In the spring of 1981, a man named John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in an assassination attempt. President Reagan was, and continues to be, one of the most divisive figures in the history of American politics. His eight years as president ushered in a conservative revolution that many people did not like. One of the people who was not a fan of President Reagan and his policies was Ardith McPherson. Ms. McPherson was an administrative employee at the county Constable’s office in Harris County, Texas (Rankin v. McPherson, 1987). McPherson was fired from her job at the Constable’s office because someone privately overheard her say, “if they go for him again, I hope they get him” in regards to the assassination attempt on President Reagan. She reported it to the Constable, Walter Rankin (Rankin v.…show more content… I would say that it is protected for some, but not all. For example, if bureaucrats are caught in a political scene, there is usually a ton of blowback; however, when elected officials are caught violating the Hatch Act, there are rarely consequences. In previous constitutional and administrative law cases where decisions are made about the Constitutional rights of public actors, the Court has laid out certain thresholds that have to be met and balancing tests to consider when looking at these difficult cases. When it comes to an employee’s First Amendment right to free speech, the Court created a balancing test in its ruling in the case Pickering vs. the Board of Education, where a decision would have to be made regarding both the petitioner and respondent’s interests. In the case of Pickering v. the Board of Education, the court decided that the speech rights of Mr. Pickering outweighed the interest of the school board to maintain a good
