Connick v. Myers’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
3,787 federal appellate · 1,426 district · 1,091 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 11,188 later decisions (80 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc. (1984), Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006)
3,787 federal appellate · 1,426 district · 1,091 state decisions — followed in 47 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedBurnside v. Byars (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Perry v. Sindermann
Cited together with Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Rankin v. McPherson · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Givhan v. Western Line Consolidated School District
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 11,188 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Whether an employee's speech addresses a matter of public concern must be determined by the content, form, and context of a given statement, as revealed by the whole record.”
942 later decisions quote this exact passage“The inquiry into the protected status of speech is one of law, not fact.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“right to protest racial discrimination [involved] a matter inherently of public concern”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.