Law Commons^™

Creating Masculine Identities: Bullying And Harassment "Because Of Sex", Ann C. Mcginley

University of Colorado Law Review

This Article deals with group harassment of women and men in the workplace under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, the Supreme Court held that Title VII forbids harassment by members of the same sex, but it also emphasized that Title VII is implicated only if the harassment occurs "because of sex." Oncale's "because of sex" requirement has spawned considerable confusion in same-sex and different sex harassment cases. This Article focuses on four fact patterns that confuse courts, scholars, and employment lawyers. In the first scenario, men harass women in traditionally male …

Whither The Pickering Rights Of Federal Employees?, Paul M. Secunda

University of Colorado Law Review

As a result of the Supreme Court's 1983 decision in Bush v. Lucas, federal employees are not permitted to bring Bivens constitutional tort claims directly to federal court to vindicate their First Amendment rights to free speech under Pickering v. Board of Education. Instead, the Bush Court found that Congress had established an effective, alternative statutory scheme for vindication of such claims under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. This places federal employees in a less favorable predicament than their state and local employee counterparts who are able to directly proceed to court on their First Amendment retaliation claims …

Government Workers And Government Speech, Helen Norton

Publications

This essay, to be published in the First Amendment Law Review's forthcoming symposium issue on Public Citizens, Public Servants: Free Speech in the Post-Garcetti Workplace, critiques the Supreme Court's decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos as reflecting a distorted understanding of government speech that overstates government's own expressive interests while undermining the public's interest in transparent government.

In Garcetti, the Court held that the First Amendment does not protect public employees' speech made "pursuant to their official duties," concluding that a government employer should remain free to exercise "employer control over what the employer itself has commissioned or created." …