PICKERING v. BOARD OF EDUCATION

Heffernan v. City of Paterson is a 2016 Supreme Court case involving the First Amendment rights of public employees.

Does the 1st Amendment protect a public employee’s subpoenaed trial testimony that was not a part of the employee’s ordinary job responsibilities?

Does the First Amendment protect the speech of a deputy district attorney who wrote and circulated a memorandum suggesting that a deputy sheriff lied in a search warrant affidavit and in his subsequent testimony at court?

Whether a permanent injunction as a remedy in a defamation action, preventing all future speech about an admitted public figure, violates the First Amendment.

Whether government retaliation against a contractor or regular provider of services for the exercise of rights of political association or allegiance violates the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Whether First Amendment prohibits government officials from terminating a contract with an independent contractor because of the contractor's speech.

Whether a federal statute prohibiting government employees from accepting any compensation for making speeches violates the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

Whether a public employee may be fired for her speech even though one version of what she said indicates that her speech was of public concern.

Whether a journalist's deliberate alteration of a public figure's spoken words "inside quotation marks" constitutes "actual malice" under the First Amendment

Whether the First Amendment prohibition against political patronage dismissals for public employees extends to other non-civil-service public employment decisions.

Whether the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause creates a special "opinion" privilege that restricts the application of state libel laws.

Can a public figure recover damages for emotional distress because of an offensive parody?

Whether a clerical employee in a county Constable's office was properly discharged for remarking, after hearing of an attempt on the life of the President: "If they go for him again, I hope they get him."

Can a court, in the context of a summary judgment request, award summary judgment in a libel action if the moving party had no evidence that a reasonable jury might disbelieve its opponent's claim?

Does the First Amendment require a private individual suing a newspaper for defamation involving a matter of public concern to prove that the allegedly defamatory statements are false, or can the law place the burden on the newspaper to prove that its statements are true?

Was Consumer Union's article written with "actual malice," thereby placing it outside the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections?

Whether the First Amendment prevents the discharge of a state employee for circulating a questionnaire concerning internal office affairs.

Whether the First Amendment protects an assistant public defender who is satisfactorily performing his job from discharge solely because of his political beliefs.

Whether a public employee forfeits his or her 1st Amendment protection against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech when he arranges to communicate privately with his employer rather than to express his views publicly.

Whether a teacher whose contract was not renewed after several speech-related incidents had his First Amendment rights violated.

Whether the discharge of a non-civil-service employee of a sheriff's department for not being affiliated with the Democratic party was a violation of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Whether the First Amendment requires a private individual who is libeled to meet the strict "actual malice" standard of proof to prevail in a defamation suit against a publisher.

Whether a Florida statute that afforded a right to reply to personal attacks on political candidates by newspapers violated the First Amendment.

Whether a non-tenured public college professor's lack of formal tenure or a contractual right to re-employment, by itself, defeats a claim that his contract non-renewal violated his First Amendment rights and whether he was entitled to procedural due process.

Whether libel standards established for public officials in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan also apply to public figures who are not public officials?

Whether libel standards established for public officials in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan also apply to public figures who are not public officials?

Are the provisions of New York's Civil Service Law requiring public servants to formally renounce Communism so overly broad and vague that they are unconstitutional?

Whether a newspaper column asking a series of questions that could be read as defamatory is protected by the First Amendment, as articulated by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).

Whether the freedom of speech provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect a criminal suspect who makes a false statement about a police officer without "actual malice."

Whether Alabama's libel laws unconstitutionally infringed on the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press protections.

Whether a Louisiana statute which compels teachers in public institutions to disclose which organizations they belong or contribute to unconstitutionally burdens a teachers 14th Amendment right of free association.

Whether the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities inquiry into petitioners past or present membership in the Communist Party violated the First Amendment.

Sweezy v. New Hampshire is a landmark Supreme Court case that addressed the balance between state power and academic freedom under the Constitution.

Whether a state loyalty oath violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Whether the distribution of a racist leaflet, in violation of a state criminal libel statute, was protected under the First Amendment.

Whether a state public nuisance law that allowed courts to prevent the future publication of "malicious, scandalous and defamatory" newspapers violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments as an unconstitutional prior restraint.