[DOWNLOAD] "Wilbur v. Mahan" by United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Wilbur v. Mahan
- Author : United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- Release Date : January 23, 1993
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 59 KB
Description
POSNER, Circuit Judge. This case arises at the intersection of two lines of free-speech decisions. One concerns the right of public officials to hire or fire an employee on the basis of his affiliation with a political party or faction. The other concerns their right to discipline an employee who speaks out on a matter of public significance in a way displeasing to them. Sheriff Mahan of Christian County, Illinois, decided to run for reelection in the November 1990 election. In August 1989 Deputy Sheriff Wilbur announced his candidacy for the office of sheriff. He declared that if elected he would delegate more authority to the deputy sheriffs; Mahan, according to Wilbur, ran the office as a one-man band. Both Mahan and Wilbur are Democrats. About a week after Wilbur announced his candidacy, Mahan amended the regulations of the sheriffs office to provide that any employee who ran for sheriff could be placed on unpaid leave of absence until the election. The regulation, effective September 1, 1989, was made applicable to Wilbur on December 16, almost a year before the election. He claims without contradiction that because the deputys job was his only source of income his ability to campaign was crippled by the application of the new regulation to him; he must not have been able to raise substantial campaign contributions. He claims again without contradiction that between the time he declared his candidacy and the time he was forced to go on unpaid leave he did not discuss politics or campaign during hours when he was on duty and his candidacy and campaigning did not disturb the operations of the office in the slightest. We assume that Wilbur lost the election and returned to his deputys job, although the record is curiously silent on these points. His suit, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeks among other things to recover the wages that he lost as a result of his unpaid leave of absence.