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AAUP Files Amicus Brief in Whistleblowing Case
By Gwendolyn Bradley
The Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free Expression and the AAUP in July jointly filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Garcetti v. Ceballos, which raises the legal issue whether public employees’ job-related speech on matters of public concern should be protected by the First Amendment. The case involves a California deputy district attorney, Richard Ceballos, who suspected that a deputy sheriff had included false statements in a search warrant affidavit. Ceballos told his supervisors and the defense attorney in the case about his suspicions, and he claims he was demoted and transferred in retaliation for speaking out on a matter of public concern. He sued his supervisors, including Gil Garcetti. A lower court dismissed the claim, ruling that Ceballos’s speech was not protected by the First Amendment because it occurred in a memorandum to his supervisors as part of his job. An appeals court overturned that ruling and found that Ceballos’s speech was protected.
While the case does not involve a faculty member, the legal issue raised has significant implications for the academic speech of the professoriate. In the brief, the AAUP and the Jefferson Center argued that if speech related to employment was not protected by the First Amendment, there could be deeply troubling implications for faculty academic speech at public institutions. A copy of the final amicus brief is available.
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