GIVHAN v. WESTERN LINE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL DISTRICT et al.

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

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 the government can prohibit federal employees from receiving compensation for writing and speaking about matters not related to their employment.

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 promotion, transfer, recall, and hiring decisions involving low-level public employees may be constitutionally based on party affiliation and support.

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."

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 the Bar, acting with state authorization, constitutionally may discipline a lawyer for soliciting clients in person, for pecuniary gain, under circumstances likely to pose dangers that the State has a right to prevent.

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 a Florida ordinance making it a public nuisance and a punishable offense for a drive-in movie theater to exhibit films containing nudity, when the screen is visible from a public street or place, violates the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech and expression.

Whether a city-owned placard on the side of a city bus, which has been opened for commericial advertising use but not political advertising, is a public forum.

Whether a state may punish speech that is not part of “narrowly limited classes of speech” outside First Amendment protection (such as incitement, obscenity, or fighting words), and whether advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future period qualifies as incitement.

Whether the respondents lack of a contractual or tenure right to reemployment, taken alone, defeats his claim that the non-renewal of his contract violated the First Amendment and whether the college refused to renew the teaching contract based on a impermissible basisas a reprisal for the exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

Whether arresting someone for wearing a jacket that says “Fuck the Draft” under a California statute which prohibits “offensive conduct” violated the First Amendment.

Whether a statute under which an individual can require a mailer to stop all future mailings that the person "believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative" violates the mailer's rights of free speech and due process.

Whether a teacher's dismissal by the Board of Education for publishing a letter in a newspaper critical of the Board's allocation of funds violated his freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

Whether a "Green River Ordiance" which bans the soliciting of individuals on their property without their consent violates the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment freedom of speech rights of magazine solicitors.

Whether a city ordinance which prescribes no appropriate standard for administrative action and gives an administrative official discretionary power to control in advance the right of citizens to speak on religious matters on the city streets is invalid under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.