McMullan v. Thornburgh’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 1 district ·
Relationships
Relies on Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Elrod v. Burns · Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Washington v. Davis
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Initially, in this case, the burden was properly placed upon respondent to show that his conduct was constitutionally protected, and that this conduct was a ‘substantial factor’— or to put it in other words, that it was a ‘motivating factor’ in the Board’s decision not to rehire. Respondent having carried that burden, however, the District Court should have gone on to determine whether the Board had shown by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision as to respondent’s reemployment even in the absence of the protected conduct.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he possibility that those persons are not employees within the contemplation of Elrod and Branti is not something which has been pressed by defense counsel....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Horn v. Kean
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.