Heffernan v. City of Paterson
| Heffernan v. City of Paterson | |
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| Argued January 19, 2016 Decided April 26, 2016 |
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| Full case name | Jeffrey Heffernan, Petitioner v. City of Paterson, et al. |
| Docket nos. | 14-1280 |
| Citations | 578 U.S. ___ (more) |
| Opinion announcement | Opinion announcement |
| Prior history | Jury finds in favor of the plaintiff, judge recuses for conflict of interest and case is retried; summary judgement in favor of the defense; Third Circuit reverses and remands; decision for the defense on remand; Third Circuit affirms |
| Holding | |
| Police department's demotion of detective in response to mistaken belief he was supporting a challenger to the city's mayor in election violated his First Amendment rights regardless of his actual purpose. Judgement of the Third Circuit reversed and remanded. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan |
| Dissent | Thomas, joined by Alito |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. I 42 U.S.C. § 1983 | |
 Heffernan v. City of Paterson Oral Argument, C-SPAN
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Heffernan v. City of Paterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in 2016 concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 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 (Heffernan's mother had wanted a sign, so he was getting one for her). 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 in the third trial.
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 rights had not been violated.
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