by TChris

The Supreme Court has long held that public employees do not have an unfettered First Amendment right to speak freely without fear of losing their jobs. In the past, the Court has protected employees who speak out on a matter of public concern (including blowing the whistle on governmental misconduct), but not when the employee speaks about private concerns. If the employee's speech addresses a public concern, the Court balances the employee's interest in speaking freely against the government's interest in avoiding disruption of the workplace. (Note: this is a simplified and necessarily incomplete summary of a complex body of law. To understand the two tests more fully, read Connick v. Myers and Pickering v. Board of Ed.)

The Court today added a new wrinkle to its analysis. In a 5-4 decision, the Court denied First Amendment protection to Los Angeles prosecutor Richard Ceballos, who "wrote a memo questioning whether a county sheriff's deputy had lied in a search warrant affidavit." Ceballos argued that he was "demoted and denied a promotion for trying to expose the lie." While this would seem to be a classic instance of whistleblowing -- the kind of speech by public officials that should be encouraged -- the Court held that Ceballos was discharging his official duties when he wrote the memo, and that he was not entitled to the same protections he would have had if he had been speaking out against the lie as a private citizen.