696
Stevens, J., dissenting
could not be fired because her supervisor reasonably but mistakenly believed she had been late to work or given a patient the wrong medicine. Ordinarily, when someone acts to another person's detriment based upon a factual judgment, the actor assumes the risk that an impartial adjudicator may come to a different conclusion.2 Our legal system generally delegates the determination of facts upon which important rights depend to neutral factfinders, notwithstanding the attendant risks of error and overdeterrence.
Federal constitutional rights merit at least the normal degree of protection. Doubts concerning the ability of juries to find the truth, an ability for which we usually have high regard, should be resolved in favor of, not against, the protection of First Amendment rights. See, e. g., New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 279-280 (1964). Unfortunately, the plurality underestimates the importance of freedom of speech for the more than 18 million civilian employees of this country's Federal, State, and local Governments,3 and subordinates that freedom to an abstract interest in bureaucratic efficiency. The need for governmental efficiency that so concerns the plurality is amply protected by the substan-2 In NLRB v. Burnup & Sims, Inc., 379 U. S. 21 (1964), two employee labor organizers were fired based upon a report that they had threatened to dynamite the employer's plant if a coming representation election was unsuccessful. The National Labor Relations Board found that the employees had never made the threatening statements. Although we recognized that the employer had acted in good faith, this Court held that the discharge "plainly violated" the organizers' right under § 8 of the National Labor Relations Act. Id., at 22. "Union activity," we observed, "often engenders strong emotions and gives rise to active rumors. A protected activity acquires a precarious status if innocent employees can be discharged while engaging in it, even though the employer acts in good faith." Id., at 23. The plurality does not explain why First Amendment rights should receive any lesser protection than the statutory right at issue in Burnup & Sims.
3 See U. S. Dept. of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States 318 (113 ed. 1993) (Table No. 500) (figure from 1991).
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