Garcetti v. Ceballos

Garcetti v. Ceballos
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 12, 2005 Reargued March 21, 2006 Decided May 30, 2006
Full case name	Gil Garcetti, Frank Sundstedt, Carol Najera, and County of Los Angeles v. Richard Ceballos
Docket no.	04-473
Citations	547 U.S. 410 (more) 126 S. Ct. 1951; 164 L. Ed. 2d 689; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 4341; 74 U.S.L.W. 4257; 152 Lab. Cas. (CCH) ¶ 60,203; 87 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 42,353; 24 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 737
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Summary judgment granted to defendants, Ceballos v. Garcetti, No. 00-cv-11106, 2002 WL 34098285 (C.D. Cal. January 30, 2002); reversed, 361 F.3d 1168 (9th Cir. 2004); cert. granted, 543 U.S. 1186 (2005).
Holding
Statements made by public employees pursuant to their official duties are not protected by the First Amendment from employer discipline.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito
Dissent	Stevens
Dissent	Souter, joined by Stevens, Ginsburg
Dissent	Breyer
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), is a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving First Amendment free speech protections for government employees. The plaintiff in the case was a district attorney who claimed that he had been passed up for a promotion for criticizing the legitimacy of a warrant. The Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that because his statements were made pursuant to his position as a public employee, rather than as a private citizen, his speech had no First Amendment protection.^[1]