A law firm serving as outside counsel for the city of Nashville is entitled to the same qualified immunity status held by public officials, a federal appeals court ruled, delivering a blow to a former firm attorney who claimed in a First Amendment suit that he was fired because of his outside public service work. In a 2-1 ruling Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz was immune to the suit from former Baker Donelson attorney James DeLanis because it was working for Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County, which allegedly pressured the firm to terminate him because of an action he took while chairing the city's election commission in 2020. “We know of no case in which the First Amendment prohibited a law firm from firing one of its lawyers when the business interests of the firm, including demands from one of its clients, triggered the firing,” Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the opinion. DeLanis’ 2022 suit claimed his firing violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech after he served as chairman of the election commission when Nashville residents devised a ballot referendum to cancel a 2020 property tax increase. After a court said the referendum violated state law, unnamed city “officials” asked the law firm to convince DeLanis to reconsider his vote to appeal the ruling. The suit stated Councilman Robert Mendes tried to convince the firm to influence DeLanis, and the firm’s general counsel “asked" him to abstain from voting, which he declined. DeLanis then alleged city officials "pressured” Baker Donelson to fire him and it did so on June 25, 2021, according to his suit. He then filed suit against Baker Donelson, Mendes and the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. A federal district judge denied giving the firm qualified immunity because Baker Donelson “as a private entity, could not benefit from qualified immunity.” In his 18-page opinion, Judge Sutton wrote that “as DeLanis acknowledges in his complaint, Baker Donelson’s business interests drove its conduct.” “The firm, in his words, ‘sought to maintain and increase the client revenue it generated’ from Nashville ‘at all time relevant to the claims.’ We know of no free-speech case that covers this unusual setting, and DeLanis does not identify one himself.” Baker Donelson did not return a request for comment on the ruling. The attorney representing DeLanis, John I. Harris III of Schulman, LeRoy & Bennett in Nashville, said he planned to meet with his client Wednesday about further action on the lawsuit. "As noted by the dissent, the majority opinion appears to expand the scope of qualified immunity to circumstances not previously allowed,” Harris said in an email. The nine-page dissent by Judge Eric L. Clay said he believed the court’s majority erred in extending qualified immunity to a non-governmental entity—which he called “a significant departure in our longstanding jurisprudence.” “Baker Donelson does not perform a public duty or act ‘at the behest of the sovereign’ by firing plaintiff, especially since Baker Donelson’s sole motivation for plaintiff’s termination was its own private business interests,” Clay wrote. But Sutton wrote that, “Qualified immunity protects public officials and those serving the public from ‘the time, expense and risk of money-damages actions’ if they did not violate the claimant’s clearly established federal constitutional rights." “When private attorneys and law firms provide legal services to a government body, they also are eligible for qualified immunity in connection with that work,” Sutton wrote.