A five-member majority of the Supreme Court ruled recently that a Los Angels assistant district attorney’s First Amendment rights were not violated with he allegedly was demoted and transferred following a dispute with his supervisors about the handling of a case.
Richard Ceballos, a calendar attorney in the Pamona, CA, D.A.’s office, told his supervisors that a deputy sheriff had embellished an affidavit to get a search warrant relating to a pending case and recommend that it be thrown out, according to the opinion.
After a “heated” meeting with the defense, prosecution, Ceballos and his supervisors, the case went ahead and Ceballos broke rank by testifying that the sheriff’s affidavit rested on misrepresentations.
He was later demoted and transferred to a court branch farther from his home, and filed the complaint that wound up before the high court that has become the latest in a series of rulings that have reverberations for the question of whistleblower protections for federal employees.
The court held that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.
