A federal court has ruled that a city did not violate the Constitutional rights of an employee who received a verbal reprimand for having an affair. The employee, Sharon Johnson, was a police officer for LaVerkin City, UT and a member of the county’s SWAT team.
The somewhat complicated story (but we’ll boil it down to the important parts) starts when she separated from her husband and started divorce proceedings.
During that time, the city sent Ms. Johnson to a training conference elsewhere in Utah — a regular type of refresher course.
At the conference, after training sessions had ended for the day, Ms. Johnson had an affair with another police officer who was not from her department.
Somehow her husband learned of the affair. First the husband told police supervisors his estranged wife had been raped at the conference. Ms. Johnson told her superiors the sex had been consensual.
Then her husband made another false accusation — that his estranged wife had the affair with the city police chief.
The City Council decided to investigate and placed both Ms. Johnson and the chief on administrative leave. The county also asked Ms. Johnson to step down from her SWAT team position until the matter was cleared up.
The investigation was to be confidential, but somehow it leaked to the local newspaper which printed the story on the front page.
Ms. Johnson’s husband recanted his story, and the chief and Ms. Johnson were eventually reinstated to their jobs.
As a result of City Council’s investigation, they learned of her brief affair with the officer from another department. Council’s investigator recommended that Ms. Johnson receive a written reprimand over the incident.
The reasoning for the discipline was based upon the law enforcement code of ethics requiring officers to “keep [their] private life unsullied as an example to all and behave in a manner that does not bring discredit to [the] agency.” The reprimand said Ms. Johnson has allowed her personal life to interfere with her duties as a police officer.
Ms. Johnson refused to sign the written reprimand at which point it turned into a verbal-only reprimand.
When Ms. Johnson sought reinstatement to the SWAT team, the county required her to obtain a letter stating she was in good standing with the city and was no longer on administrative leave. The city’s letter only said that she was no longer on leave, so the county chose not to reinstate her to the SWAT team.
Employee files lawsuit
A few months later, Ms. Johnson resigned from the police force, believing her credibility as an officer had been undermined by the city’s actions. She sued the city and city manager.
She argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas established “a broad-based fundamental right to engage in private sexual conduct.”
But the 10th Circuit Court decided it was reasonable for the police department to privately admonish Ms. Johnson’s personal conduct consistent with its code of conduct when it believes that discipline will further the public’s respect for its officers and the department they represent.
In other cases, personal conduct off the job has resulted in someone’s firing.
HRB wrote earlier about the saga of news anchors at the CBS-TV affiliate in Philadelphia. One anchor, Alycia Lane, was let go because, according to the station, she became the news instead of just reporting it. Her firing came before she had a court date on charges she slapped a New York City police officer. Those charges have effectively been dropped.
How much should personal conduct outside work matter to a person’s career? Does it depend on the type of job? What type of jobs should have so-called “morals clauses” in contracts? Let us hear from you.
