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Page Number: 25

20  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

Opinion of the Court 

Curtis,  106  U. S.  371,  372–373  (1882).    The  only  early 
speech  restrictions  the  Union  identifies  are  an  1806 
from  using
statute  prohibiting  military  personnel 
“ ‘contemptuous  or  disrespectful  words  against 
the 
President’ ”  and  other  officials,  and  an  1801  directive 
limiting  electioneering  by  top  government  employees. 
Brief for Union Respondent 3.  But those examples at most
show  that  the  government  was  understood  to  have  power 
to  limit  employee  speech  that  threatened  important
governmental  interests  (such  as  maintaining  military 
discipline  and  preventing  corruption)—not  that  public 
employees’ speech was entirely unprotected.  Indeed, more 
recently  this  Court  has  upheld  similar  restrictions  even 
while  recognizing  that  government  employees  possess 
First  Amendment  rights.    See,  e.g.,  Brown  v.  Glines,  444 
U. S.  348,  353  (1980)  (upholding  military  restriction  on
speech  that  threatened  troop  readiness);  Civil  Service 
Comm’n  v.  Letter  Carriers,  413  U. S.  548,  556–557  (1973)
(upholding limits on public employees’ political activities). 
Ultimately,  the  Union  relies,  not  on  founding-era
evidence, but on dictum from a 1983 opinion of this Court 
stating  that,  “[f]or  most  of  th[e  20th]  century,  the 
unchallenged  dogma  was  that  a  public  employee  had  no
right  to  object  to  conditions  placed  upon  the  terms  of
the 
employment—including 
exercise  of  constitutional  rights.”  Connick  v.  Myers,  461 
U. S. 138, 143; see Brief for Union Respondent 2, 17.  Even 
on  its  own  terms,  this  dictum  about  20th-century  views
does  not  purport  to  describe  how  the  First  Amendment 
was understood in 1791.  And a careful examination of the 
decisions  by  this  Court  that  Connick  cited  to  support  its 
dictum,  see  461  U. S.,  at  144,  reveals  that  none  of  them 
rested  on  the  facile  premise  that  public  employees  are
unprotected  by  the  First  Amendment.    Instead,  they
considered  (much  as  we  do  today)  whether  particular
protect” 
speech 

restrictions  were 

those  which 

“necessary 

restricted 

to