High Court's Free-Speech Ruling Favors Government

[cal04]

Public Workers on Duty Not Protected

The Supreme Court yesterday bolstered the government's power to discipline public employees who make charges of official misconduct, ruling that the First Amendment does not protect those who blow the whistle in the course of their official duties. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office did not violate prosecutor Richard Ceballos's freedom of speech by allegedly demoting him after he wrote to supervisors charging that a sheriff's deputy had lied to get a search warrant.

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In his opinion for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that those "powerful" rules still "provide checks" on supervisors. "We reject, however, the notion that the First Amendment shields from discipline the expressions employees make pursuant to their professional duties," Kennedy wrote. "Our precedents do not support the existence of a constitutional cause of action behind every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job." Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. But Kennedy's opinion drew a sharp dissent from Justice David H. Souter, who argued that statutory and other protections for whistle-blowers are weak. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Souter. Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented in a solo opinion.

Instead of barring all free-speech claims relating to public employees' official duties, Souter wrote, the court should have let lower courts assess them case by case. 'Private and public interests in addressing official wrongdoing and threats to health and safety can outweigh the government's stake in the efficient implementation of policy," Souter wrote, "and when they do public employees who speak on these matters in the course of their duties should be eligible to claim First Amendment protection."

In a separate opinion, Stevens questioned the court's distinction between speech by public employees acting officially, which gets no free-speech protection, and speech by public employees acting as citizens -- such as in a letter to the editor -- which can still get protection. "It seems perverse to fashion a new rule that provides employees with an incentive to voice their concerns publicly before talking frankly to their superiors," Stevens wrote. Souter raised the specter of threats to state university professors' free speech, but Kennedy said teaching and scholarship were beyond the scope of the case. The case added a note of division to a Supreme Court term that had been marked by many unanimous opinions under Roberts, who has publicly called for more consensus on the court.


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/30/AR2006053000463.html

[Land Shark]

1. Parallels some states that require outside complaint to police, etc.

this will probably reinforce advice to file complaints with outside agencies as an initial matter, like the article suggests. Some state whistleblowing require a report of some type to outside authorities.

[Erika]

2. Roberts definition of consensus is the same as W's

Get power illegally, stack the courts with rabid right wingers and let those right wingers shove their ideology down the country's throats.

[spag68]

3. Why doe's this surprise anyone