McAuliffe v. City of New Bedford (New Bedford, SCOTUS, 1892)
Case Overview
McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216 (1892), is the origin of public-employee free-speech law. New Bedford fired police officer John McAuliffe for political activity that violated a department rule barring officers from soliciting money for political purposes. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, upheld the firing with a line that framed the law for decades: the officer 'may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.'
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The Issue
• Does a municipal regulation restricting a police officer's political activities as a condition of employment violate his constitutional rights? • Does a public employee retain constitutional protections against conditions imposed on the privilege of public employment?
The Rules
A person has no constitutional right to public employment; the government may condition employment on the waiver of rights that could not be directly abridged, because holding office is a privilege and not a right.
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble - raised by McAuliffe as protecting his political solicitation activities.
No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law - at issue as to whether dismissal from public employment implicated a protected liberty or property interest.
The Conclusion
Holmes's 'right-privilege' rule governed for generations, then fell. The court held that a government job is a privilege the state may condition as it likes, so an employee who takes the job effectively agrees to give up free-speech rights on the government's terms. The Supreme Court abandoned that reasoning in Pickering v. Board of Education (1968), holding that public employees keep their First Amendment rights and that courts must balance those rights against the government's interests. McAuliffe is where this tracker's public-employee and government-contractor speech line begins, the rule that Pickering and Umbehr later replaced with a balancing test.
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