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Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:05:33+00:00

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1. "[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected." Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 605 -606 (1967). The teacher's interest as a citizen in making public comment must be balanced against the State's interest in promoting the efficiency of its employees' public services. P. 568.
2. Those statements of appellant's which were substantially correct regarded matters of public concern and presented no questions [391 U.S. 563, 564] of faculty discipline or harmony; hence those statements afforded no proper basis for the Board's action in dismissing appellant. Pp. 569-570.
John Ligtenberg argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was Andrew J. Leahy.
John F. Cirricione argued the cause and filed a brief for appellee.
Appellant Marvin L. Pickering, a teacher in Township High School District 205, Will County, Illinois, was dismissed from his position by the appellee Board of Education for sending a letter to a local newspaper in connection with a recently proposed tax increase that was critical of the way in which the Board and the district superintendent of schools had handled past proposals to raise new revenue for the schools. Appellant's dismissal resulted from a determination by the Board, after a full hearing, that the publication of the letter was "detrimental to the efficient operation and administration of the schools of the district" and hence, under the relevant [391 U.S. 563, 565] Illinois statute, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 122, 10-22.4 (1963), that "interests of the school require[d] [his dismissal]."
Appellant's claim that his writing of the letter was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments was rejected. Appellant then sought review of the Board's action in the Circuit Court of Will County, which affirmed his dismissal on the ground that the determination that appellant's letter was detrimental to the interests of the school system was supported by substantial evidence and that the interests of the schools overrode appellant's First Amendment rights. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Illinois, two Justices dissenting, affirmed the judgment of the Circuit Court. 36 Ill. 2d 568, 225 N. E. 2d 1 (1967). We noted probable jurisdiction of appellant's claim that the Illinois statute permitting his dismissal on the facts of this case was unconstitutional as applied under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. 1 389 U.S. 925 (1967). For the reasons detailed below we agree that appellant's rights to freedom of speech were violated and we reverse.
In February of 1961 the appellee Board of Education asked the voters of the school district to approve a bond issue to raise $4,875,000 to erect two new schools. The proposal was defeated. Then, in December of 1961, the Board submitted another bond proposal to the voters which called for the raising of $5,500,000 to build two new schools. This second proposal passed and the schools were built with the money raised by the bond [391 U.S. 563, 566] sales. In May of 1964 a proposed increase in the tax rate to be used for educational purposes was submitted to the voters by the Board and was defeated. Finally, on September 19, 1964, a second proposal to increase the tax rate was submitted by the Board and was likewise defeated. It was in connection with this last proposal of the School Board that appellant wrote the letter to the editor (which we reproduce in an Appendix to this opinion) that resulted in his dismissal.
The Board dismissed Pickering for writing and publishing the letter. Pursuant to Illinois law, the Board was then required to hold a hearing on the dismissal. At the hearing the Board charged that numerous statements in the letter were false and that the publication [391 U.S. 563, 567] of the statements unjustifiably impugned the "motives, honesty, integrity, truthfulness, responsibility and competence" of both the Board and the school administration. The Board also charged that the false statements damaged the professional reputations of its members and of the school administrators, would be disruptive of faculty discipline, and would tend to foment "controversy, conflict and dissension" among teachers, administrators, the Board of Education, and the residents of the district. Testimony was introduced from a variety of witnesses on the truth or falsity of the particular statements in the letter with which the Board took issue. The Board found the statements to be false as charged. No evidence was introduced at any point in the proceedings as to the effect of the publication of the letter on the community as a whole or on the administration of the school system in particular, and no specific findings along these lines were made.
The Illinois courts reviewed the proceedings solely to determine whether the Board's findings were supported by substantial evidence and whether, on the facts as found, the Board could reasonably conclude that appellant's publication of the letter was "detrimental to the best interests of the schools." Pickering's claim that his letter was protected by the First Amendment was rejected on the ground that his acceptance of a teaching position in the public schools obliged him to refrain from making statements about the operation of the schools "which in the absence of such position he would have an undoubted right to engage in." It is not altogether clear whether the Illinois Supreme Court held that the First Amendment had no applicability to appellant's dismissal for writing the letter in question or whether it determined that the particular statements made in the letter were not entitled to First Amendment protection. [391 U.S. 563, 568] In any event, it clearly rejected Pickering's claim that, on the facts of this case, he could not constitutionally be dismissed from his teaching position.
To the extent that the Illinois Supreme Court's opinion may be read to suggest that teachers may constitutionally be compelled to relinquish the First Amendment rights they would otherwise enjoy as citizens to comment on matters of public interest in connection with the operation of the public schools in which they work, it proceeds on a premise that has been unequivocally rejected in numerous prior decisions of this Court. E. g., Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 (1952); Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 (1960); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967). "[T]he theory that public employment which may be denied altogether may be subjected to any conditions, regardless of how unreasonable, has been uniformly rejected." Keyishian v. Board of Regents, supra, at 605-606. At the same time it cannot be gainsaid that the State has interests as an employer in regulating the speech of its employees that differ significantly from those it possesses in connection with regulation of the speech of the citizenry in general. The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.
