From Wednesday's decision in Oakes Farms Food & Distribution Servs., LLC v. Adkins, decided by Eleventh Circuit Judge Britt Grant, joined by Judges Jill Pryor and Stanley Marcus:
In spring 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world upside down. Alfie Oakes, the owner of a Florida farm and agriculture business, disagreed with the government's response—strongly—and he was not afraid to say so. He took to Facebook, where he described the virus as a "hoax" perpetrated by "corrupt world powers and their brainwashing arms of the media" to dupe "lemmings" with "COVID programming." Oakes also shared his opinions on other topics—the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd, to name a few.
Oakes Farms had been selling fruits and vegetables to a local school district for years, and the school board grew worried that Oakes's views about the pandemic betrayed a lax approach to food safety during a time when not much was known about Covid-19's transmissibility. Worries deepened after requests for the farm's pandemic protocols turned up nearly nothing, so the superintendent terminated the produce contract. Both Oakes and his farm sued, saying that the contract termination violated Oakes's First Amendment rights.
The district court saw things differently, and granted summary judgment to the school district. We agree. Although the owner was speaking as a citizen on important matters of public concern, the evidence shows that the school system's interests in food safety were the reasons for its decision to break ties with Oakes Farms—not its bare disagreement with his political views. Had there been evidence that the real motivation was punishing Oakes for these views, whether about Covid-19 or racial topics, it would be a different matter. But here, the evidence is not reasonably in dispute….
