Inside Higher Ed: Justices Punt on Academic Freedom
A divided U.S. Supreme Court severely narrowed the free speech rights of government employees in a ruling Tuesday in a whistle blower case. In doing so, the court touched on but largely sidestepped the question of whether the restrictive standard applies to employees of public colleges, in a way that concerned some proponents of academic freedom but heartened others.
Tuesday’s ruling came in a case, Garcetti v. Ceballos (04-473), in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had largely upheld the longstanding view that when public employees made statements about “matters of public concern” in their official capacities, they were protected by the First Amendment. But the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case of Richard Ceballos, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who was demoted and transferred after criticizing a local sheriff’s conduct to his supervisors, had led many observers to suggest that the court intended to reconsider that precedent.
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