Or it, you know, those contrarian views? You know the ones.
(Personally, I'm a contrarian about the presence of fire in crowded theaters, and boy have I been silenced)
So, you shouldn’t be silenced, your opinions should be heard, and to the extent they’re reasonable, they should be considered proportional to your ability to influence. The more to which this is prevented or ignored the more unstable the system is.
It's not clear to me that they're guaranteed a platform on their work email, but having been allowed to set a message and then having it removed and then replaced with a different one is not a good look for free speech.
It’s gone. The ACLU itself is pretty anti free speech these days and happily looks the other way when censorship on private social media platforms aligns with their ideological views. People have been writing about free speech issues at the ACLU for about a decade now:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/is-the-aclu...
Plus the comparison to Europe and that specific case is especially untenable because if the specific case in Europe was in Germany, then they have a special relationship with the swastika.
There are at least two kinds of speech restriction - not being allowed to say something, and being compelled to say something. To analogize, it's one thing to be told "you're not allowed to rant about the CEO on social media". It's another thing entirely to be told "you have to make 3 posts a day about how great the CEO is".
These federal employees were not just restricted from publicly criticizing the administration - which is fairly typical for federal employees - but they also had their out of office messages changed without consent to point partisan blame for the current shutdown. That's essentially compelled speech, especially since Out Of Office messages still include the employee's name as the From line.
This is perfectly legal and not a violation of any rights. Companies literally have entire departments dedicated to promotion of their products. If you say "I hate this product and don't want to work on promoting it" you will just be fired for refusing to do your job.
I thought that's exactly what you signed up for when you become a government employee.
I missed the part where government service wasn't about upholding and implementing the law but was instead about support for a particular party.
5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1): “An employee may take an active part in political management or in political campaigns, except an employee may not — (1) use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”
There’s a lot more after that.
I think you're actually struggling more with the idea that the First Amendment is a restriction on government, not on employers generally.
But the most relevant thing that you don't understand is that government employees are NOT supposed or allowed to act in partisan ways. Your suggestion seems to be that's the point of the job. In fact, that type of activity is prohibited in their official functions and can even be illegal.
As an example, if an agency wanted to perform a marketing campaign, and you decide to do go off script as an employee, you can be fired. There is no legal right to say whatever you want in the context of the job.
alfiedotwtf•1h ago
Normal_gaussian•1h ago
ethbr1•1h ago
c420•1h ago
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/we-lack-the-power-just...
pfdietz•1h ago
wl•25m ago
pfdietz•9m ago
ocdtrekkie•53m ago
There is likely a pragmatic view that if they appear to remain relevant they might continue to have some power, even though they already don't.
ethbr1•33m ago
Larrikin•25m ago
usrusr•1h ago
binarymax•1h ago
ocdtrekkie•57m ago
I expect a lot of his administration to spend their latter years in jail though. Siding with him has basically never paid off for anyone.
staticautomatic•56m ago
brian-armstrong•56m ago
jfengel•49m ago
add-sub-mul-div•49m ago