Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1466_2b3j.pdf
Page Number: 66

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

In striking the proper balance between employee speech 
rights  and  managerial  interests,  the  Court  has  long  ap-
plied  a  test  originating  in  Pickering  v.  Board  of  Ed.  of 
Township  High  School  Dist.  205,  Will  Cty.,  391  U. S.  563 
(1968).  That  case  arose  out  of  an  individual  employment 
action:  the  firing  of  a  public  school  teacher.  As  we  later 
described  the  Pickering  inquiry,  the  Court  first  asks 
whether  the  employee  “spoke  as  a  citizen  on  a  matter  of
public  concern.”  Garcetti,  547  U. S.,  at  418.    If  she  did 
not—but  rather  spoke  as  an  employee  on  a  workplace
matter—she  has  no  “possibility  of  a  First  Amendment 
claim”: A public employer can curtail her speech just as a 
private one could.  Ibid.  But if she did speak as a citizen
on a public matter, the public employer must demonstrate
“an adequate justification for treating the employee differ-
ently from any other member of the general public.”  Ibid. 
The  government,  that  is,  needs  to  show  that  legitimate 
workplace interests lay behind the speech regulation. 

Abood  coheres  with  that  framework.    The  point  here  is
not, as the majority suggests, that Abood is an overt, one-
to-one  “application  of  Pickering.”  Ante,  at  26.    It  is  not.  
Abood  related  to  a  municipality’s  labor  policy,  and  so  the
Court looked to prior cases about unions, not to Pickering’s 
analysis  of  an  employee’s  dismissal.    (And  truth  be  told, 
Pickering was not at that time much to look at: What the 
Court now thinks of as the two-step Pickering test, as the 
majority’s own citations show, really emerged from Garcetti 
and  Connick—two  cases  post-dating  Abood.  See  ante,  at 
22.)2  But Abood and Pickering raised variants of the same 
basic  issue:  the  extent  of  the  government’s  authority  to 

—————— 

2 For  those  reasons,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  “categorization
schemes” in Abood and Pickering are not precisely coterminous.  Ante, 
at  25.  The  two  cases  are  fraternal  rather  than  identical  twins—both 
standing  for  the  proposition  that  the  government  receives  great  defer-
ence  when  it  regulates  speech  as  an  employer  rather  than  as  a  sover-
eign.  See infra this page and 12–13.