Santa Clara County DA Beats Deputy’s Revived Free Speech Claim

A former Santa Clara County deputy prosecutor can’t maintain a retaliation suit claiming he was reassigned to allegedly less-prestigious courts for authoring an op-ed about criminal justice issues, a California federal judge ruled.

The claim against District Attorney Jeff Rosen, which had been revived on appeal, is barred by an arbitrator’s earlier finding that the deputy spoke as a public employee when he penned the newspaper piece expressing views contrary to Rosen’s public statements. That finding that plaintiff Daniel Chung wasn’t speaking as a private citizen was fatal to his First Amendment claim, and binding as to his change-in-role ...