GARCETTI et al. v. CEBALLOS

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GARCETTI et al. v. CEBALLOS
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the ninth circuit
No. 04–473. Argued October 12, 2005—Reargued March 21, 2006—
Decided May 30, 2006
Respondent Ceballos, a supervising deputy district attorney, was asked
by defense counsel to review a case in which, counsel claimed, the affi
davit police used to obtain a critical search warrant was inaccurate.
Concluding after the review that the affidavit made serious misrepre
sentations, Ceballos relayed his findings to his supervisors, petitioners
here, and followed up with a disposition memorandum recommending
dismissal. Petitioners nevertheless proceeded with the prosecution.
At a hearing on a defense motion to challenge the warrant, Ceballos
recounted his observations about the affidavit, but the trial court re
jected the challenge. Claiming that petitioners then retaliated against
him for his memo in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments,
Ceballos filed a 42 U. S. C. § 1983 suit. The District Court granted peti
tioners summary judgment, ruling, inter alia, that the memo was not
protected speech because Ceballos wrote it pursuant to his employment
duties. Reversing, the Ninth Circuit held that the memo’s allegations
were protected under the First Amendment analysis in Pickering v.
Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S.
563, and Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138.
Held: When public employees make statements pursuant to their official
duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes,
and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from em
ployer discipline. Pp. 417–426.
(a) Two inquiries guide interpretation of the constitutional protec
tions accorded public employee speech. The first requires determining
whether the employee spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern.
See Pickering, supra, at 568. If the answer is no, the employee has no
First Amendment cause of action based on the employer’s reaction to
the speech. See Connick, supra, at 147. If the answer is yes, the pos
sibility of a First Amendment claim arises. The question becomes
whether the government employer had an adequate justification for
treating the employee differently from any other member of the general
public. See Pickering, supra, at 568. This consideration reflects the
importance of the relationship between the speaker’s expressions and
employment. Without a significant degree of control over its employ

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ees’ words and actions, a government employer would have little chance
to provide public services efficiently. Cf. Connick, supra, at 143.
Thus, a government entity has broader discretion to restrict speech
when it acts in its employer role, but the restrictions it imposes must
be directed at speech that has some potential to affect its operations.
On the other hand, a citizen who works for the government is nonethe
less still a citizen. The First Amendment limits a public employer’s
ability to leverage the employment relationship to restrict, incidentally
or intentionally, the liberties employees enjoy in their capacities as pri
vate citizens. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593, 597. So long
as employees are speaking as citizens about matters of public concern,
they must face only those speech restrictions that are necessary for
their employers to operate efficiently and effectively. See, e. g., Con
nick, supra, at 147. Pp. 417–420.
(b) Proper application of the Court’s precedents leads to the conclu
sion that the First Amendment does not prohibit managerial discipline
based on an employee’s expressions made pursuant to official responsi
bilities. Because Ceballos’ memo falls into this category, his allegation
of unconstitutional retaliation must fail. The dispositive factor here is
not that Ceballos expressed his views inside his office, rather than pub
licly, see, e. g., Givhan v. Western Line Consol. School Dist., 439 U. S.
410, 414, nor that the memo concerned the subject matter of his employ
ment, see, e. g., Pickering, supra, at 573. Rather, the controlling factor
is that Ceballos’ expressions were made pursuant to his official duties.
That consideration distinguishes this case from those in which the First
Amendment provides protection against discipline. Ceballos wrote his
disposition memo because that is part of what he was employed to do.
He did not act as a citizen by writing it. The fact that his duties some
times required him to speak or write does not mean his supervisors
were prohibited from evaluating his performance. Restricting speech
that owes its existence to a public employee’s professional responsibil
ities does not infringe any liberties the employee might have enjoyed
as a private citizen. It simply reflects the exercise of employer con
trol over what the employer itself has commissioned or created.
Cf. Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819,
833. This result is consistent with the Court’s prior emphasis on the
potential societal value of employee speech and on affording government
employers sufficient discretion to manage their operations. Ceballos’
proposed contrary rule, adopted by the Ninth Circuit, would commit
state and federal courts to a new, permanent, and intrusive role, man
dating judicial oversight of communications between and among govern
ment employees and their superiors in the course of official business.
This displacement of managerial discretion by judicial supervision finds

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no support in the Court’s precedents. The doctrinal anomaly the Court
of Appeals perceived in compelling public employers to tolerate certain
employee speech made publicly but not speech made pursuant to an
employee’s assigned duties misconceives the theoretical underpinnings
of this Court’s decisions and is unfounded as a practical matter.
Pp. 420–425.
(c) Exposing governmental inefficiency and misconduct is a matter of
considerable significance, and various measures have been adopted to
protect employees and provide checks on supervisors who would order
unlawful or otherwise inappropriate actions. These include federal and
state whistle-blower protection laws and labor codes and, for govern
ment attorneys, rules of conduct and constitutional obligations apart
from the First Amendment. However, the Court’s precedents do not
support the existence of a constitutional cause of action behind every
statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her
job. Pp. 425–426.
361 F. 3d 1168, reversed and remanded.
Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts,
C. J., and Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a
dissenting opinion, post, p. 426. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in
which Stevens and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, post, p. 427. Breyer, J., filed
a dissenting opinion, post, p. 444.
Cindy S. Lee argued and reargued the cause for petition
ers. With her on the briefs were Jin S. Choi and Doraine
F. Meyer.
Dan Himmelfarb argued, and Deputy Solicitor General
Kneedler reargued, the cause for the United States as ami
cus curiae urging reversal. On the brief were Solicitor
General Clement, Assistant Attorney General Keisler, Mr.
Himmelfarb, William Kanter, Michael E. Robinson, Mark
A. Robbins, Steven E. Abow, and Robin M. Richardson.
Bonnie I. Robin-Vergeer argued and reargued the cause
for respondent. With her on the brief were Scott L. Nelson
and Brian Wolfman.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the International
Municipal Lawyers Association by Gene C. Schaerr, Linda T. Coberly,
Peter Kryn Dykema, and Henry W. Underhill, Jr.; for the National Asso

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Opinion of the Court
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
It is well settled that “a State cannot condition public em
ployment on a basis that infringes the employee’s constitu
tionally protected interest in freedom of expression.” Con
nick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 142 (1983). The question
presented by the instant case is whether the First Amend
ment protects a government employee from discipline based
on speech made pursuant to the employee’s official duties.
I
Respondent Richard Ceballos has been employed since
1989 as a deputy district attorney for the Los Angeles
County District Attorney’s Office. During the period rele
vant to this case, Ceballos was a calendar deputy in the
office’s Pomona branch, and in this capacity he exercised
certain supervisory responsibilities over other lawyers. In
February 2000, a defense attorney contacted Ceballos about
a pending criminal case. The defense attorney said there
were inaccuracies in an affidavit used to obtain a critical
search warrant. The attorney informed Ceballos that he
ciation of Counties et al. by Richard Ruda and James I. Crowley; and for
the National School Boards Association by Naomi Gittins, Julie Under
wood, Lisa Soronen, and Thomas E. Wheeler II.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations by Jona
than P. Hiatt, James B. Coppess, and Laurence Gold; for the Association
of Deputy District Attorneys et al. by Jody Manier Kris; for the Govern
ment Accountability Project et al. by Joanne Royce; for the National Asso
ciation of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by Michael C. Small, Jeffrey
L. Fisher, and Steven R. Shapiro; for the National Treasury Employees
Union by Gregory O’Duden, Elaine D. Kaplan, Barbara A. Atkin, and
Julie Sarah Lehrman; and for the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Pro
tection of Free Expression et al. by J. Joshua Wheeler, Robert M. O’Neil,
Donna R. Euben, and David M. Rabban.
Robert H. Chanin and Jeremiah A. Collins filed a brief for the National
Education Association as amicus curiae.

