Justice Byron White wrote for the majority that most of the matters Myers' questionnaire had touched on were of personal, not public, concern and that the action had damaged the harmonious relations necessary for the efficient operation of the district attorney's office.

[2] Shortly after her dismissal, Myers filed a Section 1983 suit in federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, against Connick both personally and in his official capacity.

[2] "Taken as a whole," Gordon continued," the issues presented in the questionnaire relate to the effective functioning of the District Attorney's Office and are matters of public importance and concern."

A 1974 Fifth Circuit decision offered language that clarified this test: "[I]t is incumbent upon [the government] to clearly demonstrate that the employee's conduct substantially and materially interferes with the discharge of duties and responsibilities inherent in [public] employment.

He agreed it was important, but did not believe, as Connick did, that the mere act of distributing a questionnaire which asked, among other things, whether respondents trusted four named supervisors, was as prejudicial to discipline as a negative statement about those individuals would be.

[2][8] "When all factors are considered, it cannot be said that the defendant's interest in promoting the efficiency of the public services performed through his employees was either adversely affected or substantially impeded by plaintiff's distribution of the questionnaire", Gordon concluded.

[10] Strickler "had this sinking feeling", when he heard the news, since it meant at least four justices disagreed with the district court; likewise, Wessel said he knew Connick would win.

Not even the question asking if ADAs had felt pressured to work on Connick's campaigns, which he described as "thrown in", were of public interest, he argued, since they were not civil service positions.

"Since the petitioner cannot really do anything with those facts," he said, "he urges this Court to hold as a matter of law that the content of this questionnaire was so totally devoid of value as to be per se unfit for protection under the First Amendment."

By a 5-4 margin it had upheld Connick's firing of Myers, holding that her First Amendment rights had not been violated and the district court had imposed an overly onerous burden on him.

Around the beginning of the McCarthy era in the middle of the century, as public employees were required to sign loyalty oaths and deny or repudiate past membership in the Communist Party or similar organizations, the Court sided with challenges to those laws, often by holding them too vague to be enforceable.

These culminated in Keyishian v. Board of Regents,[14] where the Court struck down a broad range of New York statutes and regulations requiring faculty at state-run colleges and universities to certify that they had never been members of the Communist Party.

"[These cases] lead us to conclude that, if Myers' questionnaire cannot be fairly characterized as constituting speech on a matter of public concern, it is unnecessary for us to scrutinize the reasons for her discharge", White wrote.

When employee expression cannot be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community, government officials should enjoy wide latitude in managing their offices, without intrusive oversight by the judiciary in the name of the First Amendment.

"When close working relationships are essential to fulfilling public responsibilities, a wide degree of deference to the employer's judgment is appropriate", White wrote.

"Questions, no less than forcefully stated opinions and facts, carry messages and it requires no unusual insight to conclude that the purpose, if not the likely result, of the questionnaire is to seek to precipitate a vote of no confidence in Connick and his supervisors."

"[19] "The limited First Amendment interest involved here," White began his conclusion, "does not require that Connick tolerate action which he reasonably believed would disrupt the office, undermine his authority, and destroy close working relationships."

[25] "The Court's decision today inevitably will deter public employees from making critical statements about the manner in which government agencies are operated for fear that doing so will provoke their dismissal," Brennan said, in conclusion.

"[1] Because of the difference in circumstances and its opposite holding, Connick was considered as the complement of Pickering, establishing a test that required determining whether the employee's speech was on a matter of public concern.

The respondent in Rankin v. McPherson was a Harris County, Texas, deputy constable, newly hired and on probationary status in 1981, when she heard about the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

"It will be an unusual case where the employer's legitimate interests will be so great as to justify punishing an employee for this type of private speech that routinely takes place at all levels in the workplace.

"[30] Antonin Scalia, appointed to the Court by Reagan to replace Burger, wrote in dissent that Myers' questionnaire had far more of a claim to legitimate public interest than McPherson's remark.

O'Connor, writing for a four-justice plurality, held that due to the dispute the Connick test should have been applied to what the supervisor reasonably believed Churchill had said, rather than what a trier of fact might find.

"[35] In 2006, a similar case, in that it involved an assistant district attorney in a large city challenging a nationally known superior over a job action, came before the Court.

Following the appointment of Samuel Alito, it was reargued and he cast the deciding vote to reverse the Ninth Circuit and find that Ceballos had not been unduly deprived of his First Amendment rights.

For the majority, Anthony Kennedy found that while Ceballos was speaking on a matter of undeniable public concern, his speech, unlike Myers' or those in the other cases, was made as part of his job duties.

"The only sense in which his position apparently required him to hew to a substantive message was at the relatively abstract point of favoring respect for law and its evenhanded enforcement, subjects that are not at the level of controversy in this case.

[39] In another case from the 1987 term, White's "common-sense realization that government offices could not function if every employment decision became a constitutional matter" became the guiding principle for evaluating public employees' Fourth Amendment rights during non-criminal administrative investigations.

Both would be quoted again in 2010, when Ontario v. Quon considered the same issue in holding unanimously that an audit of police pagers which revealed sexually explicit personal messages was legitimately work-related and constitutional.

"[His dissent] is fully consistent with [his] generous view of the Court's powers ... and his commitment to the fullest possible degree of freedom of expression and access to information.