Alomari v. Ohio Dep't of Pub. Safety

Alomari v. Ohio Dep't of Pub. Safety

Opinion

 [*560]  SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge.

Omar Alomari ("Plaintiff") filed suit against the Ohio Department of Public Safety ("ODPS"), ODPS Director Thomas Charles, former ODPS Director Thomas Stickrath, and former Ohio Homeland Security ("OHS") Director William Vedra (collectively, "Defendants"), alleging, inter alia, that Defendants discriminated against him on the basis of national origin, [**2]  religion, and race. Plaintiff further alleged retaliation against his exercise of protected First Amendment speech. The district court granted summary judgment for Defendants. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM.

In November 2005, OHS, a division within ODPS, hired Plaintiff as a contract employee. He became a permanent, full-time Multicultural Liaison Officer one year later. Plaintiff reported to John Overly, Executive Director of OHS, and then to William Vedra, Overly's successor. Plaintiff's duties included (1) building productive relationships between OHS, law enforcement, and Arab and Muslim communities; (2) researching and authoring publications on Arab and Muslim communities; and (3) presenting his research to law enforcement at training sessions.

During these training sessions, Plaintiff's views often conflicted with the views of law enforcement officials. For example, at a November 2008 training session for Ohio law enforcement officials, Plaintiff made a presentation in which he explained that Muslims generally fell into four categories: Fundamentalists, Islamists, Jihadists, and Secular Moderate Muslims. After Plaintiff's remarks, Todd Sheets, an Officer with the Columbus Police Department [**3]  ("CPD"), gave a presentation on international terrorism. Officer Sheets commented on Plaintiff's statements. He said, "I'm not sure about Fundamentalist, Islamist or Jihadist. When I stop a Muslim, I don't ask if they're a Fundamentalist, Islamist or Jihadist. To me, they're all the same." Officer Sheets claimed that Arab Muslims in Central Ohio had links to terrorism, and that Islam commanded violence. Afterwards, Plaintiff complained to Director Vedra about Officer Sheets's comments, alleging that they implied all Arabs and Muslims were terrorist suspects, which contradicted Plaintiff's presentation. Plaintiff believed that the inconsistent messages could confuse law enforcement.

In January 2009, Plaintiff attended a two-day training session at the Columbus Police Academy. At this session, a presenter claimed that Christianity and Islam have been in conflict for more than 1,400 years, and Muslims will use violence to conquer and convert the entire world to Islam. Plaintiff told the presenter that he was irresponsible for "giving his opinions, not facts" to the law enforcement community. During and immediately after the training session, Plaintiff complained to numerous officials, [**4]  including CPD Deputy Director John Rockwell; Chief Deputy Steve Martin of the Ohio Sheriff's Department; OHS Regional Coordination Unit Supervisor Andrew Stefanik; OHS Fusion Center Counterterrorism Research Analyst Ben Presson; and OHS Senior Strategic  [*561]  Planning Officer Tracy Proud. Plaintiff also emailed George Selim, a Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's ("DHS") Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, to voice his concern that public DHS funds supported biased training sessions. Finally, because Director Vedra did not attend the session, Plaintiff drafted a report summarizing the event and sent it to him. The report stated that the first day of training was full of inaccuracies about the history and tenets of Islam, as well as Arab culture.

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