First Amendment

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This week in Litzman v. City of New York, Southern District of New York Judge Harold Baer largely sided with plaintiff, Probationary New York City Police Officer Fishel Litzman, in his lawsuit alleging religious discrimination. Plaintiff follows the rules and traditions of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish community, and his Orthodox Jewish faith prohibits him from…

Read More SDNY Holds That NYPD Failed to Reasonably Accommodate Jewish Officer’s Religious Beliefs
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In a lawsuit captioned Thomas v. City of New York, EDNY 13-cv-6139 (filed 11/6/13), plaintiff Justin Thomas – a School of Visual Arts senior – alleges that he was unlawfully arrested while filming the exterior of the NYPD’s 72nd Precinct station house for his senior class video project. Here is the Gothamist article with embedded video footage…

Read More Visual Arts Student Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Following Arrest for Filming NYPD Precinct
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The Appellate Division, First Department recently upheld an arbitrator’s decision to terminate the respondent, a tenured teacher, for making death threats towards an arbitrator. The decision is In re Smith v. NYC Dept. of Education, 2013 NY Slip Op 05765 (Sept. 3, 2013). Initially, the court held that the arbitrator’s decision to terminate the petitioner…

Read More Death Threats Justified Teacher’s Firing; No First Amendment Protection for “True Threats”
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In a striking victory for free speech, a Manhattan trial court judge recently dismissed a lawsuit brought by TriBeCa residents against photographer Arne Svenson after he surreptitiously photographed them in their homes and used the photos in an art exhibit called “The Neighbors”. Judge Rakower’s August 5, 2013 opinion dismissing the case in Foster v.…

Read More Citing Free Speech, Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Photographer Who Took Secret Pictures of Neighbors
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Admit it:  you’ve fantasized about doing this. Below is the complaint filed by Willian Barboza in June, captioned Willian Barboza v. Detective Steven D’Agata and Police Officer Melvin Gorr, 13-cv-4067 (SDNY June 13, 2013).  Plaintiff alleges: In August 2012, plaintiff Willian Barboza paid by mail a traffic ticket that he received while driving through the Village…

Read More Traffic Ticket Profanity Results in First Amendment Lawsuit
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Last week in Williams v. Board of Education-City of Buffalo, the Second Circuit affirmed the summary judgment dismissal of plaintiff’s First Amendment retaliation claims.  The district court’s decision is here, and the Second Circuit’s decision is here. Plaintiff, a clerk at the Riverside Institute of Technology, claimed that the principal instructed her to “alter payroll documentation…

Read More School Clerk’s Complaints About Payroll Fraud Not Protected Under the First Amendment
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That pesky First Amendment.  Always causing trouble. As has been widely reported (for example, here and here), an Ohio jury recently awarded former Catholic school computer technology teacher Christa Dias more than $170,000 in her federal anti-discrimination lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Plaintiff claimed that she was fired because she was pregnant (due to…

Read More Recent Pregnancy Discrimination Verdict May Lead To Revisiting The “Ministerial Exception” To A Federal Anti-Discrimination Claim
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On September 30, 2012, in Dinler v. City of New York, the Southern District of New York issued an opinion that largely favors the protesters who filed suit for alleged police abuses during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Significantly, the Court rejected the Defendants’ theory of “group probable cause”, and affirmed the requirement of individualized…

Read More Court Issues Major Victory to Protesters in RNC Litigation
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Yesterday, in Ross v. Lichtenfeld et al., the Second Circuit (WALKER, Leval, Pooler) held that a government clerk’s claim of First Amendment retaliation should have been dismissed, because she was speaking pursuant to her official duties.  The Court applied the rule of Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), that “when public employees make statements…

Read More Second Circuit Dismisses First Amendment Retaliation Claim
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