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had filed a motion to traverse, or challenge, the warrant, but
he also wanted Ceballos to review the case. According to
Ceballos, it was not unusual for defense attorneys to ask cal
endar deputies to investigate aspects of pending cases.
After examining the affidavit and visiting the location it
described, Ceballos determined the affidavit contained seri
ous misrepresentations. The affidavit called a long drive
way what Ceballos thought should have been referred to as
a separate roadway. Ceballos also questioned the affidavit’s
statement that tire tracks led from a stripped-down truck to
the premises covered by the warrant. His doubts arose
from his conclusion that the roadway’s composition in some
places made it difficult or impossible to leave visible tire
tracks.
Ceballos spoke on the telephone to the warrant affiant, a
deputy sheriff from the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s De
partment, but he did not receive a satisfactory explana
tion for the perceived inaccuracies. He relayed his findings
to his supervisors, petitioners Carol Najera and Frank
Sundstedt, and followed up by preparing a disposition memo
randum. The memo explained Ceballos’ concerns and rec
ommended dismissal of the case. On March 2, 2000, Ceballos
submitted the memo to Sundstedt for his review. A few
days later, Ceballos presented Sundstedt with another
memo, this one describing a second telephone conversation
between Ceballos and the warrant affiant.
Based on Ceballos’ statements, a meeting was held to dis
cuss the affidavit. Attendees included Ceballos, Sundstedt,
and Najera, as well as the warrant affiant and other employ
ees from the sheriff ’s department. The meeting allegedly
became heated, with one lieutenant sharply criticizing
Ceballos for his handling of the case.
Despite Ceballos’ concerns, Sundstedt decided to proceed
with the prosecution, pending disposition of the defense
motion to traverse. The trial court held a hearing on the
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his observations about the affidavit, but the trial court re
jected the challenge to the warrant.
Ceballos claims that in the aftermath of these events he
was subjected to a series of retaliatory employment actions.
The actions included reassignment from his calendar deputy
position to a trial deputy position, transfer to another court
house, and denial of a promotion. Ceballos initiated an em
ployment grievance, but the grievance was denied based on
a finding that he had not suffered any retaliation. Unsatis
fied, Ceballos sued in the United States District Court for
the Central District of California, asserting, as relevant here,
a claim under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983. He al
leged petitioners violated the First and Fourteenth Amend
ments by retaliating against him based on his memo of
March 2.
Petitioners responded that no retaliatory actions were
taken against Ceballos and that all the actions of which he
complained were explained by legitimate reasons such as
staffing needs. They further contended that, in any event,
Ceballos’ memo was not protected speech under the First
Amendment. Petitioners moved for summary judgment,
and the District Court granted their motion. Noting that
Ceballos wrote his memo pursuant to his employment duties,
the court concluded he was not entitled to First Amendment
protection for the memo’s contents. It held in the alterna
tive that even if Ceballos’ speech was constitutionally pro
tected, petitioners had qualified immunity because the rights
Ceballos asserted were not clearly established.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, hold
ing that “Ceballos’s allegations of wrongdoing in the memo
randum constitute protected speech under the First Amend
ment. ” 361 F. 3d 1168, 1173 (2004). In reaching its
conclusion the court looked to the First Amendment analysis
set forth in Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High
School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968), and Connick,
supra. Connick instructs courts to begin by considering

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whether the expressions in question were made by the
speaker “as a citizen upon matters of public concern.” See
id., at 146–147. The Court of Appeals determined that
Ceballos’ memo, which recited what he thought to be govern
mental misconduct, was “inherently a matter of public con
cern.” 361 F. 3d, at 1174. The court did not, however, con
sider whether the speech was made in Ceballos’ capacity as
a citizen. Rather, it relied on Circuit precedent rejecting
the idea that “a public employee’s speech is deprived of First
Amendment protection whenever those views are expressed,
to government workers or others, pursuant to an employ
ment responsibility.” Id., at 1174–1175 (citing cases includ
ing Roth v. Veteran’s Admin. of Govt. of United States, 856
F. 2d 1401 (CA9 1988)).
Having concluded that Ceballos’ memo satisfied the
public-concern requirement, the Court of Appeals proceeded
to balance Ceballos’ interest in his speech against his super
visors’ interest in responding to it. See Pickering, supra,
at 568. The court struck the balance in Ceballos’ favor, not
ing that petitioners “failed even to suggest disruption or in
efficiency in the workings of the District Attorney’s Office”
as a result of the memo. See 361 F. 3d, at 1180. The court
further concluded that Ceballos’ First Amendment rights
were clearly established and that petitioners’ actions were
not objectively reasonable. See id., at 1181–1182.
Judge O’Scannlain specially concurred. Agreeing that the
panel’s decision was compelled by Circuit precedent, he nev
ertheless concluded Circuit law should be revisited and over
ruled. See id., at 1185. Judge O’Scannlain emphasized the
distinction “between speech offered by a public employee
acting as an employee carrying out his or her ordinary job
duties and that spoken by an employee acting as a citizen
expressing his or her personal views on disputed matters
of public import.” Id., at 1187. In his view, “when public
employees speak in the course of carrying out their routine,
required employment obligations, they have no personal in

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terest in the content of that speech that gives rise to a First
Amendment right.” Id., at 1189.
We granted certiorari, 543 U. S. 1186 (2005), and we now
reverse.
II
As the Court’s decisions have noted, for many years “the
unchallenged dogma was that a public employee had no right
to object to conditions placed upon the terms of employ
ment—including those which restricted the exercise of con
stitutional rights.” Connick, 461 U. S., at 143. That dogma
has been qualified in important respects. See id., at 144–
145. The Court has made clear that public employees do not
surrender all their First Amendment rights by reason of
their employment. Rather, the First Amendment protects
a public employee’s right, in certain circumstances, to speak
as a citizen addressing matters of public concern. See, e. g.,
Pickering, supra, at 568; Connick, supra, at 147; Rankin v.
McPherson, 483 U. S. 378, 384 (1987); United States v. Treas
ury Employees, 513 U. S. 454, 466 (1995).
Pickering provides a useful starting point in explaining
the Court’s doctrine. There the relevant speech was a
teacher’s letter to a local newspaper addressing issues in
cluding the funding policies of his school board. 391 U. S.,
at 566. “The problem in any case,” the Court stated, “is to
arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, 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.” Id., at 568. The Court found the teacher’s
speech “neither [was] shown nor can be presumed to have in
any way either impeded the teacher’s proper performance of
his daily duties in the classroom or to have interfered with
the regular operation of the schools generally.” Id., at 572–
573 (footnote omitted). Thus, the Court concluded that “the
interest of the school administration in limiting teachers’ op
portunities to contribute to public debate is not significantly

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greater than its interest in limiting a similar contribution by
any member of the general public.” Id., at 573.
Pickering and the cases decided in its wake identify two
inquiries to guide interpretation of the constitutional protec
tions accorded to public employee speech. The first requires
determining whether the employee spoke as a citizen on a
matter of public concern. See id., at 568. If the answer is
no, the employee has no First Amendment cause of action
based on his or her employer’s reaction to the speech. See
Connick, supra, at 147. If the answer is yes, then the possi
bility of a First Amendment claim arises. The question be
comes whether the relevant government entity had an ade
quate justification for treating the employee differently from
any other member of the general public. See Pickering, 391
U. S., at 568. This consideration reflects the importance of
the relationship between the speaker’s expressions and em
ployment. A government entity has broader discretion to
restrict speech when it acts in its role as employer, but the
restrictions it imposes must be directed at speech that has
some potential to affect the entity’s operations.
To be sure, conducting these inquiries sometimes has
proved difficult. This is the necessary product of “the enor
mous variety of fact situations in which critical statements
by teachers and other public employees may be thought by
their superiors . . . to furnish grounds for dismissal.” Id.,
at 569. The Court’s overarching objectives, though, are
evident.
When a citizen enters government service, the citizen by
necessity must accept certain limitations on his or her free
dom. See, e. g., Waters v. Churchill, 511 U. S. 661, 671 (1994)
(plurality opinion) (“[T]he government as employer indeed
has far broader powers than does the government as sov
ereign”). Government employers, like private employers,
need a significant degree of control over their employees’
words and actions; without it, there would be little chance
for the efficient provision of public services. Cf. Connick,

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supra, at 143 (“[G]overnment offices could not function if
every employment decision became a constitutional matter”).
Public employees, moreover, often occupy trusted positions
in society. When they speak out, they can express views
that contravene governmental policies or impair the proper
performance of governmental functions.
At the same time, the Court has recognized that a citizen
who works for the government is nonetheless a citizen. The
First Amendment limits the ability of a public employer to
leverage the employment relationship to restrict, inciden
tally or intentionally, the liberties employees enjoy in their
capacities as private citizens. See Perry v. Sindermann,
408 U. S. 593, 597 (1972). So long as employees are speaking
as citizens about matters of public concern, they must face
only those speech restrictions that are necessary for their
employers to operate efficiently and effectively. See, e. g.,
Connick, supra, at 147 (“Our responsibility is to ensure that
citizens are not deprived of fundamental rights by virtue of
working for the government”).
The Court’s employee-speech jurisprudence protects, of
course, the constitutional rights of public employees. Yet
the First Amendment interests at stake extend beyond the
individual speaker. The Court has acknowledged the impor
tance of promoting the public’s interest in receiving the
well-informed views of government employees engaging in
civic discussion. Pickering again provides an instructive
example. The Court characterized its holding as rejecting
the attempt of school administrators to “limi[t] teachers’ op
portunities to contribute to public debate.” 391 U. S., at
573. It also noted that teachers are “the members of a com
munity most likely to have informed and definite opinions”
about school expenditures. Id., at 572. The Court’s ap
proach acknowledged the necessity for informed, vibrant dia
logue in a democratic society. It suggested, in addition, that
widespread costs may arise when dialogue is repressed.
The Court’s more recent cases have expressed similar con

