141850P.pdf   07/10/2015  Stevon Anzaldua  v.  Northeast Ambulance and Fire
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  14-1850
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Shepherd, Author, with Murphy, Circuit Judge, and Harpool, 
   District Judge] 
   Civil case - Civil rights. In action alleging defendant fired plaintiff in 
   violation of his First Amendment rights after he emailed a reporter 
   expressing his concerns about the operation of the Fire District and the 
   conduct of the Fire Chief, the individual defendants were entitled to 
   summary judgment based on qualified immunity as the defendants showed that 
   the speech in question had caused dissension and disruption in the 
   department and the balance of the interests enumerated in the Pickering 
   test favored defendants; the district court did not abuse its discretion 
   by denying plaintiff's Rule 56(d) motion; once the district court found 
   there was no First Amendment violation by the individual defendants, it 
   did not err in dismissing the Fire District; with respect to plaintiff's 
   complaint that the Chief and another person improperly accessed his email 
   account in violation of the Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and 
   Transactional Records Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2701, the district court did not 
   err in denying his motion to amend the count as amendment would be futile 
   because plaintiff failed to show that the emails were protected by the Act 
   because he failed to show they were in "electronic storage" within the 
   meaning of the Act; however, the district court erred in denying 
   plaintiff's motion to amend his claims for violation of the Missouri 
   Computer Tampering Act as his First Amended Complaint satisfied the 
   elements of the Act in that he alleged he owned the emails and that the 
   Chief and the other person took them and disclosed them knowing they had 
   been been obtained without authorization.