Opinion ID: 6984420
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Restrictions on Government Employee Speech

Text: It is well established that “individuals do not relinquish their First Amendment rights by accepting employment with the government.” Harman v. City of New York, 140 F.3d 111, 117 (2d Cir.1998) (citing Pickering v. Board of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968)). Nevertheless, the state does have “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.” Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731. Accordingly, the government “may impose restraints on the job-related speech of public employees that would be plainly unconstitutional if applied to the public at large.” United States v. National Treasury Employees Union, 513 U.S. 454, 465, 115 S.Ct. 1003, 130 L.Ed.2d 964 (1995) (“NTEU ”). In evaluating a restriction on government employees’ speech, a court must seek “to arrive at a balance between the interests of the [employee], 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.” Pickering, 391 U.S. at 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731. The District Court, relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in NTEU, subjected defendants to a higher burden of justification than normally required of the government when the free speech interests of its employees are at stake, on the ground that the NYPD parade policy restrains speech “before it occurs.” LOA, 1999 WL 386753, at . In NTEU, which involved a statute that prohibited federal employees from “receiv[ing] any honorari[a],” 513 U.S. at 459, 115 S.Ct. 1003, the Supreme Court drew a distinction between ex post punishment, based on an “analysis of one employee’s speech and its impact on that employee’s public responsibilities,” and ex ante rules, which can represent a “wholesale deterrent to a broad category of expression by a massive number of potential speakers.” 513 U.S. at 466-67, 115 S.Ct. 1003; see also id. at 481, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part). Emphasizing that ex ante restrictions on expression “give[] rise to far more serious concerns than could any single supervisory decision,” the Court held that the government’s burden of justification is “greater” with respect to such ex ante restrictions. Id. at 468, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (majority opinion). Specifically, “[t]he Government must show that the interests of both potential audiences and a vast group of present and future employees in a broad range of present and future expression are outweighed by that expression’s ‘necessary impact on the actual operation’ of the Government.” Id. (quoting Pickering, 391 U.S. at 571, 88 S.Ct. 1731). Further, the government “must do more than simply posit the existence of the disease sought to be cured.... It must demonstrate that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way.” Id. at 475, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (internal quotation marks omitted). Defendants’ principal contention on appeal is that the District Court erred in applying this stricter standard from NTEU. The NTEU standard does not apply, defendants argue, because (1) the NYPD parade policy affects fewer employees (approximately 40,000 as opposed to 1.7 million) and restricts less expression (the unauthorized wearing of uniforms in parades as opposed to receiving compensation for writings or speeches on any subject) than the statute at issue in NTEU; (2) the parade policy, unlike the statute in NTEU, does not “ ‘single out’ expressive conduct”; and (3) the parade policy is not a “classic ‘prior restraint,’ ” but rather “suppresses precisely that conduct which [the NYPD] would be allowed to punish after the fact.” 6 These arguments are without merit. First, that the NYPD parade policy affects fewer employees than the policy at issue in NTEU and that it arguably could be characterized as narrower in scope are irrelevant to whether the NTEU standard applies. 7 Application of the NTEU standard turns on whether a government employee’s expression is restricted “through a generally applicable statute or regulation, as opposed to a particularized disciplinary action,” and there is no doubt that the former is involved here. Weaver v. United States Info. Agency, 87 F.3d 1429, 1439 (D.C.Cir.1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1251, 117 S.Ct. 2407, 138 L.Ed.2d 174 (1997). To be sure, the NTEU Court cited the “vast group of present and future employees” and the “broad range of present and future expression” at stake in that case as factors weighing against the government. 513 U.S. at 468, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (emphases added). But nothing in NTEU implies that the stricter standard applies only when a “vast group” of employees is involved or when a regulation restricts a “broad range” of expression. Cf. Latino Officers Ass’n v. Safir, 170 F.3d 167, 171—72 (2d Cir.1999) (applying NTEU in upholding an NYPD regulation restricting officers’ public comments regarding police department matters); Harman, 140 F.3d at 118 (applying NTEU in striking down a regulation restricting the speech of 6500 employees in the Administration for Children’s Services). 8 Defendants’ second argument — that the parade policy, in contrast to the statute at issue in NTEU, does not “ ‘single out’ expressive conduct” — is similarly inapposite. NTEU concerned a law that banned federal employees from accepting compensation for making speeches or writing articles in their spare time. The two government commissions that recommended the ban, however, had stressed the importance of prohibiting both compensation for “appearance[s], speeches] or article[s]” and compensation for “other off duty activities” such as consulting, serving on corporate boards, and even sports. 513 U.S. at 474-75, 115 S.Ct. 1003. Under these circumstances, the Supreme Court found the statute’s singling out of expressive activity significant, concluding that it “undermine[d] the Government’s submission that the breadth [of the statute was] reasonably necessary” to protect the government’s interest in the efficiency of public service. Id. at 474, 115 S.Ct. 1003. That the statute in NTEU restricted only expressive activities was thus a factor the Court used in assessing the reasonableness of the restriction at issue there; it was not, as defendants appear to assert, a prerequisite to the Court’s stricter scrutiny. Finally, defendants contend that, in contrast to the statute in NTEU, the NYPD parade policy is not a “classic ‘prior restraint’ ” because it “suppresses precisely that conduct which [the NYPD] would be allowed to punish after the fact.” But this argument presumes the very conclusion that is at issue in this case—namely, that the NYPD can prohibit unrecognized groups, including the LOA, from marching in parades in uniform and behind their organization banners. The danger of a prior restraint, as opposed to ex post disciplinary action, is precisely that making predictions ex ante as to what restrictions on speech will ultimately be found permissible is hazardous and may chill protected speech. See, e.g., NTEU, 513 U.S. at 481, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (“[E]x ante rules, in contrast to ex post punishments, carry risks of overinclu-siveness and underinclusiveness.”); id. at 468, 115 S.Ct. 1003 (majority opinion) (“[U]nlike an adverse action taken in response to actual speech, [an ex ante restriction] chills potential speech before it happens.”); see also New York Magazine, 136 F.3d at 131 (“We consider prior restraints to be particularly abhorrent to the First Amendment in part because they vest in government agencies the power to determine important constitutional questions properly vested in the judiciary.”). In short, the District Court properly subjected defendants to the “greater” burden of justification set forth in NTEU.