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cerns. See, e. g., San Diego v. Roe, 543 U. S. 77, 82 (2004)
(per curiam) (“Were [public employees] not able to speak on
[the operation of their employers], the community would be
deprived of informed opinions on important public issues.
The interest at stake is as much the public’s interest in re
ceiving informed opinion as it is the employee’s own right to
disseminate it” (citation omitted)); cf. Treasury Employees,
513 U. S., at 470 (“The large-scale disincentive to Govern
ment employees’ expression also imposes a significant bur
den on the public’s right to read and hear what the employ
ees would otherwise have written and said”).
The Court’s decisions, then, have sought both to promote
the individual and societal interests that are served when
employees speak as citizens on matters of public concern and
to respect the needs of government employers attempting to
perform their important public functions. See, e. g., Ran
kin, 483 U. S., at 384 (recognizing “the dual role of the public
employer as a provider of public services and as a govern
ment entity operating under the constraints of the First
Amendment”). Underlying our cases has been the premise
that while the First Amendment invests public employees
with certain rights, it does not empower them to “consti
tutionalize the employee grievance.” Connick, 461 U. S.,
at 154.
III
With these principles in mind we turn to the instant case.
Respondent Ceballos believed the affidavit used to obtain a
search warrant contained serious misrepresentations. He
conveyed his opinion and recommendation in a memo to his
supervisor. That Ceballos expressed his views inside his of
fice, rather than publicly, is not dispositive. Employees in
some cases may receive First Amendment protection for ex
pressions made at work. See, e. g., Givhan v. Western Line
Consol. School Dist., 439 U. S. 410, 414 (1979). Many citi
zens do much of their talking inside their respective work
places, and it would not serve the goal of treating public

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employees like “any member of the general public,” Picker
ing, 391 U. S., at 573, to hold that all speech within the office
is automatically exposed to restriction.
The memo concerned the subject matter of Ceballos’ em
ployment, but this, too, is nondispositive. The First Amend
ment protects some expressions related to the speaker’s job.
See, e. g., ibid.; Givhan, supra, at 414. As the Court noted
in Pickering: “Teachers are, as a class, the members of a
community most likely to have informed and definite opin
ions as to how funds allotted to the operation of the schools
should be spent. Accordingly, it is essential that they be
able to speak out freely on such questions without fear of
retaliatory dismissal.” 391 U. S., at 572. The same is true
of many other categories of public employees.
The controlling factor in Ceballos’ case is that his expres
sions were made pursuant to his duties as a calendar deputy.
See Brief for Respondent 4 (“Ceballos does not dispute that
he prepared the memorandum ‘pursuant to his duties as a
prosecutor’ ”). That consideration—the fact that Ceballos
spoke as a prosecutor fulfilling a responsibility to advise his
supervisor about how best to proceed with a pending case—
distinguishes Ceballos’ case from those in which the First
Amendment provides protection against discipline. We hold
that when public employees make statements pursuant to
their official duties, the employees are not speaking as
citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitu
tion does not insulate their communications from employer
discipline.
Ceballos wrote his disposition memo because that is part
of what he, as a calendar deputy, was employed to do. It is
immaterial whether he experienced some personal gratifica
tion from writing the memo; his First Amendment rights do
not depend on his job satisfaction. The significant point is
that the memo was written pursuant to Ceballos’ official
duties. Restricting speech that owes its existence to a pub
lic employee’s professional responsibilities does not infringe

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any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a private
citizen. It simply reflects the exercise of employer control
over what the employer itself has commissioned or created.
Cf. Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515
U. S. 819, 833 (1995) (“[W]hen the government appropriates
public funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is
entitled to say what it wishes”). Contrast, for example, the
expressions made by the speaker in Pickering, whose letter
to the newspaper had no official significance and bore similar
ities to letters submitted by numerous citizens every day.
Ceballos did not act as a citizen when he went about con
ducting his daily professional activities, such as supervising
attorneys, investigating charges, and preparing filings. In
the same way he did not speak as a citizen by writing a memo
that addressed the proper disposition of a pending criminal
case. When he went to work and performed the tasks he
was paid to perform, Ceballos acted as a government em
ployee. The fact that his duties sometimes required him to
speak or write does not mean his supervisors were prohib
ited from evaluating his performance.
This result is consistent with our precedents’ attention to
the potential societal value of employee speech. See supra,
at 419–420. Refusing to recognize First Amendment claims
based on government employees’ work product does not pre
vent them from participating in public debate. The em
ployees retain the prospect of constitutional protection for
their contributions to the civic discourse. This prospect of
protection, however, does not invest them with a right to
perform their jobs however they see fit.
Our holding likewise is supported by the emphasis of our
precedents on affording government employers sufficient
discretion to manage their operations. Employers have
heightened interests in controlling speech made by an em
ployee in his or her professional capacity. Official communi
cations have official consequences, creating a need for sub
stantive consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure

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that their employees’ official communications are accurate,
demonstrate sound judgment, and promote the employer’s
mission. Ceballos’ memo is illustrative. It demanded the
attention of his supervisors and led to a heated meeting with
employees from the sheriff ’s department. If Ceballos’ supe
riors thought his memo was inflammatory or misguided, they
had the authority to take proper corrective action.
Ceballos’ proposed contrary rule, adopted by the Court of
Appeals, would commit state and federal courts to a new,
permanent, and intrusive role, mandating judicial oversight
of communications between and among government employ
ees and their superiors in the course of official business.
This displacement of managerial discretion by judicial super
vision finds no support in our precedents. When an em
ployee speaks as a citizen addressing a matter of public
concern, the First Amendment requires a delicate balancing
of the competing interests surrounding the speech and its
consequences. When, however, the employee is simply per
forming his or her job duties, there is no warrant for a simi
lar degree of scrutiny. To hold otherwise would be to de
mand permanent judicial intervention in the conduct of
governmental operations to a degree inconsistent with sound
principles of federalism and the separation of powers.
The Court of Appeals based its holding in part on what it
perceived as a doctrinal anomaly. The court suggested it
would be inconsistent to compel public employers to tolerate
certain employee speech made publicly but not speech made
pursuant to an employee’s assigned duties. See 361 F. 3d,
at 1176. This objection misconceives the theoretical under
pinnings of our decisions. Employees who make public
statements outside the course of performing their official
duties retain some possibility of First Amendment protec
tion because that is the kind of activity engaged in by citi
zens who do not work for the government. The same goes
for writing a letter to a local newspaper, see Pickering,
supra, or discussing politics with a co-worker, see Rankin,

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424 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
Opinion of the Court
483 U. S. 378. When a public employee speaks pursuant to
employment responsibilities, however, there is no relevant
analogue to speech by citizens who are not government
employees.
The Court of Appeals’ concern also is unfounded as a prac
tical matter. The perceived anomaly, it should be noted, is
limited in scope: It relates only to the expressions an em
ployee makes pursuant to his or her official responsibilities,
not to statements or complaints (such as those at issue in
cases like Pickering and Connick) that are made outside the
duties of employment. If, moreover, a government em
ployer is troubled by the perceived anomaly, it has the means
at hand to avoid it. A public employer that wishes to en
courage its employees to voice concerns privately retains the
option of instituting internal policies and procedures that are
receptive to employee criticism. Giving employees an inter
nal forum for their speech will discourage them from con
cluding that the safest avenue of expression is to state their
views in public.
Proper application of our precedents thus leads to the con
clusion that the First Amendment does not prohibit manage
rial discipline based on an employee’s expressions made pur
suant to official responsibilities. Because Ceballos’ memo
falls into this category, his allegation of unconstitutional
retaliation must fail.
Two final points warrant mentioning. First, as indicated
above, the parties in this case do not dispute that Ceballos
wrote his disposition memo pursuant to his employment
duties. We thus have no occasion to articulate a comprehen
sive framework for defining the scope of an employee’s duties
in cases where there is room for serious debate. We reject,
however, the suggestion that employers can restrict employ
ees’ rights by creating excessively broad job descriptions.
See post, at 431, n. 2 (Souter, J., dissenting). The proper
inquiry is a practical one. Formal job descriptions often
bear little resemblance to the duties an employee actually is

