Teacher Opposed to Gay Marriage Could be Fired

You presume wrong.

I suppose that the balancing test gives the public employer a chance to say that the speech caused a disruption, but under Pickering public employees have free speech rights outside the office that at-will private employees do not.

 

YF, you are misunderstanding the private/public distinction. In this case, it doesn't matter if he said it to a circle of friends or to the world. The First Amendment applies the same (except for the argument that the more people that hear it, the greater the possibility of disruption).

Take libel law, for example. If you say something to one person, that technically is a "publication," and has been litigated as such. It doesn't have to appear in the New York Times.

 

So if I grope a colleague at work the state can't fire me?

Please go back and reread what I wrote.

 

I don't understand what you're getting at.

What would be the "consequences" of their speech? That someone molested a boy because of it?

 

Yes, it does. The First Amendment protects against the state taking action to punish speech after the fact.

So a public employee speaking as a private citizen on matters of public concern can't be fired from his government job because of his speech.

 

You just told me the state has no right to decide 'standards of conduct for their employees.' Really?

 

I presumed that you were including "speech" as "conduct."

 

You presumed wrong.

 

As I understand it, the Pickering case established that teachers could speak freely on issues of public importance without being fired by their school.

The teacher did speak freely on a matter of public importance. But I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that he spoke in a matter that could have revealed a bias against a certain group of students, or at least the perception of such.

I don't know how the school administration can't investigate. And if they find through the course of the investigation that he has a pattern of discrimination toward certain students, I'd assume they could fire him for that.

 

So what do you mean by, "consequences of their speech" then?

 

Yeah, OK, that makes sense.

In other words, he ultimately wouldn't be fired for the speech, but for the manifestation of those beliefs through his conduct. The speech would just be the tipping-off point. Same way we get someone to tell us something on the record that someone else has told us off the record.

 

If I use a racial epithet in the street, I have exercised my right to free speech.

If I am punched in the nose for doing so, I have suffered a consequence of that speech.