[Regnore]

What are the laws around the government punishing government employees for criticizing the government?

I'm not an expert but it doesn't really seem like a first amendment issue although I think most would agree that the government shouldn't be punishing its own employees for conduct like this.

[ceejayoz]

This one'd probably hinge on whether the comment was "made pursuant to the employee's job duties". In chronological order:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_v._Board_of_Educatio... establishes a "right to speak on issues of public importance" for public employees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcetti_v._Ceballos limits that right when statements are "made pursuant to his position as a public employee".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demers_v._Austin extends "First Amendment protection to professors at public universities for on-the-job speech that deals with public issues related to teaching or scholarship, whether inside or outside of the classroom", but doesn't apply everywhere as it's a Ninth Circuit decision.

[bachmeier]

I'd be interested to hear how this could fall under the second classification. The professor in this case wasn't even working directly with the politician.

[ceejayoz]

You can be a public employee without being a direct report to the Governor.

[bachmeier]

Well I get that, but I'm curious what would be the "government employees' work product" in this case, using the Supreme Court's chosen phrase. The case you linked is about someone doing their job in a way that his bosses thought was wrong. It just happened to involved speech. I don't see the connection to this case. To the extent that the criticism of the politician was related to that person's work duties, it's because they're paid by a public university to share opinions related to their expertise.

[ceejayoz]

The work product of a state university professor is, in part, their lectures.

I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demers_v._Austin has it right in this regard - that public educators have a specific First Amendment need/exception to be able to teach facts their chain of command doesn't appreciate - but it doesn't yet apply in Texas.

[thinkcontext]

A federal judge in FL ruled against UFL for denying professors the ability to testify as experts in cases against the state. DeSantis of course has made attacking universities part of his anti-woke cultural jihad. TX and FL have been reading from the same authoritarian hymnal so its not surprising to see a similar situation play out.

It will be interesting to see what effect these kind of antics have on quality of higher ed in these states. I must think that there would be some effect on the quality of professors that get hired.

https://www.thefire.org/news/judge-university-florida-cant-e...

[patmorgan23]

IIRC public universities are state actors and thus have to follow certain frost amendment restrictions.

Professors at state universities are state employees and you can't fire a state employee for criticizing an elected official.

[wolverine876]

In which state is that law?

[mikeyouse]

All of them. State employees have very broad 1st Amendment protections.

[ceejayoz]

"you can't fire a state employee for criticizing an elected official" isn't entirely true, though. If the Governor's press secretary gets up to the podium and says "my boss is a corrupt fuckwit", they'll get fired, because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcetti_v._Ceballos.

[HWR_14]

It was the government school punishing a university professor for giving a guest lecture at another school. Both university professors (via tenure) and government employees (via the first amendment) deserve special protection from their employers to speak publicly.

[bbor]

This is literally the definition of a first amendment issue, in my eyes. Should the president be able to ban anyone who works for any company that has any government contracts from making any critical statements about his administration? This isn’t some intern in the office of the politician she (seemingly lightly) criticized, this is a tenured professor.

Besides, IMO tenured professors are the very front line of free speech, perhaps right behind journalists - for the system to function at all (/continue limping along), tenured professors should NEVER be afraid of criticizing the government. At all. In any way.

[dctoedt]

> * this is a tenured professor.*

I don't think she's tenured — her TAMU Web page says she's a clinical assistant professor. [0]

[0] https://health.tamu.edu/experts/joy-alonzo.html