Garcetti v. Ceballos’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
1,011 federal appellate · 557 district · 173 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,066 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture (2008), Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. (2007)
1,011 federal appellate · 557 district · 173 state decisions — followed in 29 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
reviewedCeballos v. Garcetti (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act)) · 5 U.S.C. § 2302
Relies on Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Brady v. State of Maryland · Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics · Farmer v. Brennan · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois
Cited together with Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Connick v. Myers · Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly · Rankin v. McPherson
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 4,066 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“whether the relevant government entity had an adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public.”
178 later decisions quote this exact passage“when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The proper inquiry is a practical one. Formal job descriptions often bear little resemblance to the duties an employee actually is expected to perform, and the listing of a given task in an employee’s written job description is neither necessary nor sufficient to demonstrate that conducting the task is within the scope of the employee’s professional duties for First Amendment purposes.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.