The Board contends that "the teacher by virtue of his public employment has a duty of loyalty to support his superiors in attaining the generally accepted goals of education and that, if he must speak out publicly, he should do so factually and accurately, commensurate with [391 U.S. 563, 569] his education and experience." Appellant, on the other hand, argues that the test applicable to defamatory statements directed against public officials by persons having no occupational relationship with them, namely, that statements to be legally actionable must be made "with knowledge that [they were] . . . false or with reckless disregard of whether [they were] . . . false or not," New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 280 (1964), should also be applied to public statements made by teachers. Because of the enormous variety of fact situations in which critical statements by teachers and other public employees may be thought by their superiors, against whom the statements are directed, to furnish grounds for dismissal, we do not deem it either appropriate or feasible to attempt to lay down a general standard against which all such statements may be judged. However, in the course of evaluating the conflicting claims of First Amendment protection and the need for orderly school administration in the context of this case, we shall indicate some of the general lines along which an analysis of the controlling interests should run.
We next consider the statements in appellant's letter which we agree to be false. The Board's original charges included allegations that the publication of the letter damaged the professional reputations of the Board and the superintendent and would foment controversy and conflict among the Board, teachers, administrators, and the residents of the district. However, no evidence to support these allegations was introduced at the hearing. So far as the record reveals, Pickering's letter was greeted by everyone but its main target, the Board, with massive apathy and total disbelief. The Board must, therefore, [391 U.S. 563, 571] have decided, perhaps by analogy with the law of libel, that the statements were per se harmful to the operation of the schools.
More importantly, the question whether a school system requires additional funds is a matter of legitimate public concern on which the judgment of the school administration, including the School Board, cannot, in a society that leaves such questions to popular vote, be taken as conclusive. On such a question free and open [391 U.S. 563, 572] debate is vital to informed decision-making by the electorate. Teachers are, as a class, the members of a community most likely to have informed and definite opinions as to how funds allotted to the operation of the schools should be spent. Accordingly, it is essential that they be able to speak out freely on such questions without fear of retaliatory dismissal.
What we do have before us is a case in which a teacher has made erroneous public statements upon issues then currently the subject of public attention, which are critical of his ultimate employer but which are neither shown nor can be presumed to have in any way either impeded the teacher's proper performance of his daily duties in [391 U.S. 563, 573] the classroom 5 or to have interfered with the regular operation of the schools generally. In these circumstances we conclude that the interest of the school administration in limiting teachers' opportunities to contribute to public debate is not significantly greater than its interest in limiting a similar contribution by any member of the general public.
In sum, we hold that, in a case such as this, absent proof of false statements knowingly or recklessly made by him, 6 a teacher's exercise of his right to speak on issues of public importance may not furnish the basis for his dismissal from public employment. Since no [391 U.S. 563, 575] such showing has been made in this case regarding appellant's letter, see Appendix, infra, his dismissal for writing it cannot be upheld and the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court must, accordingly, be reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK joins, concurs in the judgment of the Court for the reasons set out in his concurring opinions in Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 401 , Rosenblatt v. Baer, 383 U.S. 75, 88 , and Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 80 , and in the separate opinions of MR. JUSTICE BLACK in Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 170 , and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 293 .
One statement in your paper declared that swimming pools, athletic fields, and auditoriums had been left out of the program. They may have been left out but they got put back in very quickly because Lockport West has both an auditorium and athletic field. In fact, Lockport West has a better athletic field than Lockport Central. It has a track that isn't quite regulation distance even [391 U.S. 563, 576] though the board spent a few thousand dollars on it. Whose fault is that? Oh, I forgot, it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. It must have fallen out of the sky. Such responsibility has been touched on in other letters but it seems one just can't help noticing it. I am not saying the school shouldn't have these facilities, because I think they should, but promises are promises, or are they?
Remember those letters entitled "District 205 Teachers Speak," I think the voters should know that those letters have been written and agreed to by only five or six teachers, not 98% of the teachers in the high school. In fact, many teachers didn't even know who was writing them. Did you know that those letters had to have the approval of the superintendent before they could be put in the paper? That's the kind of totalitarianism teachers [391 U.S. 563, 577] live in at the high school, and your children go to school in.
In last week's paper, the letter written by a few uninformed teachers threatened to close the school cafeteria and fire its personnel. This is ridiculous and insults the intelligence of the voter because properly managed school cafeterias do not cost the school district any money. If the cafeteria is losing money, then the board should not be packing free lunches for athletes on days of athletic contests. Whatever the case, the taxpayer's child should only have to pay about 30 for his lunch instead of 35 to pay for free lunches for the athletes.
