Decision: Public employee speech curbed

UPDATED 10:45 a.m.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the First Amendment does not provide protection for comments that a public employee makes in the course of performing regular duties, even if the comments alleged public corruption or government wrongdoing. The ruling leaves supervisors free to impose on-the-job discipline for comments that are considered disruptive or in violation of work rules, so long as the employee makes those as part of a normal duty assignment. While the case involved a county-level prosecutor, the First Amendment principles laid out in the ruling would apply at all levels of public employment.

This was the only decision of the day in an argued case. Further decisions are expected next Monday.

The 5-4 decision came in the case of Garcetti v. Ceballos, 04-473.. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority ruling. Chief Justice John G. Roberts noted that Kennedy was delivering the opinion on the 30th anniversary of his appointment to a federal judgeship — on the 9th Circuit. He was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1988.

“Proper application of our precedents,” Kennedy wrote, “leads to the conclusion that the First Amendment does not prohibit managerial discipline based on an employee’s expressions made pursuant to official responsibilities.” The case involved a deputy prosecutor in Los Angeles County who was reassigned to a less desirable position by his superiors after he wrote an internal memo blowing the whistle on a flawed search warrant.

The majority said that the deciding factor was not that the deputy expressed his views inside the office, rather than publicly, nor that the memo covered issues that the county attorney’s office handled. The controlling factor, it said, was that his comments were made “pursuant to his official duties. That consideration distinguishes this case from those in which the First Amendment provides protection against discipline.” The deputy, Richard Ceballos, “wrote his disposition memo because that is part of what he was employed to do. He did not act as a citizen in writing it.”

The case had been argued in October, but the Court evidently was split 4-4 on it after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired. It was reargued March 21. O’Connor’s successor, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., cast the fifth vote to make Tuesday’s majority.

There are two other cases that the Court had reargued, and those decisions are expected over the next month. One involves the constitutionality of Kansas’ death penalty procedure, the other involves a major question of what becomes of evidence that police gather after they entered a home without a warrant and without knocking and announcing themselves beforehand.