The Mayor and the First Amendment Lawsuit

Many residents of Bay Village may not know that the second highest court in the country (the U.S. Court of Appeals, which sits under the Supreme Court) held that Mayor Sutherland may well have violated the First Amendment in suspending a fire fighter who publicly criticized her in a council meeting.  Here are two online summaries of the case -- summary 1 and summary 2 -- and the actual opinion is posted in its entirety here. 

In this case, decided in 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals held unanimously that the fire fighter’s claim against Mayor Sutherland deserved to go to trial.  Specifically, the firefighter made a strong legal case that his fundamental right to free speech was violated when she suspended him after he raised criticisms about whether the public’s safety was being adequately protected by the City after the tragic drowning of a young boy off the Bay Village coast.  After the Court of Appeals sent the case back for a full trial on this First Amendment violation in 2011, Mayor Sutherland settled the case.  (It isn’t clear how much Sutherland paid to settle, nor whether the money came from tax coffers…..  This isn’t to suggest this litigation was supported by residents’ dollars – the information just isn’t available to illuminate these questions).

Our nation’s Bill of Rights makes it clear that government officials cannot penalize employees who, in their capacity as citizens, raise questions or voice criticisms against the government.  If this kind of retaliation were allowed, then those who work for the government as civil servants would be turning over their right to speak freely as citizens; exactly the kind of tyranny that our founding fathers and revolutionary heroes worked so hard to fight against.   What is even worse, if mayors and other government officials can threaten employees with the loss of their jobs every time they raise questions about their leadership in their capacity as citizens, then government officials could bully employees into silence and control the information that reaches the public.

I suspect that few Mayors in the country have this kind of negative line on their political resumes – a unanimous opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals holding they may have violated the U.S. Constitution in their treatment of City employees.  At the very least, Bay Village residents should know about this important First Amendment case in deciding how to cast their votes next week.