Attorneys for House Speaker Mark Eves asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to overturn an earlier decision to dismiss Eves’ lawsuit against Gov. Paul LePage.

Eves’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment on the hearing and LePage’s attorney declined to discuss the case.

Eves, the Democratic leader from North Berwick, sued the Republican governor last summer, alleging that LePage abused his power by threatening to withhold state funding if an educational institution in central Maine moved forward with hiring Eves to be its president.

The board of Good Will-Hinckley school in Fairfield did ultimately rescind its offer to Eves, citing the governor’s threats as one of the main reasons.

Eves argued that governor used his executive power to intercede into his private life for political retribution. LePage, through his attorneys, has said his actions were protected as free speech.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge George Singal sided with LePage and tossed out the suit. Eves appealed almost immediately.

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Lengthy briefs were filed this summer by Eves’ attorney, David Webbert, and the governor’s attorney, Patrick Strawbridge.

On Wednesday, each side addressed a three-judge panel seated in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which will issue a written ruling on the case at a later date. If the case is overturned on appeal, it would be sent back to Maine to be tried. Audio of Wednesday’s oral arguments was supposed to be posted on the court’s website by 4 p.m. but had not been posted by 5 p.m., when the court closed for the day.

In his brief, Webbert said LePage retaliated against Eves for purely political reasons.

“This alleged right of a governor to insist on party loyalty as a condition of state funding for all private organizations – no matter how nonpartisan – is contrary to clearly established federal constitutional rights and threatens the independence of all nonpartisan private organizations,” Eves’ attorney wrote in their appeal brief. “LePage’s theory of executive powers also jeopardizes multiparty democracy at the state level, which cannot survive if a governor is allowed to use the state treasury to enforce political loyalty to his party by nonpartisan, private organizations.”

Strawbridge’s response argued that the earlier decision should be affirmed.

“This is a dispute properly resolved in the political arena, not the federal courts,” the governor’s attorney wrote. “As the complaint acknowledges, the speaker and the governor are political opponents who have clashed on numerous policy issues. It is hardly surprising, then, that they disagreed over whether the speaker was an appropriate steward of millions of dollars of future state funding for Maine’s first charter school, especially given the speaker’s public record of opposing charter schools.”

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The dispute began on June 5, 2015, the day Eves signed a two-year employment contract with the school.

LePage phoned Richard Abramson, then interim president of the school, that day and expressed his extreme displeasure about Eves’ selection. The governor also sent a handwritten note to the chairman of the school’s board of directors, called Eves a “hack” and made it clear that the school would lose the $1.06 million in discretionary funding that it expected to receive in the upcoming two-year budget cycle.

The dispute arose as the Legislature worked to finalize the state’s budget and marked a particularly frigid moment between legislators and LePage, who vowed to veto every bill sponsored by a Democrat because members of the House did not address his policy priorities.

The Good Will-Hinckley board rescinded its offer to hire Eves as its president on June 24. LePage admitted to reporters that he threatened to choke off funding. Eves filed suit the next month.

Eves accused the governor of using taxpayer money and the power of his office to prevent his hiring by Good Will-Hinckley, and contended that LePage’s actions violated several of Eves’ constitutional rights, including his First Amendment rights of free speech, free association and political affiliation, as well as his 14th Amendment right to due process.

Strawbridge argued that LePage was making a legally protected political statement when he successfully persuaded Good Will-Hinckley to fire Eves and therefore had immunity from Eves’ claim, or was otherwise protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

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The 44-page decision by Judge Singal in May to dismiss the case came less than a month after attorneys for Eves and the governor argued the case before him in Portland.

In that decision, Singal wrote that however distasteful Eves found the governor’s actions, they did not breach Eves’ constitutional rights. The judge also found that LePage was entitled to qualified immunity because the statements he made about Eves did not constitute a threat to bring government power to bear against a private person or group, but were rather an “attempt to ensure that a public expenditure would be utilized to achieve a policy goal related to charter schools for at-risk youth.”

In rejecting Eves’ claims, Singal also said the nature of the dispute was ill-suited to courtroom resolution. He noted that courts have found the preferred solution to political disputes is through the democratic electoral process.

Eric Russell can be contacted at 791-6344 or at:

erussell@pressherald.com

Twitter: PPHEricRussell


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