City’s ordinances make City’s building inspector responsible…
City’s ordinances make City’s building inspector responsible for enforcing building code standards and authorizes the inspector to refer for prosecution all known building code violations. The inspector took a newspaper reporter through a number of rundown buildings in a slum neighborhood. After using various slurs to describe the occupants of the buildings, the inspector said to the reporter: “I don’t even try to get these buildings up to code or to get their owners prosecuted because if these buildings ever were repaired, the people who live in them would just wreck them again.” The reporter published the inspector’s statement in a story in the local newspaper. The inspector admitted he made the statements. On the basis of the statements and on the authority of another ordinance that allows the inspector to be fired for “good cause,” City’s council discharged the inspector. Is the City council’s action constitutional?