Angelo Dahlia v. Omar Rodriguez

I.

Four days after Angelo Dahlia, a detective in the City of Burbank Police Department, disclosed the alleged use of abusive interrogation tactics by his colleagues to the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, he was placed on administrative leave by Chief of Police Tim Stehr. That decision prompted Dahlia to file a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit against Stehr and lieutenants, sergeants, and a detective of the Burbank Police Department, alleging that his placement on administrative leave was unconstitutional retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment rights. The district court dismissed the suit, concluding that our decision in Huppert v. City of Pittsburg, 574 F.3d 696 (9th Cir.2009), con trolled Dahlia’s case “unless and until overruled” and that, therefore, Dahlia’s speech was not protected by the First Amendment. The district court, correctly noting that “the nature of an official’s job duties are generally a question of fact,” concluded that Hwppert held “as a matter of law that disclosure of incriminating facts is within the official duties of a police officer in the State of California.” Although we have significant reservations about the validity of the Huppert…