By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) has ruled that a policeman can be fired for violating regulations after he offered for sale on the Internet videos of himself removing a uniform and masturbating.
The justices overturned on Monday a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that reinstated the officer's lawsuit claiming he had been wrongly dismissed by the San Diego Police Department because the First Amendment's free-speech rights protected his off-duty actions.
Saying the police department had demonstrated that his activities compromised its interests, the justices said the California-based appeals court had been wrong in ruling it must justify the decision to fire the officer, identified in court documents only as "John Roe."
"We have little difficulty in concluding that the city was not barred from terminating Roe," the justices said in a brief, unsigned opinion filed by the entire court. The court took the unusual step of issuing the ruling without hearing arguments.
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