In this, our 200th column, we report on a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in which the court upheld the firing of an administrative police officer based on his anonymous mailing of racist and anti-Semitic materials to charitable organizations that solicited donations from him.
In Pappas v. Giuliani,[1]� a sharply divided Second Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Pierre N. Leval, upheld the district court’s grant of summary judgment dismissing the officer’s claim that his termination from the New York City Police Department infringed his rights under the First Amendment. The court reasoned that because a police department cannot function effectively without public perception that it enforces the law in an unbiased manner, the state’s interest in promoting the efficiency of its services outweighs the officer’s interest as a citizen in commenting on matters of public concern. Judge Colleen McMahon (United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sitting by designation) filed a separate concurring opinion reasoning that the court need not reach this balancing analysis because the officer’s mailings did not constitute speech on a matter of public concern. Judge Sonia Sotomayor filed a strong dissent.
