Since the Supreme Court’s term began in early October it has agreed to hear 15 cases—13 at its “long” conference before the term began and two subsequently. Only two of them will impact local government.

In Heffernan v. City of Paterson, New Jersey Officer Heffernan was assigned to a detail in the Office of Chief of Police. He was demoted after he was seen picking up a campaign sign for the current police chief’s opponent.

The First Amendment protects nonpolitical public employees who support a candidate in an election. Officer Heffernan maintains that he was in no way involved with the police chief race. The sign wasn’t for himself; it was for his bedridden mother.

Officer Heffernan sought to bring a lawsuit claiming that he was retaliated against based on the City’s perception he was exercising his First Amendment free association rights. He pointed to lower court precedent holding that public employees may bring First Amendment retaliation claims if an adverse employment action is taken because they remain politically neutral or silent.

The Third Circuit concluded Heffernan could not bring a perceived free-association claim because he wasn’t retaliated against for “taking a stand of calculated neutrality.” Instead, he was demoted on a “factually incorrect basis.” The Supreme Court has held that it does not violate the Constitution to discipline an employee based on incorrect information. To bring a First Amendment claim an employee must engage in First Amendment protected conduct, which Officer Heffernan failed to do in this case.

A police officer stopped Edward Streiff as he was leaving a house where police suspected drugs were being sold. Utah concedes that the stop was unlawful. The officer called dispatch to run Streiff’s identification. Streiff had an outstanding warrant so the officer searched him incident to a lawful arrest and found drugs.

The issue in Utah v. Strieff is whether evidence seized incident to a lawful arrest on an outstanding warrant should be suppressed because the warrant was discovered during an investigatory stop later found to be unlawful.

The exclusionary rule suppresses evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution. Per the “attenuation” exception to the exclusionary rule, the Court has held that the taint of an initial, unlawful detention may be dissipated by an intervening circumstance. Is the discovery of an outstanding warrant such an intervening circumstance?

The Utah Supreme Court rejected the argument that the attenuation exception applies to the discovery of a warrant following an illegal stop. In all previous Supreme Court cases applying the attenuation exception the attenuating event was a “subsequent, intervening act of a defendant’s free will”—a voluntary confession (following an illegal arrest). The Utah Supreme Court found the three-factor test for determining whether the attenuation exception applies is “ill-suited to the outstanding warrant scenario.”

Lower courts have disagreed regarding whether the attenuation exception applies to the outstanding warrant scenario.

What else might the Court take before the term is over of interest to local government?  Right now, all eyes are on Friedman v. City of Highland Park, which the Court has now relisted (postponed agreeing or refusing to hear) twice. The question in this case is whether a Highland Park, Illinois ordinance banning large-capacity magazines and “assault weapons” violates the Second Amendment.