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← 635 F.3d 22 - Decotiis v. Whittemore

Decotiis v. Whittemore’s Empirical Analysis

635 F.3d 22 · 2011

Citation profile

66
cited by 66 later decisions
1
states following
May 2025
most recently cited

20 federal appellate · 34 district · 1 state decisions

Relationships

Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))

Relies on Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly · Ashcroft v. Iqbal · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois

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

  1. “whether the employee was commissioned or paid to make the speech in question; the subject matter of the speech; whether the speech was made up the chain of command; whether the employee spoke at her place of employment; whether the speech gave objective observers the impression that the employee represented the employer when she spoke (lending it “official significance”); whether the employee’s speech derived from special knowledge obtained during the course of her employment; and whether there is a so-called citizen analogue to the speech.”
    11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
  2. “'as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern' outweighed [her] employer's interest 'in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees'”
    8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
  3. “attempt[] to 'balance the value of an employee's speech -- both the employee's own interests and the public's interest in the information the employee seeks to impart -- against the employer's legitimate government interest in preventing unnecessary disruptions and inefficiencies in carrying out its public service mission.'”
    2 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.