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Article
Employee Speech & Management Rights: A Counterintuitive Reading of Garcetti v. Ceballos
UF Law Faculty Publications
  • Elizabeth Dale, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2008
OCLC FAST subject heading
Freedom of speech
Abstract

In the two years since the decision came down, courts and commentators generally have agreed that the Supreme Court's decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos sharply limited the First Amendment rights of public employees. In this Article, I argue that this widely shared interpretation overstates the case. The Court in Garcetti did not dramatically change the way it analyzed public employees' First Amendment rights. Instead, it restated the principles on which those claims rest, emphasizing management rights and the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. By making those two theories the centerpiece of the decision, the Court in Garcetti defined public employee speech rights in a way that may ultimately strengthen the hand of public employees.

Citation Information
Elizabeth Dale, Employee Speech & Management Rights: A Counterintuitive Reading of Garcetti v. Ceballos, 29 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 175 (2008), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/296