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Heffernan v. City of Paterson, No. 14-1280,: 578 U.S. United States Supreme Court First Amendment
Heffernan v. City of Paterson, No. 14-1280,: 578 U.S. United States Supreme Court First Amendment
Supreme Court case concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 62
margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an
employer, believing that the employee was engaging in what would be protected speech,
disciplines them because of that belief, even if the employee did not exercise such a
constitutional right.
The case was brought after Jeffrey Heffernan, a detective with the Paterson, New Jersey, police
force, went to a distribution center and picked up a lawn sign for the candidate challenging the
city's incumbent mayor in the 2005 election as a favor for his mother. While Heffernan did not
support the challenger, after other officers saw him with the sign they told senior officers,
including the police chief, who strongly supported the mayor. For his apparent public support of
the other candidate, they demoted Heffernan to beat patrol work as a uniformed officer.
Heffernan brought suit alleging that his demotion violated his First Amendment rights. The case
took a decade to reach the Supreme Court. For most of that time it was in federal district court,
where it was heard by three different judges. A jury verdict in Heffernan's favor was set aside. A
later summary judgment in the city's favor was overturned on appeal before being granted again
Writing for a majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer stated that the department's
belief was all that mattered, since the Court's precedent in this area holds it is unconstitutional for
a government agency to discipline an employee (who does not work under a contract that
explicitly permits such discipline) for engaging in partisan political activity, as long as that activity
is not disruptive to the agency's operations. Even if Heffernan was not engaging in protected
speech, he wrote, the discipline against him sent a message to others to avoid exercising their
rights. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he was joined by
Justice Samuel Alito, in which he agreed that Heffernan had been harmed, but his constitutional