Court.

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