It is hard to overstate the impact on public safety employee free speech rights produced by the 2006 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. In Garcetti, a deeply-divided Supreme Court overturned more than 40 years of public employee free speech law. The decision held that if speech is “ordinarily within the job duties” of the public employee, it has no constitutional protection under the First Amendment. Garcetti has led to…
One might think that speech to a city council is clearly protected by the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. As two high-ranking police officers with the City of Jellico, Tennessee discovered, the Supreme Court’s constricted view in Garcetti v. Ceballos of free speech rights of public employees means that even speech to a city council can be the basis for termination. The dispute started when Dwight Osborn…
Scott Specht works as a fire marshal for the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), where his primary responsibilities involved investigating the origins of fires. In that capacity, Specht investigated a fire in March 2018 that destroyed a five-story brownstone in Manhattan where a motion picture was being filmed. The fire resulted in serious damage to the building and the death of a firefighter. Over the course of his…
Sean DeCrane started as a firefighter with the City of Cleveland’s Division of Fire in the 1990s, eventually working his way up to battalion chief. In August 2012, DeCrane became the director of training at the City’s Fire Training Academy. Edward Eckart is an assistant director in the Department of Public Safety that oversees the Division of Fire. DeCrane applied to be the chief of the Division of Fire….
Detective John Butcher of Saginaw County, Michigan seized $22,583 in cash from Pierre Najjar during a narcotics investigation. When Najjar agreed to pay the Sheriff’s Department the money seized from him in lieu of entering formal civil forfeiture proceedings, Butcher delivered the money to Garrett DeWyse, the Department’s property and evidence room manager. A few weeks later, Butcher asked DeWyse to release $2,000 of the funds to pay for…
Kelvin Lett was an investigator for Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, a municipal office tasked with reviewing allegations of police misconduct. In 2016, Lett was working on an investigation into police involvement in a civilian shooting. The office’s Chief Administrator, Sharon Fairley, directed him to include in the report a finding that police officers had planted a gun on the victim of the shooting. Lett refused because he…
In Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the United States Supreme Court ruled that speech made as part of a public employee’s job has no First Amendment protection. However, the First Amendment is only one source of protection against improper discipline for engaging in speech. Protection against unfair discipline for speech can be found in the “just cause” provisions of collective bargaining agreements, in civil service laws, and…
From Florida Question: I’ve often heard from my union’s legal defense plan that we cannot go to arbitration for a written reprimand because the grievant has no “property loss” and that the arbitrator can’t rescind the written reprimand. Often our members feel like this is an excuse by the legal defense plan because the LDP doesn’t want to spend the money on the arbitration. While a written reprimand doesn’t…
Under the rule in Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the First Amendment only protects the speech of public employees if they “speak as a citizen on a matter of public concern.” In a union environment, there is little question but that a no-confidence vote on the performance of a chief is protected speech, and is a matter of public concern. However, a very different result can be…
As a recent New Jersey case shows, the Garcetti rule marches on and is alive and well. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), the Supreme Court held that if a public employee engages in speech (e.g., writes or says something) as part of the job, the First Amendment gives the employee no protection, and the employer is free to retaliate against the employee even if the speech…
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