New sheriff does not rehire senior deputies

The Roanoke Times reports here that the new sheriff for Roanoke County chose not to rehire some of the senior deputy sheriffs who served under his predecessor. Historically, the federal courts have zigged and zagged a bit in trying to define the limits of the constitutional protections for deputies of constitutional officers against patronage dismissals. The decisions in Jones v. Dodson, Jenkins v. Medford, and Knight v. Vernon did not proceed in a straight line. Probably the higher-ranking officials in any government office have the lower level of First Amendment protection.