Municipal – Lynchburg registrar’s attack on adverse jury verdict fails

Where the plaintiff alleging she was not reappointed as registrar in Lynchburg, Virginia because of improper “partisan political animus” argued an adverse jury verdict should be vacated because of errors during voir dire or because of the trial court’s evidentiary rulings, these arguments were waived or rejected.

Background

In 2018, Christine Gibbons was unanimously appointed registrar in Lynchburg, Virginia by a board that included two Democrats and one Republican. When her most recent term expired in 2023, the latest gubernatorial election had produced a board with two Republicans and one Democrat. Before plaintiff’s term expired, she was told the board would be accepting applications for her position and that she would have to reapply if she wanted to be considered. Plaintiff reapplied and was among the four candidates interviewed. The board ultimately appointed a different candidate, who was a registered Republican.

Plaintiff sued the board and its two Republican members, alleging the decision to replace her “was not based on any deficiencies in her performance, but was motivated by partisan political animus toward her non-partisanship.” After the district court dismissed plaintiff’s claim against the board, the case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for the defendants.

Jurors

The district court allowed the parties to question prospective jurors. For her part, plaintiff asked whether any prospective jurors or members of their immediate families “ha[d] an occupation that touches on politics or political campaigns.” Plaintiff also asked how much attention the prospective jurors paid “to current events” and whether they regularly talked “about current events or politics with [their] family or [their] friends and co-workers.”

Plaintiff now protests the court’s refusal to allow questions about “political group memberships; [prospective jurors’] sources of news; their sharing of beliefs with groups involved in the Jan. 6th election protests; their beliefs about the 2020 election result and whether as election officials they would be disinclined to certify the 2024 presidential election result if it did not favor their preferred candidate.”

This court sees no abuse of discretion. Prospective jurors have “legitimate privacy interests,” and there is a risk that “pointed questions” about sensitive topics might “exacerbate whatever prejudice might exist without substantially aiding in exposing it.” Here, the district court struck this difficult balance by asking (and allowing plaintiff to ask) questions that probed the prospective jurors’ degree of political engagement and ability to render an impartial verdict, while also limiting what questions plaintiff could ask.

Evidentiary rulings

Plaintiff asserts that the district court improperly prevented her from presenting certain evidence. When “the trial court appears to have reserved its ruling or to have indicated that [a] ruling is provisional,” however, Rule 103 requires the proponent of the evidence “to bring the issue to the court’s attention subsequently” or be deemed to have abandoned the issue.

Here, the district court repeatedly told plaintiff that the pretrial rulings she now challenges were subject to clarification or reconsideration later. Once the trial began, plaintiff offered only two pieces of evidence whose exclusion she challenges on appeal. Because those proposed exhibits were not made part of the district court record in the first place, they are not part of “the record on appeal,” and this court has no way of accessing them. This court thus concludes plaintiff has failed to carry her burden of showing the district court committed reversible error by excluding those exhibits.

Nearly all of plaintiff’s other evidentiary arguments fail for lack of specificity or because plaintiff never obtained a definitive ruling from the district court. There are, however, two types of evidence where the district court clearly made a final determination and about which plaintiff consistently objected: (1) that evidence about national political events (or the individual defendants’ views about them) would not be admitted absent some tangible connection to their decision not to reappoint plaintiff and (2) that it would not permit evidence about other Virginia localities’ failure to reappoint their registrars without evidence linking those decisions to the individual defendants’ decision not to reappoint plaintiff. This court sees no abuse of discretion on either topic.

Affirmed.

Gibbons v. Gibbs, Case No. 24-1891, Feb. 11, 2026. 4th Cir. (Heytens), from WDVA at Lynchburg (Ballou). Stephen B. Pershing for Appellant. Blaire Hawkins O’Brien for Appellees. VLW 026-2-045. 17 pp.

Full-Text Opinion

VLW 026-2-045
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