Opinion ID: 1213837
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the waters reasonable investigation element

Text: Connick teaches that for government employee speech to be protected by the First Amendment, the employee's interest in expressing himself (or herself) on a matter of public concern must not be outweighed by the government's own interest in promoting the efficiency of public services rendered through its employees. [8] The Waters plurality held that in pretermination stages the government employer must conduct a probe to ascertain if the First Amendment's mantle extends to the offending employee's utterances in controversy and to make its inquiry part of the documentation that is to accompany the dismissal action. [9] The discharge record so compiled must reveal the employer had pressed a reasonable inquiry and came to be objectively satisfied that its dismissal action would not violate First Amendment guarantees. The four-member plurality who endorsed the addendum calling for a pre-dismissal internal inquiry rested the new requirement on a need to ensure proper procedural safeguards in the critical pre-termination stage. [10] I concur in the court's conclusion that Acevedo's communications here in contest underwent a pre-discharge investigation that meets the extraconstitutional [11] Waters plurality test.