Waters v. Chaffin’s Empirical Analysis
684 F.2d 833 · 1982
Citation profile
43 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 97 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Egger v. Phillips (1983), Melton v. City of Oklahoma City (1989)
43 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 1343 · 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Broadrick v. Oklahoma · Grayned v. City of Rockford
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 97 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he state has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee] as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the state, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the actual words [Morales] spoke cannot be said to be valuable to the public at large, the first amendment's protections do not turn on the social worth of the statements. ...”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The employee has the initial burden of demonstrating that his speech was constitutionally protected and was a substantial or motivating factor in the decision to discipline him. If the employee meets this twin burden, the burden of proof shifts to the government to show by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have reached the same decision to discipline the employee in the absence of the protected speech.””
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.