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5. Is the action of the city council constitutional?

On the basis of these statements, the city council discharged the building inspector.

A city ordinance makes the city building inspector responsible for ensuring that all buildings in that city are kept up to the building code standards, and requires the inspector to refer for prosecution all known building code violations. Another ordinance provides that the city building inspector may be discharged for «good cause.» The building inspector took a newspaper reporter through a number of run-down buildings in a slum neighborhood. After using various epithets and slurs to describe the occupants of these buildings, the building inspector stated to the reporter: «I do not even try to get these buildings up to code or to have their owners prosecuted for code violations because if these buildings are repaired, the people who live in them will just wreck them again.» The reporter published these statements in a story in the local newspaper. The building inspector admitted he made the statements.