Whistleblower Shot Down by Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court lined up behind the government and against individual rights in a whistleblower case that is sure to chill employee disclosure of government wrong doing. Respondent in the case, Ceballos, was a supervising deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County. Ceballos was asked by a defense lawyer to review a questionable affidavit supporting a search warrant. Ceballos determined that there were serious misrepresentations in the affidavit by the officer signing it and recommended dismissal of the criminal action in a memo to his superiors. The case was not dismissed and Ceballos later filed this lawsuit alleging retaliation against him by his employer for his exercising his First Amendment rights in drafting the memo against the apparent perjury to obtain a warrant.



This was a split decision with the votes lined up as expected. Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. The high Court reversed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which had reversed the District Court which had granted summary judgment to the county and dismissed the lawsuit. The Ninth Circuit relied upon precendent which held that public employees who speak out in the employment setting but on an issue of public relevance and import. The Ninth Circuit found that the reporting of governmental misconduct (the bogus affidavit) was "a matter of inherently public concern" where the speech is entitled to First Amendment protection.

The Supreme Court found that the fact that Ceballos spoke as a prosecutor fulfilling a responsibility to advise his supervisor about how best to proceed with a pending case -- distinguishes Ceballos' case from those in which the First Amendment provides protection against discipline. Thus, when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.

The upshot is that when a government employee does his/her job and contests illegal government activity that employee will be subject to whatever retaliatory measures the government can think up, including termination. In this era of government secrecy and the necessity of its employees to be willing to lay it on the line for the public good, the good of the democracy, which relies necessarily on a transparent government, secrecy is likely to increase along with government wrong doing. Considering the result was the issuance of an unlawful criminal search warrant which resulted in an individual's loss of freedom, we just lost an important weapon in our own fight for freedom.



Related News Links:
www.law.cornell.edu
www.firstamendmentcenter.org
www.law.duke.edu
www.citizen.org

[edit on 1-6-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

This has also been reported in this ATSNN story:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think we both reported on this story on May 30th but my article was held up for perceived bias. No bigee, as long as the word gets out there.