Opinion ID: 697240
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Applicable Standard: Pickering/NTEU

Text: 16 Individuals do not automatically relinquish their rights under the First Amendment by accepting government employment. See, e.g., Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 605-06, 87 S.Ct. 675, 684-85, 17 L.Ed.2d 629 (1967). At the same time, however, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress may impose restraints on the job-related speech of public employees that would be plainly unconstitutional if applied to the public at large. NTEU, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1012. Therefore, to determine the validity of a restraint on the speech of government employees, a court must 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 v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563, 568, 88 S.Ct. 1731, 1734-35, 20 L.Ed.2d 811 (1968). 17 Embedded in the Pickering test is the condition that to qualify for its protection, government employee speech must involve matters of public concern. See Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 1689-90, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). The government concedes that the speech at issue here satisfies this prerequisite. We think this concession a necessary one. The challenged regulations clearly prevent Sanjour, Kaufman and other executive branch employees from addressing current government policies, perhaps the paradigmatic matter[ ] of public concern. 18 That the Pickering balancing test applies in this case is thus eminently clear; the manner of its application, however, is somewhat less so. Pickering and most of its Supreme Court progeny involved disciplinary actions taken against individual employees; the Court weighed the impact of the speech giving rise to the action on that employee's performance of her public responsibilities. Cf. Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378, 107 S.Ct. 2891, 97 L.Ed.2d 315 (1987); Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 103 S.Ct. 1684, 75 L.Ed.2d 708 (1983). Sanjour, in contrast, involves regulations proscribing a broad category of speech by a large number of potential speakers. 19 Fortunately, the Supreme Court's recent decision in NTEU offers useful guidance on how to apply Pickering in such a case. NTEU involved a challenge by two unions and several career civil servants to Sec. 501(b) of the Ethics in Government Act, 5 U.S.C. app. Sec. 501(b) (1988), which prevented officer[s] or employee[s] of the federal government from receiv[ing] any honorarium. The Court observed that the statute represented a wholesale deterrent to a broad category of expression by a massive number of potential speakers, and therefore [gave] rise to far more serious concerns than could any single supervisory decision. NTEU, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1014. It concluded that 20 the government's burden is greater with respect to this statutory restriction on expression than with respect to an isolated disciplinary action. The 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. Pickering, 391 U.S. at 571, 88 S.Ct. at 1736. 21 NTEU, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1014. This, then--the Pickering/NTEU test--is the standard we apply in this case.