Do school officials forfeit their First Amendment protections once they become public employees?
No. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public school teachers, like other public employees, do not forfeit all constitutional protections when they take a government job. In its Tinker opinion the Court stated, “it can hardly be argued that either teachers or students shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” For the early part of the 20th century, courts ruled that public employees had no right to object to conditions placed upon public employment. The courts subscribed to the view outlined by Oliver Wendell Holmes who, as a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, wrote: “A policeman may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.” The Court abandoned this view later in the 20th century with a series of decisions regarding loyalty oaths. Until 2006, courts examined public-employee free-speech cases under the balancing test created in the 1968 decision, Pickerin
