Ruff v. Long

MEMORANDUM

KEARNEY, District Judge.

The First and Fourteenth Amendments’ guarantees of free expression without retaliation and procedural due process apply to police sergeants terminated from their position. To obtain Section 1983 protection of these rights and defeat summary judgment, the police sergeant, like all other citizens, must adduce competent threshold evidence he engaged in First Amendment expressive conduct and his employer deprived him of due process often provided in a collective bargaining agreement. On August 3, 2014, an off-duty plain clothed police sergeant appeared in a…