Herbert v. PDC’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[t]he internal mail and computer systems exist to facilitate communication between teachers to ensure efficient sharing of information, and the restrictions on their use do not eliminate or obstruct that purpose — except to prohibit any use that would constitute political advocacy. The statute was enacted to ensure that public resources are not used to provide advantages to a particular candidate or ballot measure, and the restriction on the use of school systems furthers that purpose.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Knudsen v. Washington State Executive Ethics Board · Knudsen v. WASH. STATE EXECUTIVE ETHICS BD.

2. “While it is true that [appellant's] hypothetical union newsletter containing both political and nonpolitical messages could not be delivered by a school employee through the internal mailbox system, nothing prohibits the union from separating the messages. A union newsletter containing nonpolitical messages could still be distributed through internal mail, while political messages could be distributed via, for example, United States mail or in a staff room during nonwork hours.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 154 Cal. App. 4th 866 - San Leandro Teachers Ass'n v. Governing Bd.

3. “[T]he goal of the statute is to prohibit public employees from using public resources to distribute political messages; the speech itself could be distributed by another means (such as the United States Postal Service). Thus, the* speech itself is not chilled by the statute, but only the use of the public facilities by public employees to deliver that speech. The statute as applied carefully delineates speech that uses public facilities and all other types of speech.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 154 Cal. App. 4th 866 - San Leandro Teachers Ass'n v. Governing Bd.