Click v. Copeland’s Empirical Analysis
970 F.2d 106 · 1992
Citation profile
68 federal appellate · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably Hunt v. Rapides Healthcare System, LLC (2001), Dill v. City of Edmond (1998)
68 federal appellate · 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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Creighton · Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle · Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School District 205 Will County Illinois · Perry v. Sindermann · Connick v. Myers
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the degree to which the employee's activity involved a matter of public concern; (2) the time, place, and manner of the employee's activity; (3) whether close working relationships are essential to fulfilling the employee's public responsibilities and the potential effect of the employee's activity on those relationships; (4) whether the employee's activity may be characterized as hostile, abusive, or insubordinate; (5) whether the activity impairs discipline by superiors or harmony among coworkers.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Moore v. Smith · Murphy v. Butler“'[T]he question is not whether the law was settled, viewed abstractly, but whether, measured by an objective standard, a reasonable [official] would know that his action was illegal.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“At one end of the spectrum were Elrod [v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 , 96 S.Ct. 2673 , 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976) ] and Branti, [v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 , 100 S.Ct. 1287 , 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980) ] where little weighing was necessary because “no countervailing considerations” appeared against the employees’ right to believe as they chose. At the other end lay Ferguson v. Thomas, 430 F.2d 852 (5th Cir.1970), and Duke v. North Texas State Univ., 469 F.2d 829 (5th Cir.1972), “where instructors had incited student disturbances that were sufficiently serious to call in question the ability of academic authorities to maintain order on campus.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Murphy v. Butler · Steadman
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.