Legal Brief

Citation: Pickering VS. Board of Education

Topic: Teacher’s First Amendment Rights

Issue: Marvin L. Pickering was a teacher in the Will County, Illinois Township High School.  The district was trying to pass several bonds and tax increases to build schools and fund education.  One of the bonds passed, but neither of the tax increases passed.  When trying to pass the tax increases the school published letters and articles saying how much the district needed the money and how the money would be used.  After the tax increases failed Pickering wrote and published a letter saying that the teachers had not been allowed to speak out against the bonds or tax increases and that the district had gone about proposing them in the wrong way.  The board of education saw the letter has a type of harassment and had Pickering dismissed. 

Facts:

• Before the vote to increase taxes articles were published to push the passage of the increase by saying that a failure would produce a lowering of educational quality.

• After the increase failed Pickering published a letter saying that the teachers had not been allowed to speak out against the bonds or increases and that the school had used some of the bond money for athletics instead of education.

• The Board of Education dismissed Pickering for his letter saying it put the district and administrators in a bad light and that many of the allegations were false.

• Pickering said that his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated and that there were no grounds for dismissal.

Findings:

• Circuit Court of Will County affirmed the dismissal

• Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed the dismissal

• Supreme Court of the United States agreed that Pickering’s First Amendment rights were violated and reversed the previous decisions

Rationale: The court found that many of the allegations in the letter were false, but that the letter never harmed anyone that would make work or other teacher relationships uncomfortable.  The letter was seen to not impede the function of Pickering as a teacher or the operation of the schools. Pickering’s First Amendment rights to make statements about public concerns even about their superiors were protected under Garrison vs. Louisiana and Wood vs. Georgia.

Implications: For educators this meant that they had the right to speak out against their district, schools, and superiors.  This was reversed in Garcetti vs. Ceballos in 2006 that ruled that public employees have no first amendment protection when making comments about their employment. 

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/pickering.html