Whistleblowers not protected
The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for government employees to file lawsuits claiming they were retaliated against for going public with allegations of official misconduct.
By a 5-4 vote, justices said the nation’s 20 million public employees do not have carte blanche free speech rights to disclose government’s inner-workings. New Justice Samuel Alito cast the tie-breaking vote.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court’s majority, said the First Amendment does not protect “every statement a public employee makes in the course of doing his or her job.”
First off, 7.1% of US Citizens work for the government? Second, I generally concur that no one has carte blanche free speech involving their workplace but the details of this case make it more troubling:
The ruling sided with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, which appealed an appellate court ruling which held that prosecutor Richard Ceballos was constitutionally protected when he wrote a memo questioning whether a county sheriff’s deputy had lied in a search warrant affidavit.
Ceballos had filed a lawsuit claiming he was demoted and denied a promotion for trying to expose the lie.
Dissenting justices said Tuesday that the ruling could silence would-be whistleblowers who have information about governmental misconduct.
Unless such employees have legitimate recourse for such, their motivation to come forward when necessary is seriously diminished.
David Hardy has more, including the details regarding lying on the warrant.
May 31st, 2006 at 6:41 am
MSNBC (actually the Ass. Press) bungled the basic facts of Garcetti v. Ceballos when they claim the Supremes “made it harder for government employees to file lawsuits claiming they were retaliated against for going public with allegations of official misconduct.” In fact, they did no such thing. Both the dissent and the majority agreed that if Ceballos had gone public with the information in question, it would have been protected free speech. It wasn’t because the memo in question was written on the job, as part of his official duties.
May 31st, 2006 at 7:11 am
[…] The Ass. Press completely mangled (h/t: Say Uncle) the holding in yesterday’s Supreme Court case, Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. ___ (2006), which held that work made by government workers in the capacity of their official job duties is not constitutionally protected speech. These paragraphs from pages 8-9 of the majority opinion explain its basic holding: Respondent Ceballos beleived the affidavit used to obtain a search warrant contained serious misrepresentations. He conveyed his opinion and recommendation in a memo to his supervisor. That Ceballos expressed his views inside his office, rather than publicly, is not dispositive. Employees in some cases may receive First Amendment protection for expressions made at work. See, e.g., Givhan v. Western Line Consol. School Dist. 439 U.S. 410, 414 (1976). May citizens do much of their talking inside their respective workplaces, and it would not serve the goal of treating public employees “like any member of the general public”Pickering, 391 U.S. at 573, to hold that all speech within the office is automatically exposed to restriction. […]
May 31st, 2006 at 8:36 am
[…] Remember that time the press said the court ruled that whistleblowers weren’t protected? Well, that’s not really the case. […]