Gorum v. Sessoms’s Empirical Analysis
561 F.3d 179 · 2009
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 72 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably Burton v. Teleflex Inc. (2013), Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (2011)
14 federal appellate · 3 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Pennsylvania Eastern District Court)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1331
Relies on Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Connick v. Myers · Garcetti v. Ceballos · Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc.
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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) in making it, the employee spoke as a citizen, (2) the statement involved a matter of public concern, and (3) the government employer did not have 'an adequate justification for treating the employee differently from any other member of the general public' as a result of the statement he made.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The Supreme Court in Garcetti held that 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. The Court explicitly did not decide whether this analysis would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to teaching. Thus, we continue to apply the Pickering-Con-nick standard ... to this appeal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“There is some argument that expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction implicates additional constitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the analysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.”
1 later decision 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.