Unintended consequences?

Does Citizens United compel public sector employees to support corporate political campaigning? One Harvard professor thinks so. Most public sector employees are required to make contributions to a pension plan. Many public sector pension trustees make investment decisions in the private sector in corporate securities. The problem is Citizens United permits corporations to make political expenditures from the corporate treasury. Essentially public sector employees are compelled to finance private corporate political expenditures with no mechanism for opting out. Unions, of course, cannot use employee dues money for political expenditures if the dues payer objects. The professor suggests this compelled financing of corporate political speech violates the public sector pension contributors' First Amendment rights. Intereting argument.

Picture perfect

That pesky dispute over a mural depicting labor history in Maine has landed in federal court. Republican Governor Paul LePage had the mural removed because he viewed it one sided. The court arguments sound appropriate for a law school exam on First Amendment issues. The more difficult problem is the removal violated the terms of a federal grant that paid for the piece. The U.S. Department of labor wants its money back.

Public employee speech - Protected?

Public employees free speech rights are limited. Those unaware of that concept need to read up on Garcetti v. Ceballos, and review subsequent developments, particularly case law in the Fifth Circuit. But what happens when an employee is not disciplined for provocative if not outrageous speech, as in this case where an assistant attorney general takes out after a gay college student in a blog. Good synopsis of the purported events from Workplace Prof Blog is here. Isn't the nexus between the AAG's job and allegations of what may be criminal misconduct by the college student sufficient to make discipline for the remarks appropriate under Garcetti? Probably, but there has been no discipline so far. So what happens if another AAG (or some other public sector employee)speaks out in support of the college student, or in opposition to the issues raised by the first AAG, and is disciplined? Does Garcetti prevent that public employee from even getting to the Pickering test requiring a justification for content based distinctions?

First Amendment and the NLRA

On March 11, the NLRB requested en banc consideration of a divided 9th Circuit panel opinion in McDermott v. Ampersand Publ'g LLC d/b/a Santa Barbara News-Press, 9th Cir., No. 08-56202. In that case the majority found a 10(j) injunction in favor of reporters asserting a violation of the NLRA would run afoul of the employer's First Amendment rights. Our previous post on the panel decision is here.

Newspaper's First Amendment rights bar 10(j) injunction

A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit has rejected the NLRB's request for an injunction forcing the reinstatement of newsroom employees who challenged the publisher's adverse actions against them for alleged biased reporting. Why this is important after the jump

S.J. on assault claim

DePree v. Saunders is an academic dispute case concerning a faculty member at the University of Southern Mississippi. Its a fairly unremarkable due process, first amendment, qualified immunity case. But scroll to the end for the not so mundane discussion about assault. More after the jump.