On April 26, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Heffernan v City of Paterson, New Jersey, 14-1280. By a vote of 6-2, the Court ruled that a policeman who was demoted because he was seen holding a campaign sign for a candidate for Mayor is entitled to damages. It was already settled law that government employees cannot be demoted, fired, or denied promotion, just because of their political activities, unless they are in policy-making decisions or work closely with policy-making officials.
But in this case, the policeman had not actually been campaigning for any candidate for Mayor. He was merely delivering a campaign sign to his bedridden mother, who wanted to put the sign in her lawn. The lower courts denied any relief for the policeman, on the theory that while he may have been protected if he had been engaging in campaigning, in this case he wasn’t campaigning. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and said even if he wasn’t campaigning, the fact that he was demoted because he was thought to be campaigning also entitles him to relief. See this story.
A curiosity is that the demotion occurred in 2005, and the district court decision happened in 2014. What happened in between?
The SCOTUS morons continue to screw up.
1. Differences between intentional and negligent illegal actions or omissions — 4 possibilities — esp. for the severity of the remedy — i.e. PUNITIVE damages and ordinary damages.
2. 42 USC Sec. 1983 — *under color of [a facially UNCONSTITUTIONAL] law — think the facial UNCONSTITUTIONAL laws, etc. in the 1861-1865 so-called Confederate States regimes.
3. Separate stuff if the govt hack is NOT enforcing any such UNCONSTITUTIONAL law.
what amazed me about this case is that apparently he was demoted without any sort of hearing or even being able to explain what he was doing. He was seen by a colleague who must of then went runing back to the office to tell the boss. No doubt there was some sort of cheering about how ‘we got the SOB’ and the next day he was demoted.
He wasn’t activly campaigning for a candidate (or againt another) all he was doing was collecting a lawn sign for his disabled mother yet somehow that was enough to ‘punish’ him.
There is obviously a lot more to this case which to me is really one of a vendetta.
SCOTUS ruled correctly but it should never have had to have got that far.