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425 Cite as: 547 U. S. 410 (2006)
Opinion of the Court
expected to perform, and the listing of a given task in an
employee’s written job description is neither necessary nor
sufficient to demonstrate that conducting the task is within
the scope of the employee’s professional duties for First
Amendment purposes.
Second, Justice Souter suggests today’s decision may
have important ramifications for academic freedom, at least
as a constitutional value. See post, at 438–439. There is
some argument that expression related to academic schol
arship or classroom instruction implicates additional con
stitutional interests that are not fully accounted for by
this Court’s customary employee-speech jurisprudence. We
need not, and for that reason do not, decide whether the anal
ysis we conduct today would apply in the same manner to a
case involving speech related to scholarship or teaching.
IV
Exposing governmental inefficiency and misconduct is a
matter of considerable significance. As the Court noted in
Connick, public employers should, “as a matter of good judg
ment,” be “receptive to constructive criticism offered by
their employees.” 461 U. S., at 149. The dictates of sound
judgment are reinforced by the powerful network of legisla
tive enactments—such as whistle-blower protection laws and
labor codes—available to those who seek to expose wrong
doing. See, e. g., 5 U. S. C. § 2302(b)(8); Cal. Govt. Code Ann.
§ 8547.8 (West 2005); Cal. Lab. Code Ann. § 1102.5 (West
Supp. 2006). Cases involving government attorneys impli
cate additional safeguards in the form of, for example, rules
of conduct and constitutional obligations apart from the First
Amendment. See, e. g., Cal. Rule Prof. Conduct 5–110
(2005) (“A member in government service shall not institute
or cause to be instituted criminal charges when the member
knows or should know that the charges are not supported by
probable cause”); Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963).
These imperatives, as well as obligations arising from any

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426 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
Stevens, J., dissenting
other applicable constitutional provisions and mandates of
the criminal and civil laws, protect employees and provide
checks on supervisors who would order unlawful or other
wise inappropriate actions.
We reject, however, the notion that the First Amendment
shields from discipline the expressions employees make pur
suant to their professional duties. Our precedents do not
support the existence of a constitutional cause of action be
hind every statement a public employee makes in the course
of doing his or her job.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and
the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
The proper answer to the question “whether the First
Amendment protects a government employee from discipline
based on speech made pursuant to the employee’s official du
ties,” ante, at 413, is “Sometimes,” not “Never.” Of course
a supervisor may take corrective action when such speech is
“inflammatory or misguided,” ante, at 423. But what if it
is just unwelcome speech because it reveals facts that the
supervisor would rather not have anyone else discover?*
*See, e. g., Branton v. Dallas, 272 F. 3d 730 (CA5 2001) (police internal
investigator demoted by police chief after bringing the false testimony of
a fellow officer to the attention of a city official); Miller v. Jones, 444 F. 3d
929, 936 (CA7 2006) (police officer demoted after opposing the police chief ’s
attempt to “us[e] his official position to coerce a financially independent
organization into a potentially ruinous merger”); Delgado v. Jones, 282
F. 3d 511 (CA7 2002) (police officer sanctioned for reporting criminal activ
ity that implicated a local political figure who was a good friend of the
police chief); Herts v. Smith, 345 F. 3d 581 (CA8 2003) (school district
official’s contract was not renewed after she gave frank testimony about
the district’s desegregation efforts); Kincade v. Blue Springs, 64 F. 3d 389
(CA8 1995) (engineer fired after reporting to his supervisors that contrac
tors were failing to complete dam-related projects and that the resulting
dam might be structurally unstable); Fox v. District of Columbia, 83 F. 3d

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427 Cite as: 547 U. S. 410 (2006)
Souter, J., dissenting
As Justice Souter explains, public employees are still
citizens while they are in the office. The notion that there
is a categorical difference between speaking as a citizen and
speaking in the course of one’s employment is quite wrong.
Over a quarter of a century has passed since then-Justice
Rehnquist, writing for a unanimous Court, rejected “the
conclusion that a public employee forfeits his protection
against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech if he
decides to express his views privately rather than publicly.”
Givhan v. Western Line Consol. School Dist., 439 U. S. 410,
414 (1979). We had no difficulty recognizing that the First
Amendment applied when Bessie Givhan, an English
teacher, raised concerns about the school’s racist employment
practices to the principal. See id., at 413–416. Our silence
as to whether or not her speech was made pursuant to her
job duties demonstrates that the point was immaterial.
That is equally true today, for it is senseless to let constitu
tional protection for exactly the same words hinge on
whether they fall within a job description. Moreover, it
seems perverse to fashion a new rule that provides employ
ees with an incentive to voice their concerns publicly before
talking frankly to their superiors.
While today’s novel conclusion to the contrary may not be
“inflammatory,” for the reasons stated in Justice Souter’s
dissenting opinion it is surely “misguided.”
Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens and Jus
tice Ginsburg join, dissenting.
The Court holds that “when public employees make state
ments pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not
speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the
Constitution does not insulate their communications from
employer discipline.” Ante, at 421. I respectfully dissent.
1491, 1494 (CADC 1996) (D. C. Lottery Board security officer fired after
informing the police about a theft made possible by “rather drastic mana
gerial ineptitude”).

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Souter, J., dissenting
I agree with the majority that a government employer has
substantial interests in effectuating its chosen policy and
objectives, and in demanding competence, honesty, and judg
ment from employees who speak for it in doing their work.
But I would hold that private and public interests in address
ing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can
outweigh the government’s stake in the efficient implementa
tion of policy, and when they do public employees who speak
on these matters in the course of their duties should be eligi
ble to claim First Amendment protection.
I
Open speech by a private citizen on a matter of public im
portance lies at the heart of expression subject to protection
by the First Amendment. See, e. g., Schenck v. Pro-Choice
Network of Western N. Y., 519 U. S. 357, 377 (1997). At the
other extreme, a statement by a government employee com
plaining about nothing beyond treatment under personnel
rules raises no greater claim to constitutional protection
against retaliatory response than the remarks of a private
employee. See Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 147 (1983).
In between these points lies a public employee’s speech un
welcome to the government but on a significant public issue.
Such an employee speaking as a citizen, that is, with a
citizen’s interest, is protected from reprisal unless the state
ments are too damaging to the government’s capacity to con
duct public business to be justified by any individual or pub
lic benefit thought to flow from the statements. Pickering
v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will
Cty., 391 U. S. 563, 568 (1968). Entitlement to protection is
thus not absolute.
This significant, albeit qualified, protection of public
employees who irritate the government is understood to flow
from the First Amendment, in part, because a govern
ment paycheck does nothing to eliminate the value to an indi
vidual of speaking on public matters, and there is no good

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Cite as: 547 U. S. 410 (2006) 429
Souter, J., dissenting
reason for categorically discounting a speaker’s interest
in commenting on a matter of public concern just because
the government employs him. Still, the First Amendment
safeguard rests on something more, being the value to the
public of receiving the opinions and information that a pub
lic employee may disclose. “Government employees are
often in the best position to know what ails the agencies
for which they work.” Waters v. Churchill, 511 U. S. 661,
674 (1994).
The reason that protection of employee speech is qualified
is that it can distract co-workers and supervisors from their
tasks at hand and thwart the implementation of legitimate
policy, the risks of which grow greater the closer the employ
ee’s speech gets to commenting on his own workplace and
responsibilities. It is one thing for an office clerk to say
there is waste in government and quite another to charge
that his own department pays full-time salaries to part-time
workers. Even so, we have regarded eligibility for protec
tion by Pickering balancing as the proper approach when an
employee speaks critically about the administration of his
own government employer. In Givhan v. Western Line
Consol. School Dist., 439 U. S. 410 (1979), we followed Pick
ering when a teacher was fired for complaining to a superior
about the racial composition of the school’s administrative,
cafeteria, and library staffs, 439 U. S., at 413–414, and the
same point was clear in Madison Joint School Dist. No. 8 v.
Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 429 U. S. 167
(1976). That case was decided, in part, with reference to
the Pickering framework, and the Court there held that a
schoolteacher speaking out on behalf of himself and others
at a public school board meeting could not be penalized for
criticizing pending collective-bargaining negotiations affect
ing professional employment. Madison noted that the
teacher “addressed the school board not merely as one of its
employees but also as a concerned citizen, seeking to express
his views on an important decision of his government.” 429

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430 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
Souter, J., dissenting
U. S., at 174–175. In each case, the Court realized that a
public employee can wear a citizen’s hat when speaking on
subjects closely tied to the employee’s own job, and Givhan
stands for the same conclusion even when the speech is not
addressed to the public at large. Cf. Pegram v. Herdrich,
530 U. S. 211, 225 (2000) (recognizing that, factually, a trustee
under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974
can both act as ERISA fiduciary and act on behalf of the
employer).
The difference between a case like Givhan and this one is
that the subject of Ceballos’s speech fell within the scope of
his job responsibilities, whereas choosing personnel was not
what the teacher was hired to do. The effect of the majori
ty’s constitutional line between these two cases, then, is that
a Givhan schoolteacher is protected when complaining to the
principal about hiring policy, but a school personnel officer
would not be if he protested that the principal disapproved
of hiring minority job applicants. This is an odd place to
draw a distinction,1 and while necessary judicial line-drawing
sometimes looks arbitrary, any distinction obliges a court to
justify its choice. Here, there is no adequate justification
for the majority’s line categorically denying Pickering pro
tection to any speech uttered “pursuant to . . . official duties,”
ante, at 421.
As all agree, the qualified speech protection embodied in
Pickering balancing resolves the tension between individual
and public interests in the speech, on the one hand, and the
government’s interest in operating efficiently without dis
traction or embarrassment by talkative or headline-grabbing
employees. The need for a balance hardly disappears when
an employee speaks on matters his job requires him to ad
dress; rather, it seems obvious that the individual and public
1 It seems stranger still in light of the majority’s concession of some
First Amendment protection when a public employee repeats statements
made pursuant to his duties but in a separate, public forum or in a letter
to a newspaper. Ante, at 423–424.

