Bautista v. Los Angeles County

10 S.O.S. 6749 (Profiled in Police Magazine 12/07/10). The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not violate a deputy’s First Amendment rights, when the agency fired him for maintaining a personal relationship with a known prostitute and heroin user, a district appellate court has ruled. Deputy Emir Bautista was terminated in 2004, after his relationship with Shawn Crook became known to the department. Bautista had not reported the relationship to his superiors, reports the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Department policy requires officers to seek permission before associating with anyone under criminal investigation or indictment, or “who have an open and notorious reputation in the community for criminal activity, where such association would be detrimental to the image of the Department.” Bautista sued in 2006 to reverse a decision of the Los Angeles County Civil Service Commission approving his discharge. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs, since retired, denied the request, reasoning that the prohibited-association policy was rationally related to a legitimate purpose and therefore constitutional. On appeal, Bautista argued that Janavs should have applied heightened scrutiny to the policy because it infringed his fundamental right of marriage and similar intimate association, but Perluss said rational basis review was appropriate where the policy only “incidentally” affected those rights. The justice conceded that Bautista’s involvement with Crook was “admirable” insofar as it encouraged her to abandon prostitution and recover from heroin addiction. However, he wrote, crediting Martinez’s testimony about the effect of Bautista’s relationship on the department, the decision “was not without costs.” Perluss also rebuffed Bautista’s argument that the penalty was excessive, pointing out that the department’s disciplinary guidelines expressly mentioned discharge as the appropriate punishment.