Antonin Scalia

“ As a law enforcement officer, the Constable obviously has a strong interest in preventing statements by any of his employees approving, or expressing a desire for, serious, violent crimes — regardless of whether the statements actually interfere with office operations at the time they are made or demonstrate character traits that make the speaker unsuitable for law enforcement work. In Connick, we upheld the dismissal of an Assistant District Attorney for circulating among her coworkers a questionnaire implicitly criticizing her superiors. ”

“ A statement [p398] lying so near the category of completely unprotected speech cannot fairly be viewed as lying within the "heart" of the First Amendment's protection; it lies within that category of speech that can neither be characterized as speech on matters of public concern nor properly subject to criminal penalties, see Connick, supra, at 147. Once McPherson stopped explicitly criticizing the President's policies and expressed a desire that he be assassinated, she crossed the line. ”

“ In sum, since Constable Rankin's interest in maintaining both an esprit de corps and a public image consistent with his office's law enforcement duties outweighs any interest his employees may have in expressing on the job a desire that the President be killed, even assuming that such an expression addresses a matter of public concern, it is not protected by the First Amendment from suppression. ”

“ But he assuredly found that, whether McPherson later said she meant it or not, and whether she even meant it at the time or not, the idea she expressed was not just an exaggerated expression of her disapproval for the President's policies, but a voicing of the hope that, next time, the President would be killed. ”

“ We have, however, recognized that the government's power as an employer to make hiring and firing decisions on the basis of what its employees and prospective employees say has a much greater scope than its power to regulate expression by the general public. ”

“ Those criticisms merely reveal the speaker's motive for expressing the desire that the next attempt on the President's life succeed, in the same way that [p397] a political assassin's remarks to his victim before pulling the trigger might reveal a motive for that crime. ”

“ That McPherson's statement does not constitute speech on a matter of "public concern" is demonstrated by comparing it with statements that have been found to fit that description in prior decisions involving public employees. McPherson's statement is a far cry from the question by the Assistant District Attorney in Connick whether her coworkers "ever [felt] pressured to work in political campaigns," Connick, 461 U.S. at 149 ”