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Souter, J., dissenting
value of such speech is no less, and may well be greater,
when the employee speaks pursuant to his duties in address
ing a subject he knows intimately for the very reason that it
falls within his duties.2
As for the importance of such speech to the individual, it
stands to reason that a citizen may well place a very high
value on a right to speak on the public issues he decides to
make the subject of his work day after day. Would anyone
doubt that a school principal evaluating the performance of
teachers for promotion or pay adjustment retains a citizen’s
interest in addressing the quality of teaching in the schools?
(Still, the majority indicates he could be fired without First
Amendment recourse for fair but unfavorable comment when
the teacher under review is the superintendent’s daughter.)
Would anyone deny that a prosecutor like Richard Ceballos
may claim the interest of any citizen in speaking out against
a rogue law enforcement officer, simply because his job re
quires him to express a judgment about the officer’s per
formance? (But the majority says the First Amendment
2 I do not say the value of speech “pursuant to . . . duties” will always
be greater, because I am pessimistic enough to expect that one response
to the Court’s holding will be moves by government employers to expand
stated job descriptions to include more official duties and so exclude even
some currently protectable speech from First Amendment purview. Now
that the government can freely penalize the school personnel officer for
criticizing the principal because speech on the subject falls within the per
sonnel officer’s job responsibilities, the government may well try to limit
the English teacher’s options by the simple expedient of defining teachers’
job responsibilities expansively, investing them with a general obligation
to ensure sound administration of the school. Hence today’s rule presents
the regrettable prospect that protection under Pickering v. Board of Ed.
of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968), may
be diminished by expansive statements of employment duties.
The majority’s response, that the enquiry to determine duties is a “prac
tical one,” ante, at 424, does not alleviate this concern. It sets out a
standard that will not discourage government employers from setting du
ties expansively, but will engender litigation to decide which stated duties
were actual and which were merely formal.

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Souter, J., dissenting
gives Ceballos no protection, even if his judgment in this
case was sound and appropriately expressed.)
Indeed, the very idea of categorically separating the citi
zen’s interest from the employee’s interest ignores the fact
that the ranks of public service include those who share the
poet’s “object . . . to unite [m]y avocation and my vocation”; 3
these citizen servants are the ones whose civic interest rises
highest when they speak pursuant to their duties, and these
are exactly the ones government employers most want to
attract.4 There is no question that public employees speak
ing on matters they are obliged to address would generally
3 R. Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays
251, 252 (R. Poirier & M. Richardson eds. 1995).
4 Not to put too fine a point on it, the Human Resources Division of
the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Ceballos’s employer, is
telling anyone who will listen that its work “provides the personal satisfac
tion and fulfillment that comes with knowing you are contributing essen
tial services to the citizens of Los Angeles County.” Career Opportuni
ties, http://da.co.la.ca.us/hr/default.htm (all Internet materials as visited
May 25, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).
The United States expresses the same interest in identifying the indi
vidual ideals of a citizen with its employees’ obligations to the Govern
ment. See Brief as Amicus Curiae 25 (stating that public employees are
motivated to perform their duties “to serve the public”). Right now, for
example, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration is appealing to physi
cians, scientists, and statisticians to work in the Center for Drug Evalua
tion and Research, with the message that they “can give back to [their]
community, state, and country by making a difference in the lives of
Americans everywhere.” Career Opportunities at CDER: You Can Make
a Difference, http://www.fda.gov/cder/career/default.htm. Indeed, the
Congress of the United States, by concurrent resolution, has previously
expressly endorsed respect for a citizen’s obligations as the prime respon
sibility of Government employees: “Any person in Government Service
should: . . . [p]ut loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country
above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department,” and shall
“[e]xpose corruption wherever discovered,” Code of Ethics for Govern
ment Service, H. Con. Res. 175, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. (1958), 72 Stat. B12.
Display of this Code in Government buildings was once required by law, 94
Stat. 855; this obligation has been repealed, Office of Government Ethics
Authorization Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104–179, § 4, 110 Stat. 1566.

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Souter, J., dissenting
place a high value on a right to speak, as any responsible
citizen would.
Nor is there any reason to raise the counterintuitive ques
tion whether the public interest in hearing informed employ
ees evaporates when they speak as required on some subject
at the core of their jobs. Last Term, we recalled the public
value that the Pickering Court perceived in the speech of
public employees as a class: “Underlying the decision in
Pickering is the recognition that public employees are often
the members of the community who are likely to have in
formed opinions as to the operations of their public employ
ers, operations which are of substantial concern to the public.
Were they not able to speak on these matters, the community
would be deprived of informed opinions on important public
issues. The interest at stake is as much the public’s interest
in receiving informed opinion as it is the employee’s own
right to disseminate it.” San Diego v. Roe, 543 U. S. 77, 82
(2004) (per curiam) (citation omitted). This is not a whit
less true when an employee’s job duties require him to speak
about such things: when, for example, a public auditor speaks
on his discovery of embezzlement of public funds, when a
building inspector makes an obligatory report of an attempt
to bribe him, or when a law enforcement officer expressly
balks at a superior’s order to violate constitutional rights he
is sworn to protect. (The majority, however, places all these
speakers beyond the reach of First Amendment protection
against retaliation.)
Nothing, then, accountable on the individual and public
side of the Pickering balance changes when an employee
speaks “pursuant” to public duties. On the side of the gov
ernment employer, however, something is different, and to
this extent, I agree with the majority of the Court. The
majority is rightly concerned that the employee who speaks
out on matters subject to comment in doing his own work
has the greater leverage to create office uproars and fracture
the government’s authority to set policy to be carried out

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Souter, J., dissenting
coherently through the ranks. “Official communications
have official consequences, creating a need for substantive
consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure that their
employees’ official communications are accurate, demon
strate sound judgment, and promote the employer’s mis
sion.” Ante, at 422–423. Up to a point, then, the majority
makes good points: government needs civility in the work
place, consistency in policy, and honesty and competence in
public service.
But why do the majority’s concerns, which we all share,
require categorical exclusion of First Amendment protection
against any official retaliation for things said on the job? Is
it not possible to respect the unchallenged individual and
public interests in the speech through a Pickering balance
without drawing the strange line I mentioned before, supra,
at 430? This is, to be sure, a matter of judgment, but the
judgment has to account for the undoubted value of speech to
those, and by those, whose specific public job responsibilities
bring them face to face with wrongdoing and incompetence
in government, who refuse to avert their eyes and shut their
mouths. And it has to account for the need actually to dis
rupt government if its officials are corrupt or dangerously
incompetent. See n. 4, supra. It is thus no adequate justi
fication for the suppression of potentially valuable informa
tion simply to recognize that the government has a huge
interest in managing its employees and preventing the occa
sionally irresponsible one from turning his job into a bully
pulpit. Even there, the lesson of Pickering (and the object
of most constitutional adjudication) is still to the point: when
constitutionally significant interests clash, resist the demand
for winner-take-all; try to make adjustments that serve all
of the values at stake.
Two reasons in particular make me think an adjustment
using the basic Pickering balancing scheme is perfectly fea
sible here. First, the extent of the government’s legitimate
authority over subjects of speech required by a public job

