1402, 1405, (11th Cir.1996), that it was not clearly established under Branti that the dismissal of clerical employees of a county tax collector’s office for political reasons violated their First Amendment rights. Beauregard controls the qualified immunity analysis in this ease. Moreover, it is not entirely without significance that the district court, with full briefing and two years after Nikolits’s actions, concluded that those actions did not violate the law. Finally, we note that plaintiffs’ argument that the law was clearly established by Elrod and Branti is further undermined by the split of the circuits concerning what those two decisions mean. See supra our discussion at 2510; see also Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 533-36, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2819-20, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985) (<HOLDING>). While we have endeavored in this opinion to
holding that because a city inspector was not entitled to official immunity the city was not entitled to vicarious official immunity holding that attorney who was retained by city to assist in conducting official investigation into firefighters potential wrongdoing was entitled to qualified immunity in firefighters  1983 claim because official investigation of state employee was activity of the type entitled to qualified immunity holding that official defendant was entitled to qualified immunity and noting that legal uncertainty about the meaning of a supreme court decision was reflected in the decisions of the lower federal courts recognizing that decisions of lower federal courts interpreting federal law are not binding on state courts holding that defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity