Facebook Again – This Time It’s Cleveland
A Facebook post that prompted over 60,000 responses including comments from Hillary Clinton and other elected officials, prompted a post from Cleveland firefighter that is now the center of an investigation.
On July 3, Humans of New York posted a photo of a weeping child saying, “I’m homosexual and I’m afraid about what my future will be and that people won’t like me.”
Guy Estergall, a 26-year veteran with the Cleveland Fire Department posted “This kid needs psychiatric help, he’s delusional. We need to find a cure for his kind!”
Responding to another comment, Estergall allegedly posted “You’re mentally ill Andrew, just like this kid and the rest of the immoral homosexuals and their supporters” and “The overwhelming majority of pedophiles are homosexuals. You need to get the professional psychiatric help you need to become normal.”
The Cleveland Fire Department is now investigating.
At what point if you work for a public agency do you loose your right to free speech?
I read an article on the Concord Monitor written by a Admin. Judge that took issue with gun rights, and offered rather polarizing views, quoting from a decidedly liberal publication. At the bottom was typed “the views of the contributor does not necessarily reflect the views of the Social Security Administration.”
It seems that the ability to speak freely without having your job threatened is strictly reserved to those with a liberal Progressive points of view.
My contention is that free speech is that: free speech and if someone speaks or types something you don’t agree with so be it.
Steveo
Great question!!! Our court system has become very conservative over the past 25-30 years. One area they have been particularly conservative is on individual rights such as the First Amendment Right of public employees. They will write things like “A person does not surrender his First Amendment Rights when he becomes a public employee” but then go on to rule that the employee has in fact given up those rights when they accepted a job working for government…
Here is the simplest formulation of the law pertaining to the 1st Amendment Rights of public employees… the Pickering balancing test: If an employee is (1) speaking on a matter of public concern (2) as a private citizen, they must prove their interest “in commenting upon matters of public concern” outweighs the “interests of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”
If you are a judge – that test probably makes alot of sense because you get to second guess what someone did AFTER THE FACT!!!! If you are a law professor its a great test because you can create wonderfully complex hypotheticals to dazzle your students.
But as a fire chief – how do you turn that into a policy without being unconstitutionally vague… and as a public employee how could you possibly know what you can and cannot say??? In some respects the Pickering balancing test itself is a “prior- restraint” on the speech of public employees…
Back to your point – public employees who make public statements on social media run an extreme risk these days… a risk that is seemingly non-existent right up to the point that someone is offended and turns the entire issue into front page headlines. Then the fact that a firefighter reposted a comment that 10 million other people shared and/or liked – is irrelevant. The comment is scrutinized and the firefighter subjected to the scorn of the self-righteous offended… while most people shake their head and say “another example of a lack of common sense…”
“our court system has become very conservative over the past 25-30 years” Huh? the last week in June every year is when most of us conservatives wait to see what actual constitutional rights our court system will eliminate or further restrict, and what new “made up” rights they will enact.
Jack
I can’t tell you how many guys I have represented that said the same thing… until it was them that needed help from the court system they thought was “too liberal”… Then they realized that while the courts may be “liberal” (not even sure what that means because it is a relative term) in some areas – when it comes to the rights of public employees, there’s been a cold wind blowing.