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Souter, J., dissenting
can be recognized in advance by setting in effect a minimum
heft for comments with any claim to outweigh it. Thus, the
risks to the government are great enough for us to hold from
the outset that an employee commenting on subjects in the
course of duties should not prevail on balance unless he
speaks on a matter of unusual importance and satisfies high
standards of responsibility in the way he does it. The exam
ples I have already given indicate the eligible subject matter,
and it is fair to say that only comment on official dishonesty,
deliberately unconstitutional action, other serious wrongdo
ing, or threats to health and safety can weigh out in an em
ployee’s favor. If promulgation of this standard should fail
to discourage meritless actions premised on 42 U. S. C. § 1983
(or Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S.
388 (1971)) before they get filed, the standard itself would
sift them out at the summary-judgment stage.5
My second reason for adapting Pickering to the circum
stances at hand is the experience in Circuits that have recog
nized claims like Ceballos’s here. First Amendment protec
tion less circumscribed than what I would recognize has been
available in the Ninth Circuit for over 17 years, and neither
there nor in other Circuits that accept claims like this one
has there been a debilitating flood of litigation. There has
indeed been some: as represented by Ceballos’s lawyer at
oral argument, each year over the last five years, approxi
mately 70 cases in the different Courts of Appeals and ap
proximately 100 in the various District Courts. Tr. of Oral
Arg. 58–59. But even these figures reflect a readiness to
litigate that might well have been cooled by my view about
5 As I also said, a public employer is entitled (and obliged) to impose high
standards of honesty, accuracy, and judgment on employees who speak in
doing their work. These criteria are not, however, likely to discourage
meritless litigation or provide a handle for summary judgment. The em
ployee who has spoken out, for example, is unlikely to blame himself for
prior bad judgment before he sues for retaliation.

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Souter, J., dissenting
the importance required before Pickering treatment is in
order.
For that matter, the majority’s position comes with no
guarantee against factbound litigation over whether a public
employee’s statements were made “pursuant to . . . official
duties,” ante, at 421. In fact, the majority invites such liti
gation by describing the enquiry as a “practical one,” ante,
at 424, apparently based on the totality of employment cir
cumstances.6 See n. 2, supra. Are prosecutors’ discretion
ary statements about cases addressed to the press on the
courthouse steps made “pursuant to their official duties”?
Are government nuclear scientists’ complaints to their
supervisors about a colleague’s improper handling of radioac
tive materials made “pursuant” to duties?
II
The majority seeks support in two lines of argument ex
traneous to Pickering doctrine. The one turns on a falla
cious reading of cases on government speech, the other on a
mistaken assessment of protection available under whistle
blower statutes.
A
The majority accepts the fallacy propounded by the county
petitioners and the Federal Government as amicus that any
statement made within the scope of public employment is (or
should be treated as) the government’s own speech, see ante,
at 421–422, and should thus be differentiated as a matter
of law from the personal statements the First Amendment
protects, see Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 610
(1973). The majority invokes the interpretation set out in
Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S.
819 (1995), of Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173 (1991), which
6 According to the majority’s logic, the litigation it encourages would
have the unfortunate result of “demand[ing] permanent judicial interven
tion in the conduct of governmental operations,” ante, at 423.

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Souter, J., dissenting
held there was no infringement of the speech rights of Title
X funds recipients and their staffs when the Government
forbade any on-the-job counseling in favor of abortion as a
method of family planning, id., at 192–200. We have read
Rust to mean that “when the government appropriates pub
lic funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is enti
tled to say what it wishes.” Rosenberger, supra, at 833.
The key to understanding the difference between this case
and Rust lies in the terms of the respective employees’ jobs
and, in particular, the extent to which those terms require
espousal of a substantive position prescribed by the gov
ernment in advance. Some public employees are hired to
“promote a particular policy” by broadcasting a particular
message set by the government, but not everyone work
ing for the government, after all, is hired to speak from a
government manifesto. See Legal Services Corporation v.
Velazquez, 531 U. S. 533, 542 (2001). There is no claim or
indication that Ceballos was hired to perform such a speak
ing assignment. He was paid to enforce the law by con
stitutional action: to exercise the county government’s pros
ecutorial power by acting honestly, competently, and
constitutionally. The only sense in which his position appar
ently required him to hew to a substantive message was at
the relatively abstract point of favoring respect for law and
its evenhanded enforcement, subjects that are not at the
level of controversy in this case and were not in Rust. Un
like the doctors in Rust, Ceballos was not paid to advance
one specific policy among those legitimately available, de
fined by a specific message or limited by a particular mes
sage forbidden. The county government’s interest in his
speech cannot therefore be equated with the terms of a spe
cific, prescribed, or forbidden substantive position compara
ble to the Federal Government’s interest in Rust, and Rust
is no authority for the notion that government may exercise
plenary control over every comment made by a public em
ployee in doing his job.

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It is not, of course, that the district attorney lacked inter
est of a high order in what Ceballos might say. If his speech
undercut effective, lawful prosecution, there would have
been every reason to rein him in or fire him; a statement
that created needless tension among law enforcement agen
cies would be a fair subject of concern, and the same would
be true of inaccurate statements or false ones made in the
course of doing his work. But these interests on the gov
ernment’s part are entirely distinct from any claim that
Ceballos’s speech was government speech with a preset or
proscribed content as exemplified in Rust. Nor did the
county petitioners here even make such a claim in their an
swer to Ceballos’s complaint, see n. 13, infra.
The fallacy of the majority’s reliance on Rosenberger’s un
derstanding of Rust doctrine, moreover, portends a bloated
notion of controllable government speech going well beyond
the circumstances of this case. Consider the breadth of the
new formulation:
“Restricting speech that owes its existence to a public
employee’s professional responsibilities does not infringe
any liberties the employee might have enjoyed as a pri
vate citizen. It simply reflects the exercise of employer
control over what the employer itself has commissioned
or created.” Ante, at 421–422.
This ostensible domain beyond the pale of the First Amend
ment is spacious enough to include even the teaching of a
public university professor, and I have to hope that today’s
majority does not mean to imperil First Amendment protec
tion of academic freedom in public colleges and universities,
whose teachers necessarily speak and write “pursuant to . . .
official duties.” See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 329
(2003) (“We have long recognized that, given the important
purpose of public education and the expansive freedoms of
speech and thought associated with the university environ
ment, universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional

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439 Cite as: 547 U. S. 410 (2006)
Souter, J., dissenting
tradition”); Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State
of N. Y., 385 U. S. 589, 603 (1967) (“Our Nation is deeply com
mitted to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of tran
scendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers
concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of
the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast
a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom. ‘The vigilant pro
tection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than
in the community of American schools’ ” (quoting Shelton v.
Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 487 (1960))); Sweezy v. New Hamp
shire, 354 U. S. 234, 250 (1957) (a governmental enquiry into
the contents of a scholar’s lectures at a state university “un
questionably was an invasion of [his] liberties in the areas of
academic freedom and political expression—areas in which
government should be extremely reticent to tread”).
B
The majority’s second argument for its disputed limitation
of Pickering doctrine is that the First Amendment has little
or no work to do here owing to an assertedly comprehensive
complement of state and national statutes protecting govern
ment whistle-blowers from vindictive bosses. See ante, at
425–426. But even if I close my eyes to the tenet that
“ ‘[t]he applicability of a provision of the Constitution has
never depended on the vagaries of state or federal law,’ ”
Board of Comm’rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr, 518 U. S. 668,
680 (1996), the majority’s counsel to rest easy fails on its
own terms.7
7 Even though this Court has recognized that 42 U. S. C. § 1983 “does not
authorize a suit for every alleged violation of federal law,” Livadas v.
Bradshaw, 512 U. S. 107, 132 (1994), the rule is that Ҥ 1983 remains a
generally and presumptively available remedy for claimed violations of
federal law,” id., at 133. Individual enforcement under § 1983 is rendered
unavailable for alleged violations of federal law when the underlying stat
utory provision is part of a federal statutory scheme clearly incompatible
with individual enforcement under § 1983. See Rancho Palos Verdes v.
Abrams, 544 U. S. 113, 119–120 (2005).

