DePree v. Saunders’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

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 83 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “not formally applied Burlington to First Amendment retaliation claims, the interrelation among [three cases “undermining DePree’s assertion that he suffered an actionable adverse employment action,”] 27 yields no “clearly established law” that [Defendant, the university president,] would have known she was violating by revoking DePree’s teaching duties and access to the business school. At most, these cases create a fact issue to whether DePree suffered a material adverse employment action. Similarly, no clearly established law dictated that Saunders could not impose discipline, notwithstanding a few references to De-Pree’s “speech,” in light of the uniform reports about his intimidating and disruptive behavior. In sum, this court cannot conclude that Saunders’s action was objectively unreasonable, “assessed in light of the legal rules that were clearly established at the time it was taken.”.... In First Amendment retaliation cases, “[t]here will rarely be a basis for a prioñ judgment that the termination or discipline of a public employee violated ‘clearly established’ constitutional rights.” [citations omitted]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Jackson v. Texas Southern University

2. “An employee may be joined in an action against a governmental entity in a representative capacity if the act or omission complained of is one for which the governmental entity may be liable, but no employee shall be held personally liable for acts or omissions occurring within the course and scope of the employee’s duties. For the purposes of this chapter an employee shall not be considered as acting within the course and scope of his employment and a governmental entity shall not be liable or be considered to have waived immunity for any conduct of its employee if the employee’s conduct constituted fraud, malice, libel, slander, defamation or any criminal offense.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 901 F. Supp. 2d 761 - Chu v. Mississippi State University