Porter v. Califano

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge:

This case involves the constitutional and statutory rights of a federal employee punished for speaking. In recent years Congress and the courts have come a long way in expanding and fortifying those rights and in conferring on public employees citizenship of the first class. This decision is another episode in that journey.

Appellant Ella Porter was suspended without pay for thirty days from her clerk-typist job at the Southeastern Program Center of the Social Security Administration in Birmingham, Alabama. Porter was suspended primarily for writing and distributing a…