> In the first link, the case is about a memo written on duty as part of the employee's role; a uniform is irrelevant (and the word 'uniform' is mentioned zero times in the document).
The facts are not identical, but the facts are sufficiently similar that you could cite that case as precedence for arguing that the facts in question here should be treated similarly. The lawyer I linked to certainly thinks so. Are you a lawyer?
> In the second link, the article explicitly states: "Wearing a badge doesn’t forfeit the free speech of the person".
You took that out of context. "Person" here means the private person, not the cop representing himself as a cop. The paragraph goes on to say, "the speech of a person who presents himself in his official governmental capacity is no longer the individual’s free speech, but the official person’s speech. And the latter is not free."
Speaking of taking things out of context, did you read the rest of my paragraph, which talks about private speech versus official capacity, and matches the context surrounding my quote from the article?
in his official governmental capacity were the words - the funeral/protesting police were not on the clock on active duty, and as I said, no-one sane would confuse their message with a governmental message, official or unofficial.
Are you a lawyer?
?
It's clear neither of us are. So what? You're still misreading the second article re: private vs offical personage. That article is not saying what you're claiming it says. And as a result, the first link you provided is also not supporting your claims. The lawyer you linked to says absolutely nothing about uniforms - the term (and concept) 'uniform' appears nowhere in the article, but it does talk about the loss of freedom of speech when speaking in an official capacity.
And no, 'in uniform' is not the same as 'official capacity'. In none of these cases are they equivalent: the district attorney doesn't wear a uniform; Novara's phone call was about abusing his official capacity, and he could have been in the nude when he called, for all it mattered; the police turning their backs at the funeral are clearly not acting as a government voice and couldn't be confused to be doing so.
The facts are not identical, but the facts are sufficiently similar that you could cite that case as precedence for arguing that the facts in question here should be treated similarly. The lawyer I linked to certainly thinks so. Are you a lawyer?
> In the second link, the article explicitly states: "Wearing a badge doesn’t forfeit the free speech of the person".
You took that out of context. "Person" here means the private person, not the cop representing himself as a cop. The paragraph goes on to say, "the speech of a person who presents himself in his official governmental capacity is no longer the individual’s free speech, but the official person’s speech. And the latter is not free."