Tanner v. McCall’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 1 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently September 1994
8 federal appellate · 1 district · 2 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. · Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Perry v. Sindermann · Buckley v. Valeo
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the present case, plaintiffs have the burden to show, both ultimately on the merits, and prima facie on their preliminary injunction motion, that they were not continued in their jobs because of political discrimination. However, plaintiffs have not met their burden. Defendant has indicated that he did not know or consider the political allegiances of plaintiffs or any other employees of the sheriff’s department when he decided to retain some and replace others. Deposition at 41, 55, 63. Although plaintiffs supported the candidacy of the incumbent sheriff, so did many other employees, who were retained by defendant. Hence, the fact of plaintiffs’ uniform political support alone cannot show any infringement of their First' Amendment freedoms by defendant. Far from showing anything additional, plaintiffs have indicated that defendant did not inquire, and discouraged voluntary statements, about their political stances in the preceding election. The Court concludes that plaintiffs have not met their burden to show a prima facie case of politically discriminatory animus by defendant. Furthermore, even if plaintiffs had demonstrated a prima facie case of political discrimination in defendant’s decision not to continue their employment, they would need to show more in order to prevail. Plaintiffs must show that any impermissible infringement of protected First Amendment freedoms (such as political beliefs, expression, and association) was the primary and dominant cause of their t”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Tanner v. McCall
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.