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Paul M. Secunda

Selected Works

2007

Employment Practice

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Whither The Pickering Rights Of Federal Employees?, Paul Secunda Aug 2007

Whither The Pickering Rights Of Federal Employees?, Paul Secunda

Paul M. Secunda

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. Bd. 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 (CSRA 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 …


Reflections On The Technicolor Right To Association In American Labor And Employment Law, Paul M. Secunda Jul 2007

Reflections On The Technicolor Right To Association In American Labor And Employment Law, Paul M. Secunda

Paul M. Secunda

It is time to rethink how the United States enforces the right of association in the workplace. The proliferation of political associational rights, intimate association rights, and expressive association rights in the constitutional sphere over the last thirty years has made the scope of this fundamental civil liberty confusing and hard to enforce. Outside of the constitutional framework, which generally applies only to public employees, low union density and the lack of common law associational claims have made private-sector employees' associational rights vulnerable. The unfortunate consequence may be that American workers currently enjoy less associational freedoms than almost any other …