Before King, Ho, and Engelhardt, Circuit Judges. King, Circuit Judge: In 2017, Plaintiff-Appellee Terry Bevill, then a Captain of the Quitman Police Department, signed an affidavit in support of a motion to transfer venue that was filed in a pending criminal proceeding against his friend and former colleague, David McGee. Following an investigation, Quitman Mayor David Dobbs, having concluded that Bevill’s voluntary submission of his affidavit violated two Quitman Police Department policies, decided to terminate Bevill’s employment. Bevill filed suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting a First Amendment retaliation claim against Dobbs. Bevill further alleged that Dobbs, State District Judge Jeffrey Fletcher, Wood County District Attorney James Wheeler, and Wood County Sheriff Tom Castloo conspired to terminate his employment in retaliation for his speech. This interlocutory appeal is the second one in this matter. In the first appeal, this court affirmed the district court’s denial of the Rule 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss that Sheriff Castloo, DA Wheeler, and Judge Fletcher filed asserting qualified immunity. See Bevill v. Fletcher, 26 F.4th 270 (5th Cir. 2022) [hereinafter Bevill I]. Two years later, this court is now tasked with reviewing the district court’s denial of Defendants-Appellants’ motions for summary judgment. We AFFIRM. I. A. In 2017, during Bevill’s employment with the Quitman Police Department (“QPD”), David McGee was arrested and charged with facilitating and/or permitting the escape of an inmate and tampering with government records while he was employed as an administrator at Wood County Jail. Fearing that he could not receive a fair trial in Wood County, McGee asked Bevill, his friend, to sign an affidavit in support of a motion to transfer venue. Bevill claims that he shared McGee’s concerns about receiving a fair trial. According to Bevill’s complaint, McGee’s status as a jailer working for the Wood County Sheriff’s Department generated pretrial publicity locally and drew the ire of newly elected Sheriff Castloo, who had told Bevill that he hoped McGee would be convicted and put “under the jail” for a long time. Furthermore, based on his personal knowledge and an article published by the Kilgore News Herald detailing Judge Fletcher’s first 100 days in office, Bevill also believed that Sheriff Castloo had a close relationship with DA Wheeler, who was prosecuting the case against McGee, and Fletcher, who was the presiding judge. On June 2, 2017, Bevill signed an affidavit on McGee’s behalf providing two reasons for why McGee’s motion to transfer venue should be granted: (1) pretrial publicity; and (2) alleged personal relationships between Sheriff Castloo, DA Wheeler, and Judge Fletcher. In relevant part, Bevill attested: I believe it will not be possible for DAVID MCGEE to get a fair and impartial trial in Wood County, Texas due to the pre-trial publicity involved in this case and the personal relationship between the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and the Presiding Judge in this matter. I am very familiar with the close relationships between these influential persons, and DAVID MCGEE will be greatly prejudiced by having a trial in Wood County. It is not possible for DAVID MCGEE to obtain a fair and impartial trial in Wood County, Texas because there is a dangerous combination against Defendant instigated by influential persons that a fair and impartial trail [sic] cannot be obtained. Bevill’s affidavit sent a spark through the local community. A few hours after the affidavit was filed, DA Wheeler circulated the document to Sheriff Castloo via text message. Castloo testified that the affidavit angered him, as he viewed it as an attack on his integrity. He forwarded the affidavit to Quitman City Administrator/Secretary Greg Hollen with the message, “Here it is . . .” to which Hollen immediately replied, “Wow and our librarian even motorized [sic] it.” While McGee’s motion to transfer venue was pending, Judge Fletcher and DA Wheeler purportedly met with Wood County DA Investigator Jerry Hirsch to discuss Bevill’s affidavit. According to Hirsch, Fletcher stated that he intended to charge Bevill with perjury, and that Bevill would not receive a “free pass” for writing it. DA Wheeler also discussed Bevill’s affidavit with Mayor Dobbs. During their meeting, Wheeler purportedly explained that the affidavit would hurt “[Wheeler's] future legal career” and “hurt him financially.” Wheeler also showed Dobbs a video of Bevill from a drug bust that occurred decades ago, which Dobbs interpreted as Wheeler’s effort to “tie that video evidence to the fact that Captain Bevill was a dirty cop.” Judge Fletcher was not in attendance at this meeting. But, in a journal entry dated June 5, 2017, he wrote: Must be doing a good job in the 402nd. . . . In something I have never seen or heard of . . . a Quitman Police Captain named Terry Bevill signed an affidavit stating that me, the Sheriff (Tom Castloo), and the DA(Jim Wheeler) are in a “dangerous conspiracy” and our close personal relationship prevents a former jail captain (David McGee) from getting a fair trial. Completely baseless and a total pile of crap. QPD is about to be terminated as a department due to the scurrilous insubordination by a police officer. (emphasis added). On June 8, 2017, QPD Chief Kelly Cole was summoned to a meeting with Mayor