A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a former Brooklyn prosecutor who was demoted after he said his borough was the best place for a prosecutor to work because “we’ve got more dead bodies per square inch than anybody else.”

The former prosecutor, Robert Reuland, made the statement to New York Magazine in 2001 while he was promoting his crime novel “Hollowpoint.” He was demoted and then fired four months later.

In 2004, Mr. Reuland won a $30,000 jury award in a lawsuit against the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, over his demotion.

Lawyers for the city had appealed the jury award, saying that Mr. Reuland’s statement does not deserve First Amendment protection because Mr. Reuland had made the statement to increase the sales of his book.

In a decision released yesterday, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the jury’s award, ruling 2-1 that “Reuland’s statement is a matter of public concern,” regardless of any motivations he might have had. The decision affirms a ruling in 2004 by a federal judge in Brooklyn.

Judges Rosemary Pooler and Sonia Sotomayor ruled in Mr. Reuland’s favor, finding that his statement deserved First Amendment protection.

Judge Ralph Winter dissented. He wrote: “A government employee who purposefully or recklessly misinforms the public about a fact specifically related to his area of employment responsibility in order to profit monetarily should not be rewarded by a money judgment from a federal court when he is demoted.”

In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Hynes, Jerry Schmetterer said, in part, “the District Attorney respects the court’s decision.”