enforced through litigation, thus making procedural safeguards a necessary subject of discussion. "Although we are assured that 'not every procedure that may safeguard protected speech is constitutionally mandated,' the implication of that assurance is that many are'" Scalia continued. The plurality had provided little guidance in that area. He could not reconcile this due-process requirement with other cases where the Court had ruled that at-will public employees, lacking a property interest in their jobs, were not entitled to this level of process in adverse personnel actions. He found it absurd that there was no need to investigate if the dismissal was for other causes, whether erroneously believed or not., But if speech was involved, the matter would have to be investigated, after which an adverse action could proceed, even if the investigation had produced inaccurate information about the content of the speech, as long as it did not touch on matters of public concern. Scalia argued that the plurality had not created new procedural protections for the First Amendment, "but rather new First Amendment rights". Pickering had held that public employees must be free to speak on issues of public concern without fear of retaliation, and he considered that the important factor. "A category of employee speech is certainly not being 'retaliated against' if it is no more and no less subject to being mistaken for a disciplinable infraction than is any other category of speech or conduct." He found the procedural test "doubly irrelevant" since not only had the plurality found the hospital to have satisfied it, they then remanded the case so the district court could conduct a trial on whether the speech was a pretext for a retaliatory firing. Since that had been the end result of Mt. Healthy he found no need for a new requirement in this case, and cited other areas where the Court had found a pretext inquiry sufficient to protect constitutional rights. In response to Stevens' dissent, he said such an inquiry had been held constitutionally inadequate only where there was a contractual relationship, which Churchill did not have. "An employee dismissable at will can be fired on the basis of an erroneous factual judgment, with no legal recourse—which is what happened here." Her only protection was the Pickering holding that she could not be retaliated against, and the plurality was not so much reinforcing that as expanding it to cover employer