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Hi and welcome to Amicus Slate Supreme Court Podcast.

I am Dahlia Lithwick and I cover the High Court for Slate magazine.

So we're coming at you a few days late this week and for that we blame the snow.

Here in Virginia now we're mostly dug out, dusted off, and ready to act like serious thinkers

rather than just mindless consumers of marshmallows and hot liquid chocolate.

Now this week we decided to focus on a deeply strange, the word bizarre was invoked

more than once at oral arguments last Tuesday.

Case involving speech and public employees.

It's almost creeping up on an encyclopedia Brown mystery, the case of the missing constitutional violation.

So the case is called Heffernin versus City of Patterson, and it involves a 20-year veteran police officer

of the Patterson New Jersey Police Department who was demoted in 2006 for ostensibly supporting the wrong mayoral candidate

except he never supported that candidate or any candidate in the first place.

It turns out he was just picking up a yard sign for the wrong candidate for his bedridden mother.

Mistake in identity, comedy ensues, confusion.

The first amendment question at the heart of Heffernin versus Patterson is this.

When you are a public employee, do you have a right not to be retaliated against

when the city falsely ascribes a political viewpoint to you that you never even had?

I know, right?

...