Police Officers’ First Amendment Rights

Police Officers’ First Amendment Rights

RC Phillips, DDA (Ret.)
October, 2021

Moser v. City of Las Vegas (Jan. 12, 2021) 984 F.3rd 900

McAuliffe vs. City of New Bedford (1892) 155 Mass. 216

A policeman did not have a constitutional right to his job, and his removal for violation of a police regulation was permissible because the city employing him had the right to enforce reasonable regulations on offices within the city's control.

In Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) 391 U.S. 563, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that public-sector employees did not totally relinquish their First Amendment rights at the door.  

The test has two parts:

1. When a speech case makes its way into a court of the law, the first question to be asked is, “Is the speech on a matter of public concern ” However, the court failed to accurately define what was in fact a matter of public concern, and several Supreme Court rulings that followed struggled to clarify. Initially, public concern was defined as “any matter of political, social or other concern to the community.” Eventually, the definition narrowed to focus on the question, is the speech a “subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public at the time of the publication ” As you ....

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