Wagner v. Wheeler’s Empirical Analysis
13 F.3d 86 · 1993
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently April 2023 · most notably Hughes v. Bedsole (1995), Spiegla v. Hull (2004)
19 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1367 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corporation · United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs · Mitchell v. Forsyth · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he initial burden lies with the plaintiff, who must show that [their] protected expression was a ‘substantial’ or ‘motivating’ factor in the employer’s decision to terminate him_If the-plaintiff successfully makes that showing, the defendant still may avoid liability if he can show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the decision to terminate the plaintiff would have been made even in the absence of the protected expression, more simply, the protected speech was not the but for cause of the termination.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Plaintiffs asserting such First Amendment retaliation] ... claims must establish three elements to state a claim under § 1983:(1) that the expressions which are alleged to have provoked the retaliatory action relate to matters of public concern, (2) that the alleged retaliatory action deprived him of some valuable benefit; and (3) that there was a causal relationship between the protected expression and the retaliatory action.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]emporal proximity ... is simply too slender a reed on which to rest a Section 1983 retaliatory discharge claim.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.