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440 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
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To begin with, speech addressing official wrongdoing may
well fall outside protected whistle-blowing, defined in the
classic sense of exposing an official’s fault to a third party or
to the public; the teacher in Givhan, for example, who raised
the issue of unconstitutional hiring bias, would not have
qualified as that sort of whistle-blower, for she was fired
after a private conversation with the school principal. In
any event, the combined variants of statutory whistle-blower
definitions and protections add up to a patchwork, not a
showing that worries may be remitted to legislatures for re
lief. See D. Westman & N. Modesitt, Whistleblowing: Law
of Retaliatory Discharge 67–75, 281–307 (2d ed. 2004). Some
state statutes protect all government workers, including the
employees of municipalities and other subdivisions; 8 others
stop at state employees.9 Some limit protection to employ
ees who tell their bosses before they speak out; 10 others for
bid bosses from imposing any requirement to warn.11 As
for the federal Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5
8 Del. Code Ann., Tit. 29, § 5115 (2003); Fla. Stat. § 112.3187 (2003); Haw.
Rev. Stat. § 378–61 (1993); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 61.101 (West 2005); Mass.
Gen. Laws, ch. 149, § 185 (West 2004); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 281.611 (2003);
N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 275–E:1 (Supp. 2005); Ohio Rev. Code Ann.
§ 4113.51 (Lexis 2001); Tenn. Code Ann. § 50–1–304 (2005).
9 Ala. Code § 36–26A–1 et seq. (2001); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–50.5–101
et seq. (2004); Iowa Code § 70A.28 et seq. (2005); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 75–2973
(2003 Cum. Supp.); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 105.055 (2004 Cum. Supp.); N. C. Gen.
Stat. Ann. § 126–84 (Lexis 2003); Okla. Stat., Tit. 74, § 840–2.5 et seq. (West
Supp. 2005); Wash. Rev. Code § 42.40.010 (2004); Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 9–11–
102 (2003).
10 Idaho Code § 6–2104(1)(a) (Lexis 2004); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 26,
§ 833(2) (1988); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 149, § 185(c)(1) (West 2004); N. H. Rev.
Stat. Ann. § 275–E:2(II) (1999); N. J. Stat. Ann. § 34:19–4 (West 2000); N. Y.
Civ. Serv. Law Ann. § 75–b(2)(b) (West 1999); Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 9–11–
103(b) (2003).
11 Kan. Stat. Ann. § 75–2973(d)(2) (2003 Cum. Supp.); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§ 61.102(1) (West 2005); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 105.055(2) (2004 Cum. Supp.);
Okla. Stat., Tit. 74, § 840–2.5(B)(4) (West 2005 Supp.); Ore. Rev. Stat.
§ 659A.203(1)(c) (2003).

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Souter, J., dissenting
U. S. C. § 1213 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. III), current case
law requires an employee complaining of retaliation to show
that “ ‘a disinterested observer with knowledge of the essen
tial facts known to and readily ascertainable by the employee
[could] reasonably conclude that the actions of the govern
ment evidence gross mismanagement,’ ” White v. Depart
ment of Air Force, 391 F. 3d 1377, 1381 (CA Fed. 2004) (quot
ing Lachance v. White, 174 F. 3d 1378, 1381 (CA Fed. 1999),
cert. denied, 528 U. S. 1153 (2000)). And federal employees
have been held to have no protection for disclosures made to
immediate supervisors, see Willis v. Department of Agricul
ture, 141 F. 3d 1139, 1143 (CA Fed. 1998); Horton v. Depart
ment of Navy, 66 F. 3d 279, 282 (CA Fed. 1995), cert. denied,
516 U. S. 1176 (1996), or for statements of facts publicly
known already, see Francisco v. Office of Personnel Manage
ment, 295 F. 3d 1310, 1314 (CA Fed. 2002). Most signifi
cantly, federal employees have been held to be unprotected
for statements made in connection with normal employment
duties, Huffman v. Office of Personnel Management, 263
F. 3d 1341, 1352 (CA Fed. 2001), the very speech that the
majority says will be covered by “the powerful network of
legislative enactments . . . available to those who seek to
expose wrongdoing,” ante, at 425.12 My point is not to dis
parage particular statutes or speak here to the merits of in
terpretations by other federal courts, but merely to show the
current understanding of statutory protection: individuals
doing the same sorts of governmental jobs and saying the
same sorts of things addressed to civic concerns will get dif
ferent protection depending on the local, state, or federal
jurisdictions that happened to employ them.
III
The Court remands because the Court of Appeals consid
ered only the disposition memorandum and because Ceballos
12 See n. 4, supra.

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442 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
Souter, J., dissenting
charges retaliation for some speech apparently outside the
ambit of utterances “pursuant to their official duties. ”
When the Court of Appeals takes up this case once again, it
should consider some of the following facts that escape em
phasis in the majority opinion owing to its focus.13 Ceballos
says he sought his position out of a personal commitment to
perform civic work. After showing his superior, petitioner
Frank Sundstedt, the disposition memorandum at issue in
this case, Ceballos complied with Sundstedt’s direction to
tone down some accusatory rhetoric out of concern that the
memorandum would be unnecessarily incendiary when
shown to the Sheriff ’s Department. After meeting with
members of that department, Ceballos told his immediate
supervisor, petitioner Carol Najera, that he thought Brady
v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), obliged him to give the
defense his internal memorandum as exculpatory evidence.
He says that Najera responded by ordering him to write a
new memorandum containing nothing but the deputy sher
iff ’s statements, but that he balked at that. Instead, he pro
posed to turn over the existing memorandum with his own
conclusions redacted as work product, and this is what he
did. The issue over revealing his conclusions arose again in
preparing for the suppression hearing. Ceballos maintains
that Sundstedt ordered Najera, representing the prosecu
tion, to give the trial judge a full picture of the circum
stances, but that Najera told Ceballos he would suffer retali
ation if he testified that the affidavit contained intentional
fabrications. In any event, Ceballos’s testimony generally
stopped short of his own conclusions. After the hearing, the
trial judge denied the motion to suppress, explaining that he
found grounds independent of the challenged material suffi
cient to show probable cause for the warrant.
13 This case comes to the Court on the motions of petitioners for sum
mary judgment, and as such, “[t]he evidence of [Ceballos] is to be believed,
and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in his favor.” Anderson v.
Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U. S. 242, 255 (1986).

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Souter, J., dissenting
Ceballos says that over the next six months his supervi
sors retaliated against him14 not only for his written reports,
see ante, at 415, but also for his spoken statements to them
and his hearing testimony in the pending criminal case.
While an internal grievance filed by Ceballos challenging
these actions was pending, Ceballos spoke at a meeting of
the Mexican-American Bar Association about misconduct of
the Sheriff ’s Department in the criminal case, the lack of any
policy at the District Attorney’s Office for handling allega
tions of police misconduct, and the retaliatory acts he as
cribed to his supervisors. Two days later, the office dis
missed Ceballos’s grievance, a result he attributes in part to
his bar association speech.
Ceballos’s action against petitioners under 42 U. S. C.
§ 1983 claims that the individuals retaliated against him for
exercising his First Amendment rights in submitting the
memorandum, discussing the matter with Najera and Sund
stedt, testifying truthfully at the hearing, and speaking at
the bar meeting.15 As I mentioned, the Court of Appeals
14 Sundstedt demoted Ceballos to a trial deputy; his only murder case
was reassigned to a junior colleague with no experience in homicide mat
ters, and no new murder cases were assigned to him; then-District Attor
ney Gil Garcetti, relying in part on Sundstedt’s recommendation, denied
Ceballos a promotion; finally, Sundstedt and Najera transferred him to the
office’s El Monte Branch, requiring longer commuting. Before transfer
ring Ceballos, Najera offered him a choice between transferring and re
maining at the Pomona Branch prosecuting misdemeanors instead of felon
ies. When Ceballos refused to choose, Najera transferred him.
15 The county petitioners’ position on these claims is difficult to follow
or, at least, puzzling. In their motion for summary judgment, they denied
that any of their actions was responsive to Ceballos’s criticism of the sher
iff ’s affidavit. E. g., App. 159–160, 170–172 (maintaining that Ceballos was
transferred to the El Monte Branch because of the decreased workload in
the Pomona Branch and because he was next in a rotation to go there to
serve as a “filing deputy”); id., at 160, 172–173 (contending that Ceballos’s
murder case was reassigned to a junior colleague to give that attorney
murder trial experience before he was transferred to the Juvenile Division
of the District Attorney’s Office); id., at 161–162, 173–174 (arguing that

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Breyer, J., dissenting
saw no need to address the protection afforded to Ceballos’s
statements other than the disposition memorandum, which
it thought was protected under the Pickering test. Upon
remand, it will be open to the Court of Appeals to consider
the application of Pickering to any retaliation shown for
other statements; not all of those statements would have
been made pursuant to official duties in any obvious sense,
and the claim relating to truthful testimony in court must
surely be analyzed independently to protect the integrity of
the judicial process.
Justice Breyer, dissenting.
This case asks whether the First Amendment protects
public employees when they engage in speech that both
(1) involves matters of public concern and (2) takes place in
the ordinary course of performing the duties of a govern
ment job. I write separately to explain why I cannot fully
accept either the Court’s or Justice Souter’s answer to the
question presented.
I
I begin with what I believe is common ground:
(1) Because virtually all human interaction takes place
through speech, the First Amendment cannot offer all speech
the same degree of protection. Rather, judges must apply
different protective presumptions in different contexts, scru
tinizing government’s speech-related restrictions differently
Ceballos was denied a promotion by Garcetti despite Sundstedt’s stellar
review of Ceballos, when Garcetti was unaware of the matter in People v.
Cuskey, the criminal case for which Ceballos wrote the pertinent disposi
tion memorandum). Their reply to Ceballos’s opposition to summary
judgment, however, shows that petitioners argued for a Pickering assess
ment (for want of a holding that Ceballos was categorically disentitled to
any First Amendment protection) giving great weight in their favor to
workplace disharmony and distrust caused by Ceballos’s actions. E. g.,
App. 477–478.

