Court tosses suit from Philly cops who claimed their racist Facebook posts made them victims of discrimination

A federal judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by 12 current and former Philadelphia police officers who were suspended or lost their jobs over racist, demeaning, or violent posts they made to their personal Facebook accounts.

U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker ruled that the posts clearly violated the Police Department’s social media policy and she rejected the idea that by disciplining the officers, the city had infringed upon their First Amendment rights.

She noted that the city’s interest in safeguarding public confidence in its police force outweighed the rights of individual officers to use ethnic slurs and other discriminatory speech online.

“African Americans, Muslims, Mexicans and foreign refugees were not spared, as [these officers] played racist bingo, mocking as many ethnic or religious groups as possible,” Tucker wrote in an opinion issued last week.

Their posts, she added, “betrayed hard earned public trust, especially in a climate where police are held to a higher standard, especially in the face of increasing public scrutiny.”

The ruling comes amid a nationwide moment of debate over racial bias in policing and as Philadelphia continues to grapple with the consequences of a 2019 report by the Plainview Project that unearthed discriminatory social media posts from more than 300 city cops.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit — who included Officers Christian Fenico, Thomas Gack, Edward McCammitt, Tanya Grandizio, Anthony Anzideo, Anthony Acquaviva, Kristine Amato, Joseph Przepiorka, William Bowdren, Raphael McGough, Francis T. Sheridan, and Thomas Young — were among 193 officers disciplined in response to the findings, including 15 who were fired or forced to retire in the largest mass dismissal of department employees in recent city history.

Since then, some, like Fenico, won back their jobs in arbitration proceedings mandated under the city’s contract with the police union.

Still, he and the others maintained in court filings that they had been “falsely maligned and effectively branded as racists,” making it impossible to land new jobs in law enforcement or to perform their duties on the force. They sought $2 million in damages each.

Their lawyer, Larry L. Crain, did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment on the dismissal of their case or whether they intend to appeal the ruling.

Posts authored or shared by Fenico and his fellow plaintiffs included messages referring to Syrian refugees as “savages” and Muslims as “the evil that wants to kill you.” Other posts threatened violence against transgender people and celebrated aggressive — and in some cases illegal — police responses to Black Lives Matter protesters.

In their suit, the officers maintained that the posts did not reflect their work on the force and that they appeared on their personal Facebook accounts and in some cases were viewable only by a private circle of friends.

They said that the city had arbitrarily enforced its social media policy and that other officers who had posted racially charged material about white people or that was critical of former President Donald Trump and his supporters had not been similarly disciplined.

Tucker, in her opinion, noted that the officers’ posts were public enough that the Plainview Project was able to find them and that in some cases, the officers specifically identified themselves in their postings as Philadelphia police.

She rejected the argument that the department had applied its social media policy unfairly against those with conservative views, finding that the officers who sued had failed to show that department officials were aware of and had failed to act on any other posts that might violate the policy.

City officials welcomed Tucker’s decision.

“Philadelphians deserve a city workforce and police department that will represent them with dignity and respect,” said Kevin Lessard, spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney. “Outrageous and derogatory comments like those made by the plaintiffs cannot and will not be tolerated.”