There is discussion in other threads that racist cops have a 1st amendment right to be racist and this is true. Any and all racists in this country cannot and should not be arrested or fined for being racists. However it is clear that this protection does not mean that the government agency they work for cannot fire them. In fact they can and should. This has been proven time and again and court cases have shown this. Now some foolishness that the 1st amendment protects you from consequences if the employer is the government has roots in reality. Someone who, in the course of their work, learns something about the government that has a public interest and speaks about it cannot be fired for such, most of the time. However being a jackass can get you fired. One case is the famous Pickering vs. Board of Education held that a teacher's speech was protected because it had public importance. Pickering set a standard that has been used later. It allowed the teacher to be free of retaliation for being critical of his bosses. However it did look at the speech as that of a private citizen petitioning the government. A later ruling Garcetti vs. Ceballos clarified that in some cases the 1st amendment is not applicable because it was speech in the actions of their work. The court said that restricting such speech, which "owes its existence to a public employee's professional responsibilities," did not in the Court's view violate any rights that the employee had as a private citizen. Instead, the restrictions were simply the control an employer exercised "over what the employer itself has commissioned or created." The argument was about an ADA who was passed over for promotion, in part, because she criticized the validity of an affidavit for a warrant. So the Locurato case in the 2nd circuit brings up an interesting question. The NYPD fired a police officer (Locurato) and some firefighters for participating in a racist float in a parade, and they sued. At the 2nd Circuit the Pickering standard was applied. The court said that employers can punish otherwise protected speech if the employer reasonably believes it will disrupt the workings of the agency. And applying that principle, it ultimately concluded that Locurto and the two firefighters also on the float could be fired for their off-duty speech: This standard applies to the Ft. Lauderdale police, Ferguson, and has been used numerous times to defend firing people for bigoted or other harmful statements while working in a publicly funded job. There are other cases to clarify but I wanted to help people understand that even if you work for the government the 1st amendment is not a blanket that covers you in all cases.
