First Amendment Commons^™

Educating The United States Supreme Court At Summers' School: A Lesson On The "Special Character Of The Animal", Rafael Gely, Ramona L. Paetzold, Leonard Bierman

Faculty Publications

In this article, we explore the implications that Professor Summers' insights regarding public employment have for the Garcetti and Davenport decisions. In particular, we focus on the extent to which the political nature of public employment affects public employees' rights to freedom of speech as well as matters regarding the representational functions of public employee unions.

Religion In The Workplace: A Report On The Layers Of Relevant Law In The United States, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Religion In The Workplace: A Report On The Layers Of Relevant Law In The United States, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This article reports on the thick layers of law applicable to claims of religious exception to public and private employment workplaces in the United States. It reviews the Supreme Court's First and Fourteenth Amendment salient holdings, distinguishing public sector (government) workplaces, and the extent to which legislative bodies may and may not oblige private employers to "accommodate" religiously-asserted requirements. It also provides exhaustive footnote analyses of all major federal statutes (plus some representative state and local law variations) pertinent to the topic. Its principal conclusions are these: In the currently prevailing view of the U.S. Supreme Court, neither public nor …

Constraining Public Employee Speech: Government's Control Of Its Workers' Speech To Protect Its Own Expression, Helen Norton

Publications

This Article identifies a key doctrinal shift in courts' treatment of public employees' First Amendment claims--a shift that imperils the public's interest in transparent government as well as the free speech rights of more than twenty million government workers. In the past, courts interpreted the First Amendment to permit governmental discipline of public employee speech on matters of public interest only when such speech undermined the government employer's interest in efficiently providing public services. In contrast, courts now increasingly focus on--and defer to--government's claim to control its workers' expression to protect its own speech.

More specifically, courts increasingly permit government …

Shibboleths And Ceballos: Eroding Constitutional Rights Through Pseudocommunication, Susan Stuart

Law Faculty Publications

Recently, the Supreme Court rendered an inexplicable First Amendment decision that has far-reaching effects on the way government is held accountable to the public. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Court determined that a government employer can retaliate against an employee for doing his job correctly, notwithstanding the Constitution, so long as the employer targets speech that was part of the employee’s official duties. Inasmuch as government employees are often responsible for reporting government misconduct and other matters of public concern, this opinion essentially leaves the public unprotected from the unbridled discretion of government supervisors. The possible motivations for this …

Employee Speech & Management Rights: A Counterintuitive Reading Of Garcetti V. Ceballos, Elizabeth Dale

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the two years since the decision came down, courts and commentators generally have agreed that the Supreme Court's decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos sharply limited the First Amendment rights of public employees. In this Article, I argue that this widely shared interpretation overstates the case. The Court in Garcetti did not dramatically change the way it analyzed public employees' First Amendment rights. Instead, it restated the principles on which those claims rest, emphasizing management rights and the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. By making those two theories the centerpiece of the decision, the Court in Garcetti defined public employee speech rights …

Captive Audience Meetings And Forced Listening: Lessons For Canada From The American Experience, Sara Slinn

Articles & Book Chapters

Widespread adoption of mandatory representation votes and express protection of employer speech invite employer anti-union campaigns during union organizing, including employer-held captive audience meetings. Therefore, the problem of whether and how to restrict employers’ captive audience communications during union organizing is of renewed relevance in Canada. Captive meetings are a long-standing feature of American labour relations. This article considers how treatment of captive meetings evolved in the U.S., including the notion of employee choice, the “marketplace of ideas” view of expression dominating the American debate, and the central role of the contest between constitutional and statutory rights. It also considers …

"Pick"Ering The Speech Rights Of Public School Teachers: Arguing For A Movement By Courts Toward The Hazelwood-Tinker Standard Under The First Amendment, Heather Bennett

Florida A & M University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Respectful Religious Expression In The Workplace, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

This Article makes the case for judicial recognition of respectful religious expression in the workplace as more consistent with the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence and also more true to the legislative intent of the religious accommodation provisions of Title VII. Respectful religious pluralism in the workplace should become the norm through judicial requirements of best practices in the workplace. Such a view should be wholly supported by the majority of the Justices because it is consistent with their expressed views, in the Establishment Clause case law, that religion fosters moral good and that in a pluralistic society religious expression cannot …

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." …

Students And Workers And Prisoners - Oh, My! A Cautionary Note About Excessive Institutional Tailoring Of First Amendment Doctrine, Scott A. Moss

Publications

First Amendment free speech doctrine has been called "institutionally oblivious" for ignoring how different institutions present different legal questions. This Article analyzes a little-discussed phenomenon in the growing literature about institutional context in constitutional law. With certain institutions, the situation is not institutional obliviousness but the opposite: extreme institutional tailoring of speech doctrine. The burden of proof ordinarily is on the government to justify speech restrictions, but in three institutions--public schools, workplaces, and prisons--courts allow heavy speech restrictions and defer to government officials. Even if these institutions need to restrict speech unusually often, why do we need different doctrine--institutionally tailored …

Disciplining Public Employees For Expressive Activity, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

A public employee's right to free speech under the First Amendment is not unlimited and employers have the right to discipline employees for expressive activity under certain circumstances (Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 1968). The employer has an interest in ensuring that its etnployees do not under1nine its operations or ll1terfere with acco1nplishment of its objectives. At the same time, employees do not give up their constitutional rights when they accept government employment.

