NEW HAVEN — A federal judge has thrown out a civil rights lawsuit filed by a former city firefighter who is fighting to regain his job after being terminated, reinstated and then terminated again.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton granted the city’s request to throw out a 2004 lawsuit filed by John Brantley, a 20-year veteran of the Fire Department.
Brantley had maintained the city violated his constitutional rights when, after winning his job back after being fired, he was placed by the Fire Department in a lower-paying position than when he left.
He claimed what amounted to a demotion was retaliation for his outspokenness about racial inequities in the department. Brantley is black and had been a frequent critic of how minorities were treated.
In the recent decision, Arterton dismissed the lawsuit after concluding that Brantley hadn’t proven any link between his outspokenness and his change in assignment.
Before he was fired in 2002, Brantley worked as the department’s director of Community Relations and Public Fire Education and made battalion chief pay. After he was fired, the city eliminated the position from the budget.
When Brantley’s termination was reversed, he returned as a lieutenant, his previous rank.
Brantley filed the lawsuit claiming violation of free speech and equal protection.
In tossing the suit, Arterton wrote that Brantley "provides no evidence about the timing or content of the statements he made for which the defendants allegedly retaliated against him, nor does his affidavit show any casual nexus between his speech and the defendants’ decision to eliminate his position."
The city had provided testimony that the position was eliminated for budgetary reasons, according to Assistant Corporation Counsel Audrey Kramer, and not out of retaliation.
A message was left for Brantley’s lawyer, Jerald Barber.
Separate from the lawsuit, Brantley has been in a legal battle over his employment for three years.
Earlier this year, he took his fight to get his job back to state appellate court.
Brantley was fired in 2002 for accessing personnel records on a deputy chief’s computer, which the city maintained was a violation of its regulations. Brantley maintained it was a sham and pretense to oust an outspoken critic.
In 2003, he won his job back in state arbitration and returned to work. The city appealed the arbitration decision, and in January, a Superior Court judge overturned the arbitration decision, leaving Brantley again without a job.
©New Haven Register 2005