Dobbs, Administrator/Secretary Greg Hollen, and Quitman City Attorney Jim McLeroy. Cole was presented with the affidavit, as well as paperwork to place Bevill on administrative leave. That same day, Bevill was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations of violations of QPD and City policies. Following the City’s investigation, Mayor Dobbs presented Chief Cole with termination forms for Bevill. Cole understood that “a decision had been made” regarding Bevill’s termination, and that in this circumstance he was stripped of his traditional decision-making authority over disciplinary decisions. Bevill was officially discharged on June 21, 2017. Mayor Dobbs confirmed that Bevill was terminated because of the substance of his affidavit, though he contends that the City’s decision to terminate him was made “solely in reliance on advice of counsel.” Namely, the City determined that Bevill had violated QPDpolicies which prohibit employees from “making or negotiating any compromise or arrangement for any criminal or person to escape the penalty of law,” “seek[ing] to obtain any continuance of any trial in court out of friendship for the defendant, or otherwise interfer[ing] with the courts of justice,” and “discredit[ing] the peace officer profession or their employing agency.” Furthermore, in brief written comments provided to the Texas Workforce Commission in July 2017 as part of Bevill’s unemployment benefits proceeding, Administrator/Secretary Hollen indicated that Bevill was terminated for making allegations of illegal activity that were “not true,” and that “even the district attorney said he would not take anymore cases from the City.” McGee was ultimately found guilty after trial. At the trial’s conclusion, Judge Fletcher issued a warrant for Bevill’s arrest on the ground that he had committed aggravated perjury. Bevill’s case remained pending for sixteen months, and he eventually was no-billed on the charges. B. In June 2019, Bevill brought suit against the City of Quitman, Texas, Sheriff Castloo, Mayor Dobbs, DA Wheeler, Judge Fletcher, and Wood County, Texas under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and 1985(2). Bevill alleged that Mayor Dobbs directly retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. He further alleged that Dobbs, Sheriff Castloo, DA Wheeler, and Judge Fletcher conspired to commit First Amendment retaliation against him. Castloo, Wheeler, and Fletcher filed motions to dismiss, raising the defense of qualified immunity and arguing that Bevill failed to allege sufficient facts supporting a conspiracy. The district court denied their motions in part. See Bevill v. City of Quitman, No. 4:19-CV-406, 2020 WL 1065430 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 5, 2020). These defendants appealed the district court’s order denying their motions to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity, and we affirmed. See Bevill I, 26 F.4th at 272–73. Addressing the viability of Bevill’s First Amendment claim, we held that Bevill spoke “as a private citizen, not a public employee” when he submitted his affidavit. Id. at 278. We further held that Bevill’s interest in his speech outweighed the government’s interest in the efficient provision of public services. Id. at 279 n.4. Accordingly, we concluded that Bevill “plausibly averred a deprivation of his First Amendment rights.” Id. at 279. We further held that the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity, reasoning that our en banc decision in Kinney v. Weaver, 367 F.3d 337 (5th Cir. 2004), “clearly establishe[d] the right of a plaintiff to be free from governmental officials’ exerting their power or influence over a third-party employer to cause the plaintiff to be terminated for exercising his First Amendment rights.” Bevill I, 26 F.4th at 282–83. Finally, wedetermined that Bevill had adequately averred a conspiracy claim, i.e., he pleaded sufficient facts to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery would reveal evidence of an illegal agreement. Id. at 284. On December 20, 2022, Defendants Sheriff Castloo, Judge Fletcher, DA Wheeler, and Mayor Dobbs filed motions for summary judgment. Despite their previously unsuccessful efforts on appeal, the individual Defendants, referencing the parties’ evidentiary submissions and the undisputed facts of the case, asserted: (1) there is insufficient evidence of a conspiracy among them to terminate Bevill in retaliation for his affidavit; and (2) qualified immunity applies to Bevill’s claims. In tandem with these efforts, Mayor Dobbs, for the first time in this case, claimed qualified immunity with respect to Bevill’s claims against him for First Amendment retaliation and conspiracy to commit First Amendment retaliation. And DA Wheeler additionally argued that he, as a prosecutor, is entitled to pretrial dismissal on grounds of absolute immunity. The district court disagreed with Defendants. The court first held that the record supports the conclusion that Bevill’s First Amendment rights were violated. The district court went on to find that there is sufficient evidence for a jury to “infer that the individual Defendants reached an agreement, expressly or tacitly, that Bevill should be fired for filing his affidavit.” Consistent with this court’s prior holding in Bevill I, the district court further held that Bevill’s constitutional rights were clearly established. Finally, the district court held that DA Wheeler