Pappas v. Giuliani

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Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2002), is a case in which the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit states that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was not violated where a police officer was dismissed for sending political material racial offensive from his home.

Video Pappas v. Giuliani

Fact

Thomas Pappas was dismissed by the New York City Police Department for anonymously sending letters from his home racist political material to political groups and others who had asked him for donations. Pappas was fired for submitting material. The Court of Appeal stated that the Police Department's actions did not infringe on the rights of the Plaintiff's Pappas under the First Amendment.

Maps Pappas v. Giuliani

The majority opinion

Judge Pierre N. Leval, with Judge Colleen McMahon agreeing, found the shooting of Pappas permitted under the Pickering test. The views expressed by Pappas, the findings held, could undermine the effectiveness of the department. They further stated that, although he sent anonymously, the submission of the material sought to publicize his views. They quote Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the case of McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, "A policeman may have a constitutional right to [declare his mind], but he has no constitutional right to be a cop."

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Sotomayor disagree opinion

Sonia Sotomayor disagrees with the majority decision to provide a summary assessment to the police department. Although Sotomayor admits that his speech was "blatantly offensive, hateful, and insulting," he warned the majority of "clarifying more than three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of the First Amendment's freedom in our lives simply because it was confronted with the speech it disliked."

Sotomayor argues that the precedent of the Supreme Court requires the court to consider not only the NYPD mission and public relations but also that Pappas is neither a policymaker nor a policeman who is pounding. In addition, Pappas's speech is anonymous, "going [rings] from the office at [time]." He expressed his sympathy for "NYPD concerns about race relations in society," which he described as "very poignant," but at the same time stressed that the NYPD has substantially contributed to the problem by disclosing the results of its investigations into racist letters to the public. Ultimately, he concludes, the issue of NYPD race relations "is so removed from the effective functioning of the public employers that they can not win over the right to free speech from public employees."

src: www.cbr.com

See also

• New York Police Department corruption and violation
• Employment discrimination laws in the United States

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Note

Source of the article : Wikipedia