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Breyer, J., dissenting
depending upon the general category of activity. Compare,
e. g., Burson v. Freeman, 504 U. S. 191 (1992) (plurality opin
ion) (political speech), with Central Hudson Gas & Elec.
Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557 (1980)
(commercial speech), and Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173
(1991) (government speech).
(2) Where the speech of government employees is at issue,
the First Amendment offers protection only where the offer
of protection itself will not unduly interfere with legitimate
governmental interests, such as the interest in efficient ad
ministration. That is because the government, like any em
ployer, must have adequate authority to direct the activities
of its employees. That is also because efficient administra
tion of legislatively authorized programs reflects the consti
tutional need effectively to implement the public’s democrat
ically determined will.
(3) Consequently, where a government employee speaks
“as an employee upon matters only of personal interest,” the
First Amendment does not offer protection. Connick v.
Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 147 (1983). Where the employee
speaks “as a citizen . . . upon matters of public concern,” the
First Amendment offers protection but only where the
speech survives a screening test. Pickering v. Board of Ed.
of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563,
568 (1968). That test, called, in legal shorthand, “Pickering
balancing,” requires a judge to “balance . . . the interests” of
the employee “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.” Ibid. See also Connick, supra, at 142.
(4) Our prior cases do not decide what screening test a
judge should apply in the circumstances before us, namely,
when the government employee both speaks upon a matter
of public concern and does so in the course of his ordinary
duties as a government employee.

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446 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
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II
The majority answers the question by holding that “when
public employees make statements pursuant to their official
duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First
Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate
their communications from employer discipline.” Ante, at
421. In a word, the majority says, “never.” That word, in
my view, is too absolute.
Like the majority, I understand the need to “affor[d] gov
ernment employers sufficient discretion to manage their op
erations.” Ante, at 422. And I agree that the Constitution
does not seek to “displac[e] . . . managerial discretion by judi
cial supervision.” Ante, at 423. Nonetheless, there may
well be circumstances with special demand for constitutional
protection of the speech at issue, where governmental justi
fications may be limited, and where administrable standards
seem readily available—to the point where the majority’s
fears of department management by lawsuit are misplaced.
In such an instance, I believe that courts should apply the
Pickering standard, even though the government employee
speaks upon matters of public concern in the course of his
ordinary duties.
This is such a case. The respondent, a government law
yer, complained of retaliation, in part, on the basis of speech
contained in his disposition memorandum that he says fell
within the scope of his obligations under Brady v. Maryland,
373 U. S. 83 (1963). The facts present two special circum
stances that together justify First Amendment review.
First, the speech at issue is professional speech—the
speech of a lawyer. Such speech is subject to independent
regulation by canons of the profession. Those canons pro
vide an obligation to speak in certain instances. And where
that is so, the government’s own interest in forbidding that
speech is diminished. Cf. Legal Services Corporation v.
Velazquez, 531 U. S. 533, 544 (2001) (“Restricting LSC [Legal
Services Corporation] attorneys in advising their clients and

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Breyer, J., dissenting
in presenting arguments and analyses to the courts distorts
the legal system by altering the traditional role of the attor
neys”). See also Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U. S. 312, 321
(1981) (“[A] public defender is not amenable to administrative
direction in the same sense as other employees of the State”).
See generally Post, Subsidized Speech, 106 Yale L. J. 151,
172 (1996) (“[P]rofessionals must always qualify their loyalty
and commitment to the vertical hierarchy of an organization
by their horizontal commitment to general professional
norms and standards”). The objective specificity and public
availability of the profession’s canons also help to diminish
the risk that the courts will improperly interfere with the
government’s necessary authority to manage its work.
Second, the Constitution itself here imposes speech obli
gations upon the government’s professional employee. A
prosecutor has a constitutional obligation to learn of, to pre
serve, and to communicate with the defense about exculpa
tory and impeachment evidence in the government’s posses
sion. Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U. S. 419, 437 (1995); Brady,
supra. So, for example, might a prison doctor have a similar
constitutionally related professional obligation to communi
cate with superiors about seriously unsafe or unsanitary con
ditions in the cellblock. Cf. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U. S.
825, 832 (1994). There may well be other examples.
Where professional and special constitutional obligations
are both present, the need to protect the employee’s speech
is augmented, the need for broad government authority to
control that speech is likely diminished, and administrable
standards are quite likely available. Hence, I would find
that the Constitution mandates special protection of em
ployee speech in such circumstances. Thus I would apply
the Pickering balancing test here.
III
While I agree with much of Justice Souter’s analysis,
I believe that the constitutional standard he enunciates fails

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Breyer, J., dissenting
to give sufficient weight to the serious managerial and ad
ministrative concerns that the majority describes. The
standard would instruct courts to apply Pickering balancing
in all cases, but says that the government should prevail un
less the employee (1) “speaks on a matter of unusual impor
tance,” and (2) “satisfies high standards of responsibility in
the way he does it.” Ante, at 435 (dissenting opinion).
Justice Souter adds that “only comment on official dis
honesty, deliberately unconstitutional action, other serious
wrongdoing, or threats to health and safety can weigh out in
an employee’s favor.” Ibid.
There are, however, far too many issues of public concern,
even if defined as “matters of unusual importance,” for the
screen to screen out very much. Government administra
tion typically involves matters of public concern. Why else
would government be involved? And “public issues,” in
deed, matters of “unusual importance,” are often daily
bread-and-butter concerns for the police, the intelligence
agencies, the military, and many whose jobs involve protect
ing the public’s health, safety, and the environment. This
aspect of Justice Souter’s “adjustment” of “the basic Pick
ering balancing scheme,” ante, at 434, is similar to the
Court’s present insistence that speech be of “legitimate news
interest” when the employee speaks only as a private citizen,
see San Diego v. Roe, 543 U. S. 77, 83–84 (2004) (per cu
riam). It gives no extra weight to the government’s aug
mented need to direct speech that is an ordinary part of the
employee’s job-related duties.
Moreover, the speech of vast numbers of public employees
deals with wrongdoing, health, safety, and honesty: for ex
ample, police officers, firefighters, environmental protection
agents, building inspectors, hospital workers, bank regula
tors, and so on. Indeed, this categorization could encompass
speech by an employee performing almost any public func
tion, except perhaps setting electricity rates. Nor do these

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categories bear any obvious relation to the constitutional im
portance of protecting the job-related speech at issue.
The underlying problem with this breadth of coverage is
that the standard (despite predictions that the government
is likely to prevail in the balance unless the speech concerns
“official dishonesty, deliberately unconstitutional action,
other serious wrongdoing, or threats to health and safety,”
ante, at 435 (Souter, J., dissenting)) does not avoid the judi
cial need to undertake the balance in the first place. And
this form of judicial activity—the ability of a dissatisfied em
ployee to file a complaint, engage in discovery, and insist that
the court undertake a balancing of interests—itself may in
terfere unreasonably with both the managerial function (the
ability of the employer to control the way in which an em
ployee performs his basic job) and with the use of other
grievance-resolution mechanisms, such as arbitration, civil
service review boards, and whistle-blower remedies, for
which employees and employers may have bargained or
which legislatures may have enacted.
At the same time, the list of categories substantially over
laps areas where the law already provides nonconstitutional
protection through whistle-blower statutes and the like.
See ante, at 425–426 (majority opinion); ante, at 439–441
(Souter, J., dissenting). That overlap diminishes the need
for a constitutional forum and also means that adoption of
the test would authorize Federal Constitution-based legal ac
tions that threaten to upset the legislatively struck (or ad
ministratively struck) balance that those statutes (or admin
istrative procedures) embody.
IV
I conclude that the First Amendment sometimes does au
thorize judicial actions based upon a government employee’s
speech that both (1) involves a matter of public concern and
also (2) takes place in the course of ordinary job-related du

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450 GARCETTI v. CEBALLOS
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ties. But it does so only in the presence of augmented need
for constitutional protection and diminished risk of undue
judicial interference with governmental management of the
public’s affairs. In my view, these conditions are met in this
case and Pickering balancing is consequently appropriate.
With respect, I dissent.