Providence, Rhode Island: Councilor Miguel Sanchez Wins First Amendment Lawsuit Over Firing From Governor McKee's Staff

A federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled that Governor Dan McKee's administration violated the First Amendment when it fired Miguel Sanchez, a Providence city councilor who also worked as a low level staffer in the governor's office, over his pro-Palestinian posts and protest attendance in 2023.

Chief Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island filed the decision on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Sanchez prevailed against McKee and two of his most senior officials, Chief of Staff Antonio Afonso and Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Almond. Damages and injunctive relief remain undecided, and neither side commented before publication, The Providence Journal reported. WPRI 12 also reported Sanchez prevailed.

A staffer who answered phones

Sanchez began working for the McKee administration in May 2021 as a constituent services employee, answering phone calls and emails from Rhode Islanders and helping them reach public benefits. In 2022 he told his supervisors he would seek public office, and the filings show no evidence the administration objected. Other McKee staffers had posted personal political opinions that conflicted with the governor's positions, McConnell wrote, and none of them faced pushback.

After the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, McKee condemned the terrorism. Sanchez, who by then sat on the Providence City Council, posted in favor of "respect of all human rights," an "immediate deescalation and cease-fire" and an "end to the occupation" in Gaza and the West Bank, and attended a pro-Palestinian protest on his own time. When news outlets asked the administration to confirm that Sanchez worked there, Afonso and Almond gave him the choice of resigning or being fired, and he was fired.

"The termination drew far more attention than the post had," McConnell noted. At least 17 reporters asked about the firing, at least 11 outlets reported it, and by midday on Nov. 2, 2023, the Constituent Services Office had logged 63 emails and 38 calls about it. Sanchez sued McKee, Almond and Afonso, arguing that his First Amendment rights had been violated.

"His First Amendment interests are paramount"

McConnell called the case, at an Oct. 8 hearing, "the most significant First Amendment case I've seen come before me." In his decision he wrote that "public employees' speech on matters of public concern, on their own time, is speech long understood to 'occupy the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.'" He added: "The First Amendment protects the right of a public employee to speak on matters of public concern, and that right is not lost when an individual chooses to work for the government."

The judge rejected qualified immunity for Afonso and Almond, ruling that they "knew or should have known that retaliating against Mr. Sanchez would deny him his rights." He also ruled that Sanchez, a low level and often anonymous voice to calling constituents, was not a high level policymaker who could be fired over political differences. Applying the Pickering balancing test, he concluded: "Taken together, Mr. Sanchez's interest, and the public's interest, in his off-duty speech on a matter of intense public concern is at its height. Mr. Sanchez's First Amendment interests are paramount."

Sanchez, 28, is the youngest member of the Providence City Council and represents Ward 6. The Democratic caucus has the votes to elect him the council's next president, and he won his Ward 6 primary this year by a double digit margin. His brother, Enrique Sanchez, represents District 9 in the Rhode Island House. McKee leaves office at the end of this year after losing the Democratic primary to Helena Foulkes.