Cynthia Waters, et al. v. Cheryl R. Churchill, et al. (511 U.S. 661)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 31, 1994 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 511 U.S. 661 · 114 S. Ct. 1878
- Decided
- May 31, 1994
- Term
- October Term 1993
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join. In Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138 (1983), we set forth a test for determining whether speech by a government employee may, consistently with the First Amendment, serve as a basis for disciplining or discharging that employee. In this case, we decide whether the Connick test should be applied to what the government employer thought was said, or to what the trier of fact ultimately determines to have been said. I This case arises out- of a conversation that respondent Cheryl Churchill had on January 16, 1987, with Melanie Perkins-Graham. Both Churchill and Perkins-Graham were nurses working at McDonough District Hospital; Churchill was in the obstetrics department, and Perkins-Graham was considering transferring to that department. The conversation took place at work during a dinner break. Petitioners heard about it and fired Churchill, allegedly because of it. There is, however, a dispute about what Churchill actually said, and therefore about whether petitioners were constitutionally permitted to fire Churchill for her statements. The conversation was overheard in part by two other nurses, Mary Lou Ballew and Jean Welty, and by Dr. Thomas Koch, the clinical head of obstetrics. A few days later, Ballew told Cynthia Waters,…
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