Alfie Oakes
A federal appeals court has rejected a Florida agriculture business owner’s bid to challenge the termination of a contract that supplied the Lee County School District with fruits and vegetables during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Oakes Farms Food & Distribution Services in a Sept. 17 decision, concluding that there was no evidence that the school district ended the contract as retribution for owner Alfie Oakes’ social media posts, including his statement that the virus was a “hoax.”
Oakes’ initial legal complaint filed in the Middle District of Florida alleged the school district retaliated against him as a result of his statements on Facebook that the COVID-19 pandemic was a sham perpetrated by “corrupt world powers and their brainwashing arms of the media.”
The district court, however, took a different view and granted summary judgment in the case to the school district.
“We agree,” the 11th Circuit panel said in its decision this month. “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.”
Oakes’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment. It was unclear if the decision would be appealed.
The school district’s spokesman, Rob Spicker, declined to offer any elaboration beyond the 11th Circuit’s conclusions.
“The ruling speaks for itself, and we have no additional comment to add,” Spicker told the Florida Record in an email.
Oakes Farms’ contract to supply millions of dollars worth of produce – such as apples, bananas, oranges, pears, carrots, cucumbers and lettuce – to Lee County schools was initiated in 2015 and ran smoothly until the pandemic year of 2020, according to the court’s decision. During that year, schools closed down as a result of virus-transmission fears, but the district provided food to students through “drive-up” distribution and delivered meals.
During testimony in the litigation, the district’s superintendent expressed concern that Oakes’ reference to COVID-19 as a hoax might be an indication that food-safety issues were not taken seriously on his farm.
“At the district’s request, its procurement director asked Oakes Farms to ‘forward documentation of operating procedures and/or precautions taken by Oakes Farms given the current COVID-19 pandemic,” the 11th Circuit opinion states. “But the company did not offer any direct information about Oakes Farms’ own practices.”
The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ First Amendment retaliation claim. The appeals court agreed, but it contradicted the lower court’s finding that additional social media comments by Oakes calling the late George Floyd a “disgraceful career criminal” may have also run counter to the district’s “messages of inclusion and anti-racism.” This could have posed harm to the school district’s “reputational concerns,” according to the lower court.
The appeals court said such reactions to Oakes’ comments about Floyd were irrelevant to Oakes Farms’ food-supply role.
“... Let us be clear – if there were evidence of retaliation against Oakes because of his views on Black Lives Matter or George Floyd, that would be completely out of bounds,” the appeals court’s opinion states. “And the district court was incorrect to suggest the contrary.”