The foregoing letter contains eight principal statements which the Board found to be false. 1a Our independent review of the record 2a convinces us that Justice [391 U.S. 563, 579] Schaefer was correct in his dissenting opinion in this case when he concluded that many of appellant's statements which were found by the Board to be false were in fact substantially correct. We shall deal with each of the statements found to be false in turn. (1) Appellant asserted in his letter that the two new high schools when constructed deviated substantially from the original promises made by the Board during the campaign on the bond issue about the facilities they would contain. The Board based its conclusion that this statement was false on its determination that the promises referred to were those made in the campaign to pass the second bond issue in December of 1961. In the campaign on the first bond issue the Board stated that the plans for the two schools did not include such items as swimming pools, auditoriums, and athletic fields. The publicity put out by the Board on the second bond issue mentioned nothing about the addition of an auditorium to the plans and also mentioned nothing specific about [391 U.S. 563, 580] athletic fields, although a general reference to "state required physical education" facilities was included that was similar to a reference made in the material issued by the Board during the first campaign.
(3) Pickering claimed that the superintendent had said that any teacher who did not support the 1961 bond issue referendum should be prepared for the consequences. The Board found this claim false. However, the statement was corroborated by the testimony of two other teachers, although the superintendent denied making the [391 U.S. 563, 581] remark attributed to him. The Illinois Supreme Court appears to have agreed that something along the lines stated by appellant was said, since it relied, in upholding the Board's finding that appellant's version of the remark was false, on testimony by one of the two teachers that he interpreted the remark to be a prediction about the adverse consequences for the schools should the referendum not pass rather than a threat against noncooperation by teachers. However, the other teacher testified that he didn't know how to interpret the remark. Accordingly, while appellant may have misinterpreted the meaning of the remark, he did not misreport it.
The other four statements challenged by the Board, are factually incorrect in varying degrees. (5) Appellant's letter implied that providing athletes in the schools with free lunches meant that other students must pay 35 instead of 30 for their lunches. This statement is erroneous in that while discontinuing free lunches for athletes would have permitted some small decrease in the 35 charge for lunch to other students, the decrease would not have brought the price down to 30. (6) Appellant claimed that the Board had been spending $200,000 a year on athletics while neglecting the wants [391 U.S. 563, 582] of teachers. This claim is incorrect in that the $200,000 per year figure included over $130,000 of nonrecurring capital expenditures. (7) Appellant also claimed that the Board had been spending $50,000 a year on transportation for athletes. This claim is completely false in that the expenditures on travel for athletes per year were about $10,000. (8) Finally, appellant stated that football fields had been sodded on borrowed money, while the Board had been unable to pay teachers' salaries. This statement is substantially correct as to the football fields being sodded with borrowed money because the money spent was the proceeds of part of the bond issue, which can fairly be characterized as borrowed. It is incorrect insofar as it suggests that the district's teachers had actually not been paid upon occasion, but correct if taken to mean that the Board had at times some difficulty in obtaining the funds with which to pay teachers. The manner in which the last four statements are false is perfectly consistent with good-faith error, and there is no evidence in the record to show that anything other than carelessness or insufficient information was responsible for their being made.
[ Footnote 1 ] Appellant also challenged the statutory standard on which the Board based his dismissal as vague and overbroad. See Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967); NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963); Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 (1960). Because of our disposition of this case we do not reach appellant's challenge to the statute on its face.
[ Footnote 2 ] We have set out in the Appendix our detailed analysis of the specific statements in appellant's letter which the Board found to be false, together with our reasons for concluding that several of the statements were, contrary to the findings of the Board, substantially correct.
[ Footnote 3 ] It is possible to conceive of some positions in public employment in which the need for confidentiality is so great that even completely correct public statements might furnish a permissible ground for dismissal. Likewise, positions in public employment in which the relationship between superior and subordinate is of such a personal and intimate nature that certain forms of public criticism of the superior by the subordinate would seriously undermine the effectiveness of the working relationship between them can also be imagined. We intimate no views as to how we would resolve any specific instances of such situations, but merely note that significantly different considerations would be involved in such cases.
[ Footnote 4 ] There is likewise no occasion furnished by this case for consideration of the extent to which teachers can be required by narrowly drawn grievance procedures to submit complaints about the operation of the schools to their superiors for action thereon prior to bringing the complaints before the public.
[ Footnote 5 ] We also note that this case does not present a situation in which a teacher's public statements are so without foundation as to call into question his fitness to perform his duties in the classroom. In such a case, of course, the statements would merely be evidence of the teacher's general competence, or lack thereof, and not an independent basis for dismissal.
