Curtis Sherrod, a Florida public-school history teacher, alleged that Superintendent Arthur Johnson and Principal Gloria Crutchfield retaliated against him for publicly criticizing the school district’s failure to implement a state requirement concerning African-American history. After the district court denied the officials’ motion for summary judgment, they brought an interlocutory appeal challenging qualified immunity and res judicata. The Eleventh Circuit did not reach res judicata because it held that the officials were entitled to qualified immunity. Even assuming Sherrod’s protected speech and a retaliatory motive, the record also showed an unsatisfactory evaluation, placement on a remedial plan, parent complaints, deviations from the curriculum, and unsupervised students outside his classroom. Under the governing qualified-immunity standard, the question was whether their termination recommendations were objectively unreasonable in light of all information available to them, not merely whether protected speech may have influenced them. Because Sherrod identified no precedent clearly establishing that officials with those documented performance concerns could not recommend termination, the court reversed and instructed the district court to grant Johnson and Crutchfield summary judgment.