## Facts

- Donald H. Hawkins was hired in February 1985 as a probationary correctional officer at the Maryland House of Correction and had prior detention-center experience.
- In November 1985, while off duty, out of uniform, and acting as a private citizen, Hawkins went to a bank in Annapolis to cash his State payroll check.
- After a dispute with a teller over the bank’s refusal to cash the check, Hawkins obtained authorization from a customer-service representative and returned to the teller’s window.
- Hawkins loudly directed anti-Semitic and ethnic insults at the teller, including statements that “Hitler should have gotten rid of all you Jews,” and added “And all the Poles too.”
- The incident was reported to correctional personnel, an investigation followed, and the personnel officer recommended termination.
- Hawkins’s probationary employment was terminated in December 1985.
- Correctional officials testified that racially or ethnically charged conduct by an officer could escalate tensions among a diverse inmate population and threaten institutional security.

## Issues

1. Whether off-duty, off-premises, abusive ethnic slurs directed at a private citizen were protected speech for purposes of public-employee First Amendment analysis.
2. Whether the Department could terminate a probationary correctional officer based substantially on such remarks and a reasonable prediction that they would undermine prison efficiency, discipline, and security.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed the discharge.
- The court treated Hawkins’s remarks as personal abuse during a private dispute rather than speech on a matter of public concern.
- Even assuming a balancing analysis applied, the Department’s strong interests in prison order, security, and racial/ethnic neutrality outweighed Hawkins’s minimal interest in making discriminatory insults.
- The court accepted that the Department could act on a reasonable prediction of disruption and unfitness for duty without proof of actual institutional disruption.
- Hawkins’s probationary status permitted discharge for any lawful reason, and the First Amendment did not bar termination on these facts.

## Legal Principles

- Public-employee speech protections are weakest for targeted, abusive epithets in a private quarrel and strongest for speech addressing matters of public concern.
- A public employer may discipline an employee when the employer’s interest in efficient operations outweighs the employee’s speech interest; in corrections, security and institutional order carry exceptional weight.
- In security-sensitive public employment, the employer may rely on reasonable, fact-based predictions of disruption and impaired job performance; actual disruption need not be shown.
- Off-duty speech and conduct may be considered when reasonably related to job fitness, particularly where the job requires impartial treatment of a diverse population.
- Probationary public employees may be discharged absent a constitutional or other legal prohibition; the dispositive question is whether the Constitution forbids the termination.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the termination of a probationary correctional officer for off-duty ethnic slurs because the remarks were treated as low-value personal abuse and reasonably indicated unfitness for correctional work, where maintaining security and racial neutrality justified preventive action based on predicted harm to institutional operations.


Hawkins v. Dep’t of Pub. Safety & Corr. Servs., 325 Md. 621, 602 A.2d 712 (Md. 1992)