[ Footnote 6 ] Because we conclude that appellant's statements were not knowingly or recklessly false, we have no occasion to pass upon the additional question whether a statement that was knowingly or recklessly false would, if it were neither shown nor could reasonably be presumed to have had any harmful effects, still be protected by the First Amendment. See also n. 5, supra.
[ Footnote 1a ] [391 U.S. 563, 578] We shall not bother to enumerate some of the statements which the Board found to be false because their triviality is so readily apparent that the Board could not rationally have considered them as detrimental to the interests of the schools regardless of their truth or falsity.
[ Footnote 2a ] [391 U.S. 563, 578] This Court has regularly held that where constitutional rights are in issue an independent examination of the record will be made in order that the controlling legal principles may be applied to the actual facts of the case. E. g., Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587 (1935); Pennekamp v. Florida, 328 U.S. 331 (1946); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 285 (1964). However, even in cases where the upholding or rejection of a constitutional claim turns on the resolution of factual questions, we also consistently give great, if not controlling, weight to the findings of the state courts. In the present case the trier of fact was the same body that was also both the victim of appellant's statements and the [391 U.S. 563, 579] prosecutor that brought the charges aimed at securing his dismissal. The state courts made no independent review of the record but simply contented themselves with ascertaining, in accordance with statute, whether there was substantial evidence to support the Board's findings.
Appellant requests us to reverse the state courts' decisions upholding his dismissal on the independent ground that the procedure followed above deprived him of due process in that he was not afforded an impartial tribunal. However, appellant makes this contention for the first time in this Court, not having raised it at any point in the state proceedings. Because of this, we decline to treat appellant's claim as an independent ground for our decision in this case. On the other hand, we do not propose to blind ourselves to the obvious defects in the fact-finding process occasioned by the Board's multiple functioning vis-a-vis appellant. Compare Tumey v. Ohio. 273 U.S. 510 (1927); In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133 (1955). Accordingly, since the state courts have at no time given de novo consideration to the statements in the letter, we feel free to examine the evidence in this case completely independently and to afford little weight to the factual determinations made by the Board.
The Court holds that truthful statements by a school teacher critical of the school board are within the ambit of the First Amendment. So also are false statements innocently or negligently made. The State may not fire the teacher for making either unless, as I gather it, there are special circumstances, not present in this case, demonstrating an overriding state interest, such as the need for confidentiality or the special obligations which a teacher in a particular position may owe to his superiors. 1 [391 U.S. 563, 583] The core of today's decision is the holding that Pickering's discharge must be tested by the standard of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). To this extent I am in agreement.
The Court goes on, however, to reopen a question I had thought settled by New York Times and the cases that followed it, particularly Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964). The Court devotes several pages to re-examining the facts in order to reject the determination below that Pickering's statements harmed the school system, ante, at 570-573, when the question of harm is clearly irrelevant given the Court's determination that Pickering's statements were neither knowingly nor recklessly false and its ruling that in such circumstances a teacher may not be fired even if the statements are injurious. The Court then gratuitously suggests that when statements are found to be knowingly or recklessly false, it is an open question whether the First Amendment still protects them unless they are shown or can be presumed to have caused harm. Ante, at 574, n. 6. Deliberate or reckless falsehoods serve no First Amendment ends and deserve no protection under that Amendment. The Court unequivocally recognized this in Garrison, where after reargument the Court said that "the knowingly false statement and the false statement made with reckless disregard of the truth, do not enjoy constitutional protection." 379 U.S., at 75 . The Court today neither [391 U.S. 563, 584] explains nor justifies its withdrawal from the firm stand taken in Garrison. As I see it, a teacher may be fired without violation of the First Amendment for knowingly or recklessly making false statements regardless of their harmful impact on the schools. As the Court holds, however, in the absence of special circumstances he may not be fired if his statements were true or only negligently false, even if there is some harm to the school system. I therefore see no basis or necessity for the Court's foray into fact-finding with respect to whether the record supports a finding as to injury. 2 If Pickering's false statements were either knowingly or recklessly made, injury to the school system becomes irrelevant, and the First Amendment would not prevent his discharge. For the State to be constitutionally precluded from terminating his employment, reliance on some other constitutional provision would be required.
[ Footnote 1 ] See ante, at 569-570, 572 and nn. 3, 4. The Court does not elaborate upon its suggestion that there may be situations in which, with [391 U.S. 563, 583] reference to certain areas of public comment, a teacher may have special obligations to his superiors. It simply holds that in this case, with respect to the particular public comment made by Pickering, he is more like a member of the general public and, apparently, too remote from the school board to require placing him into any special category. Further, as I read the Court's opinion, it does not foreclose the possibility that under the First Amendment a school system may have an enforceable rule, applicable to teachers, that public statements about school business must first be submitted to the authorities to check for accuracy.

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