Heffernan v. City of Paterson was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees, decided on April 26, 2016. Jeffrey Heffernan, a detective with the Paterson, New Jersey, police force, was seen with a lawn sign for the candidate challenging the city's incumbent mayor. Heffernan's supervisors mistakenly thought that he was actively supporting the challenger and demoted him. He brought suit alleging that his demotion violated his right to free speech. Writing for a majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured) cited the Court's precedents, which had held that it is unconstitutional for a government agency to discipline an employee for engaging in partisan political activity, as long as that activity is not disruptive to the agency's operations. Even if Heffernan was not actually engaging in protected speech, he wrote, the discipline against him sent a message to others to avoid exercising their rights. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he agreed that Heffernan had been harmed but not that his constitutional rights had been violated.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heffernan_v._City_of_Paterson

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1777:

American Revolutionary War: Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington (statue pictured) rode forty miles through the night to warn militiamen under the control of her father that British troops were planning to invade Danbury, Connecticut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington

1865:

U.S. Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of US President Abraham Lincoln, in rural northern Virginia, ending a twelve-day manhunt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth

1945:

World War II: Both the German and Polish–Soviet sides claimed victory as major fighting in the Battle of Bautzen ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bautzen_(1945)

1989:

An editorial was published in the People's Daily denouncing the growing unrest in Tiananmen Square, which would remain contentious through the remainder of the protests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_26_Editorial

2007:

Controversy surrounding the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, a Soviet Red Army World War II memorial in Tallinn, Estonia, erupted into mass protests and riots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Night

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

hotel load: (electrical engineering) The electrical load caused by all systems on a vehicle (especially a marine vessel or a truck) other than propulsion. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hotel_load

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.   --Eugène Delacroix https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix