Opinion ID: 754754
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The County's arguments in the First Amendment's lexicon

Text: 56 The County's first argument--that sheriff's deputies in Texas may be freely dismissed on political patronage grounds--rests upon a contention that sheriff's deputies occupy a position with respect to which party affiliation is an appropriate requirement for ... effective performance. Branti, 445 U.S. at 518, 100 S.Ct. 1287. The County thus argues that, to the extent that Molina was privileged to choose not to rehire the Plaintiffs based solely upon their political beliefs, he was necessarily privileged to choose not to rehire them on the basis of their expression of those beliefs. The County's second argument--that its interests outweighed the Plaintiffs' interest in engaging in political activity in support of Hillegeist--constitutes a contention that Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs did not violate their First Amendment rights because the Pickering /Connick balance weighs in favor of the County. 57 We conclude that the County's second argument subsumes its first and that we therefore need only address the second argument. If we accept the County's second argument, then we have no need to determine whether Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs would have been constitutional had he done so solely on the grounds of the Plaintiffs' political affiliation. By the same token, if we reject the County's second argument and conclude that Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs was unconstitutional if based upon the combination of their political affiliation and expression of that affiliation, then we necessarily reject the County's argument that Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs was constitutional even if he based the decision solely upon their political affiliation. Should we conclude that the Plaintiffs' expressive political activity in conjunction with their political affiliation did not sufficiently threaten to undermine the County's interest in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees, Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731, as to render Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs on the basis of this activity constitutional, then we surely could not simultaneously conclude that the Plaintiffs' political beliefs alone threatened to undermine the County's interests to a degree sufficient to justify Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs solely on the basis of their political belief. See Kinsey, 950 F.2d at 993-94; McBee, 730 F.2d at 1014; cf. Kinsey, 950 F.2d at 998-99 (Higginbotham, J., concurring) (concluding that, where the plaintiff superintendent claimed that the school board suspended him based upon both his political affiliation and speech on a matter of public concern, consideration of the plaintiff's speech was unnecessary because the fact that party affiliation was an appropriate requirement for the superintendent position of itself demonstrated that the suspension did not violate the plaintiff's First Amendment rights). 58 We therefore confine our inquiry to an application of the Pickering /Connick balance to determine whether Molina's failure to rehire the Plaintiffs, if based upon their political activity in support of Hillegeist, violated their First Amendment rights. 59