is not entitled to prosecutorial immunity. This appeal followed. II. We begin with jurisdiction and our standard of review. Each Defendant-Appellant asserted the affirmative defense of qualified immunity in his respective motion for summary judgment. The doctrine of qualified immunity “shields public officials sued in their individual capacities ‘from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.’” Joseph ex rel. Est. of Joseph v. Bartlett, 981 F.3d 319, 328 (5th Cir. 2020) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). To prevail against a good faith assertion of qualified immunity, a plaintiff must satisfy a two-pronged test. First, the plaintiff must show that “the official violated a statutory or constitutional right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011). Second, the plaintiff must show that “the right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the challenged conduct.” Id. (quoting Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818). The qualified immunity doctrine impacts the scope of this court’s appellate jurisdiction in this case. Although “the denial of a motion for summary judgment based upon qualified immunity is a collateral order capable of immediate review, . . . [o]ur jurisdiction is significantly limited, . . . for it extends to such appeals only ‘to the extent that [the denial of summary judgment] turns on an issue of law.’” Kinney, 367 F.3d at 346 (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985)).[1] At this interlocutory juncture, this court “cannot challenge the district court’s assessments regarding the sufficiency of the evidence—that is, the question whether there is enough evidence in the record for a jury to conclude that certain facts are true.” Cole v. Carson, 935 F.3d 444, 452 (5th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (quoting Trent v. Wade, 776 F.3d 368, 376 (5th Cir. 2015)). On appeal, several Defendants-Appellants contend that Bevill has produced insufficient summary judgment evidence that a conspiracy to terminate him existed. Bevill claims that this is a sufficiency-of-the-evidence determination that we lack interlocutory appellate jurisdiction to review. Defendants-Appellants offer a different view. They note that while we lack jurisdiction at this juncture to review the genuineness of the factual disputes the district court identified, we have jurisdiction to review their materiality. Cunningham v. Castloo, 983 F.3d 185, 190 (5th Cir. 2020). Defendants-Appellants contend that they are challenging the legal significance of the facts disputed by the parties, and that even if we take as true Bevill’s version of the facts, those facts are insufficient to support a conspiracy claim as a matter of law. “The distinction between permissible ‘materiality’ review and impermissible ‘genuineness’ review can be hazy in practice.” Buehler v. Dear, 27 F.4th 969, 979 (5th Cir. 2022). For instance, in Rodriguez v. Neeley, 169 F.3d 220, 222 (5th Cir. 1999), we held in an interlocutory appeal that, “[g]iving plaintiffs all inferences from the summary judgment record,” a trier of fact could not reasonably conclude that there was a conspiracy to deprive the plaintiffs of their constitutional rights.[2] However, in Kinney v. Weaver, 367 F.3d at 346–49, we squarely addressed the jurisdictional issue disputed by the parties, and our decision there supports Bevill’s contention that we lack jurisdiction to consider Defendants-Appellants’ sufficiency-of-the-evidence arguments. Because there is arguably some support for Defendants-Appellants’ view of our interlocutory jurisdiction—e.g., Rodriguez—our decision in Kinney is worth reviewing in detail. Kinney, like the case at bar, was an interlocutory appeal of an order denying summary judgment that involved claims of First Amendment retaliation and conspiracy. 367 F.3d at 340. Addressing our jurisdiction on interlocutory appeal, we clarified: Whenever the district court denies an official’s motion for summary judgment predicated upon qualified immunity, the district court can be thought of as making two distinct determinations, even if only implicitly. First, the district court decides that a certain course of conduct would, as a matter of law, be objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law. Second, the court decides that a genuine issue of fact exists regarding whether the defendant(s) did, in fact, engage in such conduct. According to the Supreme Court, as well as our own precedents, we lack jurisdiction to review conclusions of the second type on interlocutory appeal. Stated differently, in an interlocutory appeal we cannot challenge the district court’s assessments regarding the sufficiency of the evidence—that is, the question whether there is enough evidence in the record for a jury to conclude that certain facts are true. We do, however, have jurisdiction to . . . review the first type of determination, the purely legal question whether a given course of conduct would be objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law. Id. at 346–47 (internal citations omitted). Then, addressing the proper standard of review, we acknowledged that “[w]here factual disputes exist in an interlocutory appeal asserting qualified immunity, we accept the plaintiffs’ version of the facts as true.” Id. at 348. We then set forth at length the relevant factual disputes, “together with the district court’s concomitant assessment of what facts [were] supported by the plaintiffs’ summary judgment evidence.” Id. For instance, we had to accept the following sufficiency-of-the-evidence conclusions from the district court: There is ample evidence in the record for a jury to conclude that the defendants conspired to deter the plaintiffs from testifying in court by boycotting their business. . . . Plaintiffs’ evidence reflects a dogged determination by the defendants to rid Kilgore College of the plaintiffs as instructors in retaliation for speaking out about excessive force by police officers. Id. at 349 (internal citations omitted). Later in the opinion, we acknowledged that “[m]uch of the argument in the district court concerned the issue of whether the plaintiffs adduced sufficient evidence of a conspiracy.” Id. at 351. However, “[t]he district court’s determination that there was sufficient evidence of a conspiracy[was] not at issue in th[e] interlocutory appeal.” Id. Since Kinney, this court has repeatedly held that whether a certain defendant is implicated in a conspiracy is a fact issue that we cannot review on an interlocutory appeal reviewing the denial of qualified immunity. For instance, in Hill v. Gressert, 705 F. App’x 219, 221 (5th Cir. 2017), we determined that we lacked interlocutory jurisdiction to address the district court’s finding, as a matter of fact, that two defendants were implicated in a third defendant’s misconduct that we had previously determined amounted to a violation of the plaintiff’s clearly established constitutional rights. In Morales v. Cardenas, No. 22-50836, 2023 WL 6442593, at *3 (5th Cir. Oct. 3, 2023), we addressed a defendant’s argument that “he [was] entitled to summary judgment because the evidence the district court cited d[id] not permit an inference that he entered into a conspiracy . . . to deprive [the plaintiff] of his civil rights.” We determined that this defendant’s “arguments only challenge[d] the genuineness of the factual dispute,” and that we lacked interlocutory jurisdiction “to consider [his] arguments regarding the genuineness of the district court’s factual determinations.” Id. Accordingly, Defendants-Appellants’ jurisdictional arguments are foreclosed by Kinney and its progeny.[3] After reviewing the summary judgment evidence, the district court concluded that “the jury could infer that the individual Defendants reached an agreement, expressly or tacitly, that Bevill should be fired for filing his affidavit.” Under Kinney, we lack jurisdiction to consider Defendants-Appellants’ arguments that there is insufficient evidence for a jury to conclude that they did, in fact, reach such an agreement. Kinney, 367 F.3d at 346–47. Thus, our task in this appeal is limited to determining whether such an agreement would be objectively unreasonable in light ofclearly established law. See id. at 346. For this inquiry, our standard of review is de novo. Id. at 349. And, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to Bevill and draw all reasonable inferences in his favor. See Bluebonnet Hotel Ventures, L.L.C. v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 754 F.3d 272, 276 (5th Cir. 2014). III. Conspiracy claims asserted under § 1983 require plaintiffs to prove “(1) the existence of a conspiracy involving state action and (2) a deprivation of civil rights in furtherance of the conspiracy by a party to the conspiracy.” Armstrong v. Ashley, 60 F.4th 262, 280 (5th Cir. 2023) (quoting Pfannstiel, 918 F.2d at 1187). Because a conspiracy claim is not actionable if there is no deprivation of the asserted civil right, Shaw v. Villanueva, 918 F.3d 414, 419 (5th Cir. 2019), Defendants-Appellants’ arguments regarding the viability of Bevill’s First Amendment claim lie at the heart of this interlocutory appeal. To establish his First Amendment retaliatory-discharge claim, Bevill must show that “(1) he suffered an adverse employment decision, (2) he spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern, (3) his interest in the speech outweighs the government’s interest in the efficient provision of public services, and (4) the protected speech motivated the adverse employment action.” Bevill I, 26 F.4th at 276. The first and fourth elements of the claim are not at issue on appeal; it is undisputed that Bevill suffered an adverse employment action by being fired, and that he was fired because of his affidavit. However, notwithstanding this court’s prior consideration of these issues, albeit on motions to dismiss, Defendants-Appellants maintain that Bevill cannot satisfy the second and third elements of his claim. A. We begin by addressing the second element—whether Bevill spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern. As we explained in Gibson v. Kilpatrick, 838 F.3d 476, 481–82 (5th Cir. 2016), addressing this issue requires two separate inquiries. First, with respect to the speech at issue, Bevill must show that he spoke as a citizen and not as an employee. See id. at 481. If he spoke as a citizen, Bevill then must show that his speech “raised a matter of public concern.” See id. at 482. In this appeal, Defendants-Appellants in their opening briefs do not substantively dispute that Bevill spoke as a citizen when he filed his affidavit. We held that Bevill spoke as a citizen in Bevill I, and we agree with the district court that “[t]he facts that informed the [district court's] and [the previous panel's] analysis have not meaningfully changed after discovery.”[4]