Buying White Beauty, Imani Perry

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the global phenomenon of skin-bleaching is a manifestation of structural inequality rooted in race, poverty, and globalization. It critiques how the marketing and use of skin-whitening products perpetuate racial hierarchies and reflects broader societal power dynamics, emphasizing the need for legal and regulatory responses to address the health and social implications of this practice.

Matters Of Public Concern Standard In Free Speech Cases, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

The public concern standard has operated primarily in two categories of free-speech cases: those involving speech by government employees and those involving defamation.

Speech Of Government Employees, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

For many years, government employment was considered a privilege rather than a right, and, as a result, the government could place restrictions on employee speech that would be unconstitutional if applied to citizens.

Advanced Employment Retaliation Issues, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

This paper presented at the American Bar Association 2005 Equal Employment Opportunity Committee Midwinter Meeting discusses three issues relating to retaliation claims in the private and public sectors: the use of union information demands with regard to potential retaliation claims; the anti-retaliation provisions contained in certain federal environmental laws and regulations; and the standards for establishing causation regarding an adverse personnel action in First Amendment retaliation claims by public employees.

Rules Of Or Substantive Law: Who Controls An Individual's Right To Choose A Lawyer In Today's Corporate Environment, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1265 (2005), Joan Colson

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is The Solomon Amendment Unconstitutional, Dale Carpenter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Religious Organizations And Mandatory Collective Bargaining Under Federal And State Labor Laws: Freedom From And Freedom For, Kathleen A. Brady

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Section 1983, The First Amendment, And Public Employee Speech: Shaping The Right To Fit The Remedy (And Vice Versa), Michael Wells

Scholarly Works

This Article is not about theories of free speech and how they bear on the public employment context, nor does it contribute to the academic debate over what the aims of public employee speech law ought to be. I take the Court at its word when it says that its aim is to give substantial weight to both the value of speech and the government's interest as an employer. Unlike Massaro and Ingber, I take it as a given that the government may insist on hierarchy and obedience to authority in the workplace. Unlike Rosenthal, I begin from the Court's …

Alan Isaacman And The First Amendment: A Candid Interview With Larry Flynt's Attorney, Clay Calvert, Robert D. Richards

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Silencing Speech In The Workplace: Re-Examining The Use Of Specific Speech Injunctive Relief For Title Vii Hostile Environment Work Claims, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 321 (2000), Sonali Das

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Triumph Of Hate Speech Regulation: Why Gender Wins But Race Loses In America, Jon Gould

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On March 30, 1995, newspaper headlines declared that hate speech regulations were dead. After six years of litigating over university hate speech codes, Stanford University's rule, one of the most modest and cautiously drafted, had been declared unconstitutional by a California Superior Court. Hate speech regulation is far from over. To the contrary, hate speech rules not only continue to exist, but the courts regularly enforce their provisions. The difference is that these cases are largely restricted to a single category-sexual harassment. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with the regulatory support of the Equal …

On Balancing Scales, Kaleidoscopes, And The Blurred Limits Of Academic Freedom, Harry F. Tepker Jr., Joseph Harroz Jr.

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Employment Law: Acevedo V. City Of Muskogee -- Creating A New Doctrine For Judging The Value Of Public Employee Speech Rights--Sound Policy Or Doctrinal Mutiny?, Timothy Wilson

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law: Board Of County Commissioners V. Umbehr And O'Hare Truck Service V. City Of Northlake--The Extension Of First Amendment Protection To Independent Contractors--The Garbage Man Can Now Talk Trash!, Brent C. Eckersley

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Implementing Waters V. Churchill In Light Of The Loudermill Pretermination Hearing, Laura L. Scarry

In the Public Interest

No abstract provided.

Mine Accident Investigations: Does The Press Have A Right To Be Present, O. Marie Anderson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—First Amendment And Freedom Of Speech—Public Employers Must Conduct A Reasonable Investigation To Determine If An Employee's Speech Is Protected Before Discharging The Employee Based Upon The Speech. Waters V. Churchill, 114 S. Ct. 1878 (1994)., D. Keith Fortner

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Employee Speech And Public Concern: A Critique Of The U.S. Supreme Court's Threshold Approach To Public Employee Speech Cases, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 121 (1996), Pengtian Ma

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.