In a November 1 blog post at Justia.com, Illinois law dean and professor Vikram David Amar discusses a recent controversy involving the termination of a Wisconsin public school security guard under a zero-tolerance policy on racial epithets. Amar explains why, if the guard had chosen to sue, he likely would have lost in court based on current precedent.
"The big takeaway is that public employees often don’t realize how much their speech (while on the job, and sometimes off of it) can be proscribed and prescribed by their government employers. Indeed, at public universities like the one where I serve as a professor and a law dean, it is somewhat ironic (but clearly true) that, as far as the First Amendment is concerned, students have greater First Amendment freedoms than the professors who are charged with teaching them about the First Amendment."
Read the full post at verdict.justia.com.