He is at once the law officer of the county and the public prosecutor. While in the former capacity he represents the county and is largely subordinate to, and under the control of, the [county] board of supervisors, he is not so in the latter. In the prosecution of criminal cases he *1183 acts by the authority and in the name of the people of the state.
The theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected. At the same time it cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between *1186 the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.
h[e]ld only that when a public employee speaks not as a citizen upon matters of public concern, but instead as an employee upon matters only of personal interest, absent the most unusual circumstances, a federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review the wisdom of a personnel decision taken by a public agency allegedly in reaction to the employee's behavior.
[T]here are deprivations less harsh than dismissal that nevertheless press state employees and applicants to conform their beliefs and associations to some state-selected orthodoxy. The First Amendment is not a tenure provision, protecting public employees from actual or constructive discharge. The First Amendment prevents the government ... from wielding its power to interfere with its employees' freedom to believe and associate, or to not believe and not associate.
Pursuant to his duties as a prosecutor, [Ceballos] wrote a memo expressing his concerns about the veracity of the officers in [People v. Cuskey ]. He then informed his supervisors he intended to comply with his duties under Brady v. Maryland, [373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963) ], which required him to turn his memo over to defense counsel.
Ceballos prepared a memorandum describing [the results of his investigation] and told his supervisors that he should disclose that information to the defense under Brady v. Maryland as he is required to do so. This is a prosecutorial function that he's engaged in at this time, when he's doing what he is supposed to do.
[W]hen the State is the speaker, it may make content-based choices. When the University determines the content of the education it provides, it is the University speaking, and we have permitted the government to regulate the content of what is or is not expressed when it is the speaker or when it enlists private entities to convey its own message. In the same vein, in Rust v. Sullivan, [500 U.S. 173, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1991) ], we upheld the government's prohibition on abortion-related advice applicable to recipients of federal funds for family planning counseling. There, the government did not create a program to encourage private speech but instead used private speakers to transmit specific information pertaining to its own program. We recognized that when the government appropriates public funds to promote a particular policy of its own it is entitled to say what it wishes. 500 U.S. at 194, 111 S.Ct. 1759. When the government disburses public funds to private entities to convey a governmental message, it may take legitimate and appropriate steps to ensure that its message is neither garbled nor distorted by the grantee.
In both situations—public employee speech and government-funded speech—the government is entitled to control the content of the speech because it has, in a meaningful sense, “purchased” the speech at issue through a grant of funding or payment of a salary. The limits of government control are similar in both types of cases, as well: Just as the government as provider of funds cannot dictate the content of speech made outside the confines of the funded program, see [Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173,] at 198, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233, the government as employer is restricted in its ability to regulate the speech of its employees when they speak not as public employees, but as private citizens on matters of public concern.
any good faith communication that discloses or demonstrates an intention to disclose information that may evidence ... any activity by a state agency or by an employee that is undertaken in the performance of the employee's official duties ... and that is in violation of any state or federal law or regulation, including, but not limited to, corruption, malfeasance, bribery, theft of government property, fraudulent claims, fraud, coercion, conversion, malicious prosecution, misuse of government property, or willful omission to perform duty....
The exercise of [judicial review], even when unavoidable, is always attended with a serious evil, namely, that the correction of legislative mistakes comes from the outside, and the people thus lose the political experience, and the moral education and stimulus that comes from fighting the question out in the ordinary way, and correcting their own errors. The tendency of a common and easy resort to this great function, now lamentably too common, is to dwarf the political capacity of the people, and to deaden [their] sense of moral responsibility. It is no light thing to do that.
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