Garcetti v. Ceballos: Judicially Muzzling the Voices of Public Sector Employees
Garcetti v. Ceballos: Judicially Muzzling the Voices of Public Sector Employees
Beth Anne Roesler, 53 S.D. L. Rev. 397 (2008)
The free speech rights of public sector employees, virtually nonexistent in the earlier part of the twentieth century, experienced a revival with the United States Supreme Court decision in Pickering v. Board of Education. This decision required a balancing of interests between the public employee and the government employer. The holding in Garcetti v. Ceballos, however, placed a new threshold test on public employee speech, greatly diminishing the effectiveness of the balancing test. Further, the holding unduly expanded the powers of the government employer at the expense of its employees and the general public.