Protect The 1st Foundation
  • About
    • Leadership
  • Issues
  • Scorecards
  • News
  • Take Action
    • Educational Choice for Children Act
    • PRESS Act
    • Save Oak Flat Act
  • DONATE
  • About
    • Leadership
  • Issues
  • Scorecards
  • News
  • Take Action
    • Educational Choice for Children Act
    • PRESS Act
    • Save Oak Flat Act
  • DONATE
Picture

SCOTUS Should Protect Teacher Fired Over Old Reposts

11/4/2024

 
Picture
​Protect The 1st filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which a public school teacher was terminated over a search of her old retweets of social media memes. While a seemingly small case, it could have outsized influence over the speech rights of millions of Americans.
 
The case involves a public schoolteacher, Kari MacRae, who was hired by the Hanover High School in 2021. Months before, MacRae had been a candidate for the local school board in this Massachusetts town. At that time, she had shared and liked on her TikTok account several memes and videos poking fun at “woke” ideology. (You can decide for yourself what you think of MacRae’s reposted memes, highlighted in this Boston.com article.)
 
Hanover High learned of the unearthing of MacRae’s old TikTok reposts from local media. It then placed MacRae on administrative leave to conduct a 14-day investigation. The school then fired her.
 
MacRae sued for wrongful termination and the violation of her rights only to lose in federal district court and then on appeal before the U.S. First Circuit. In our view, the First Circuit misapplied a framework that if not reviewed and overturned by the Supreme Court, will leave the speech rights of government employees – 15 percent of the U.S. workforce – at risk.
 
The Supreme Court has already held in Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) that when government “employees are speaking as citizens about matters of public concern,” they “must face only those speech restrictions that are necessary for their employers to operate efficiently and effectively.” The First Circuit instead embraced a “balancing” standard between personal rights and public responsibilities.
 
Protect The 1st responds: “Framed in Garcetti’s terms, this case asks whether government employers, to ‘operate efficiently and effectively,’ must have carte blanche to punish their employees not for what they are now saying, but for anything they have ever said – even before they were hired. If the First Amendment means anything in this context, the answer to that question must be no. An alternative holding would silence prospective government employees lest their speech, whenever it was made, could later be cited as a reason to destroy their careers.”
 
We warn that if the First Circuit’s standard were adopted broadly, “fully protected speech could lose its protection with time – an untenable proposition.” Protect the 1st also told the Court:
 
“… that in a world where many people spend their lives online, a rule that anything they say there can later be the impetus for their termination from government employment would impose an unconscionable burden on the right to speak on issues of public concern: It would chill pre-employment speech at the front end and give a modified heckler’s veto to bad actors at the back end.”
 
We urge the Supreme Court, which has taken up few First Amendment cases so far in this term, to grant the petition and reverse the First Circuit’s erroneous ruling.

    STAY UP TO DATE

Subscribe to Newsletter
DONATE TO OUR EFFORTS TO PROTECT YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021

    Categories

    All
    2022 Year In Review
    2023 Year In Review
    2024 Year In Review
    Amicus Briefs
    Analysis
    Book Banning
    Campus Speech
    Censorship
    Congress
    Court Hearings
    Donor Privacy
    Due Process
    First Amendment
    First Amendment Online
    Freedom Of Press
    Freedom Of Religion
    Freedom Of Speech
    Government Transparency
    In The Media
    Journalism
    Law Enforcement
    Legal
    Legislation
    Legislative Agenda
    Letters To Congress
    Motions
    News
    Online Speech
    Opinion
    Parental Rights
    PRESS Act
    PT1 Amicus Briefs
    Save Oak Flat
    School Choice
    SCOTUS
    Section 230
    Speaking Of The First Amendment
    Supreme Court

    RSS Feed

we  the  people.

LET  YOUR  VOICE  BE  HEARD:


ABOUT

Who We Are

​Leadership

ISSUES

1st Amendment

TAKE ACTION

Donate

​Contact Us
® Copyright 2024 Protect The 1st Foundation