Smith v. Frye’s Empirical Analysis
488 F.3d 263 · 2007
Citation profile
8 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2025
8 federal appellate ·
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
Relies on Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife · Anderson v. Creighton · Warth v. Seldin · Younger v. Harris
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Ms. Smith argues that the district court erred in relying upon cases involving allegedly retaliatory actions taken against public employees based on the content of their speech rather than on cases addressing public employees’ associational rights. Indeed, the district court concluded that because Ms. Smith does not allege she said or did anything in support of her son’s candidacy (i.e., she does not allege she exercised First Amendment rights) that her claim failed as a matter of law. In reaching this result, the district court applied the so-called McVey test, our circuit’s three-prong test to determine if a retaliatory employment action violates an employee’s First Amendment rights. Because the first prong of the McVey test requires that the “public employee ... have spoken out as a citizen ... on a matter of public concern,” [ ] the district court found Ms. Smith’s claim failed because she had not spoken or expressed herself in any way. We find no error in the district court’s analysis on this issue, but we agree with Ms. Smith that we must also review the claim that her firing violated her First Amendment associational rights.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact” — an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) “actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical.’ ” Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of — the injury has to be “fairly ... trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not ... th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to merely “speculative,” that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“This may be an unfair reason for firing Ms. Smith but, because she was an at-will employee, Judge Frye could fire her for no reason or any reason at all — except an unlawful reason. I believe that she has alleged facts sufficient to make out a claim that the firing was unlawful; but given the dearth of authority to that effect, I cannot conclude that Judge Fiye was on “fair notice” of this. As such, Judge Frye is entitled to qualified immunity.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.