A federal judge has shut down a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former senior investigator at Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, dealing a serious blow to claims that the agency’s former chief buried evidence and punished an internal critic. The ruling, issued last Thursday, tossed the investigator’s federal First Amendment claim with prejudice and left related state-law counts unresolved. The clash grew out of a tense August 2024 firing and months of scrutiny over COPA’s handling of headline-making police use-of-force investigations.
U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow granted the city’s motion to dismiss, finding that the speech former investigator Eric Haynam says triggered retaliation was made as part of his official duties and therefore is not protected by the First Amendment. The court dismissed the federal claim with prejudice and declined supplemental jurisdiction over the Illinois whistleblower count, according to court documents from Justia. The opinion leans on the familiar Garcetti framework, which says employee speech that "owes its existence to" job duties falls outside First Amendment protection, to explain why Haynam’s federal theory could not go forward.
Haynam, who rose to deputy chief administrator at COPA, says he reported alleged misconduct by then-chief Andrea Kersten to the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability and to the city’s Office of Inspector General, and that he...
NEW YORK, NY — A series of artificial intelligence–generated images falsely portraying Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child alongside his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, with convicted sex offender and fin...