HEFFERNAN v. CITY OF PATERSON

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

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 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 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 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.