JACQUELINE GAINES v. DENISE CROSS; MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMON PLEAS COURT - Articles

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JACQUELINE GAINES v. DENISE CROSS; MONTGOMERY COUNTY COMMON PLEAS COURT

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Feb 27, 2026

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Marc D. Mezibov, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ARGUED: Cooper D. Bowen, MONTGOMERY JONSON LLP, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellees.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Marc D. Mezibov, MEZIBOV BUTLER, Cincinnati, Ohio, Emmett E. Robinson, ROBINSON LAW FIRM LLC, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant.

Attorneys 4: ON BRIEF: Cooper D. Bowen, Linda L. Woeber, MONTGOMERY JONSON LLP, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellees.

Judge(s): BATCHELDER, GILMAN, and LARSEN, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Columbus

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge. Political candidates, including judicial candidates, have broad free-speech rights to “speak in support of their campaigns.” Williams- Yulee v. The Florida Bar, 575 U.S. 433, 457 (2015). But that right does not divest a duly elected government of its power to control certain speech by its confidential and policymaking employees. Jacqueline Gaines, then a domestic-relations court magistrate, contends that her court and its administrative judge, Denise Cross, abridged Gaines’s freedom of speech when Cross terminated her employment over her campaign speech that cast the court’s operations and Gaines’s fellow magistrate in a negative light. Because Gaines held a confidential or policymaking position within the domestic-relations court and spoke on political or policy- related matters in a manner that undermined the trust and confidence that Cross had in Gaines’s continued service, her termination did not violate the First Amendment. The district court’s dismissal of her claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is therefore AFFIRMED.

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