PICKERING v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT 205, WILL COUNTY

Does the 1st Amendment protect a public employee’s subpoenaed trial testimony that was not a part of the employee’s ordinary job responsibilities?

Does the First Amendment protect the speech of a deputy district attorney who wrote and circulated a memorandum suggesting that a deputy sheriff lied in a search warrant affidavit and in his subsequent testimony at court?

Whether an injunction, stemming from a defamation and privacy judgment, that ordered the petitioner never again to display a sign or speak about respondent Johnnie Cochran (favorably or otherwise) in a public place violates the petitioners First Amendment rights.

Whether government retaliation against a contractor or regular provider of services for the exercise of rights of political association or allegiance violates the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Whether First Amendment prevents government officials from terminating a contract with an independent contractor because of the contractor's speech.

Whether the government can prohibit federal employees from receiving compensation for writing and speaking about matters not related to their employment.

Whether a public employee may be fired for her speech even though one version of what she said indicates that her speech was of public concern.

Whether, consistent with the First Amendment, a public figure can recover libel damages from the publisher of an article that attributes altered quotations to the public figure.

Whether the First Amendment requires a separate "opinion" privilege that restricts the application of state libel laws.

Whether promotion, transfer, recall, and hiring decisions involving low-level public employees may be constitutionally based on party affiliation and support.

Can a public figure recover damages for emotional distress because of an offensive parody?

Whether a clerical employee in a county Constable's office was properly discharged for remarking, after hearing of an attempt on the life of the President: "If they go for him again, I hope they get him."

Can a court, in the context of a summary judgment request, award summary judgment in a libel action if the moving party had no evidence that a reasonable jury might disbelieve its opponent's claim?

Was Consumer Union's article written with "actual malice," thereby placing it outside the First Amendment's freedom of speech protections?

Whether the First Amendment prevents the discharge of a state employee for circulating a questionnaire concerning internal office affairs.

Whether the First Amendment protects an assistant public defender who is satisfactorily performing his job from discharge solely because of his political beliefs.

Whether a public employee forfeits his or her 1st Amendment protection against governmental abridgment of freedom of speech when he arranges to communicate privately with his employer rather than to express his views publicly.

Whether a teacher whose contract was not renewed after several speech-related incidents had his First Amendment rights violated.

Whether the discharge of a non-civil-service employee of a sheriff's department for not being affiliated with the Democratic party was a violation of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Whether a Florida statute that afforded a right to reply to personal attacks on political candidates by newspapers violated the First Amendment.

To what extent does a publisher (monthly newsletter) have a constitutional privilege against liability for defamation of a private citizen?

Whether the respondents lack of a contractual or tenure right to reemployment, taken alone, defeats his claim that the non-renewal of his contract violated the First Amendment and whether the college refused to renew the teaching contract based on a impermissible basisas a reprisal for the exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech.

Are public figures subject to the actual malice standard for libel as articulated in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)?

Whether a newspaper column asking a series of questions that could be read as defamatory is protected by the First Amendment, as articulated by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964).

Whether the freedom of speech provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect a criminal suspect who makes a false statement about a police officer without "actual malice."

To what extent does the First Amendment protections for speech and press limit a state's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct?

Whether a Louisiana statute which compels teachers in public institutions to disclose which organizations they belong or contribute to unconstitutionally burdens a teachers 14th Amendment right of free association.

Whether the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities inquiry into petitioners past or present membership in the Communist Party violated the First Amendment.

Whether an investigation conducted under the aegis of state legislature to determine whether a professor was a subversive person in the state and including asking him for the contents of a lecture he gave at the state university and his knowledge of the Progressive Party violated the First Amendment.

Whether a state loyalty oath violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Whether the distribution of a racist leaflet, in violation of a state criminal libel statute, was protected under the First Amendment.

Whether a Minnesota statute that allowed "abatement"—an injunction against future publication—of printed material deemed to be a public nuisance constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.