In this case, the teacher’s conduct probably violated several constitutionally sound local statutes protecting children, parents and the community at large. His conduct was also obviously relevant to his suitability to teach children. Unless you are an H.R. representative for the government, however, generally it is a good idea, in a diplomatic way, to train employees at the very beginning of their employment that they have no free speech “rights” with regard to their employer, at-will or unionized. To a great degree, you can, and should, be “Big Brother,” becuase you need to protect your employer, within the constraints of local, state and federal law. This is, of course, not legal advice, but my personal effort to help to educate readers.

This is from Mike R: “They don’t realize that the Bill of Rights guarantees that the GOVERNMENT will not infringe on these rights.”

In this situation, Spanierman’s employer is the government. That’s what makes this case different from one where, say, an employee at a private company gets fired for posting an offensive bumper sticker on her car.

I’m not saying I agree or disagree with the school’s or the courts decision, only that Spanierman does actually have first amendment rights in this context if he was indeed a public employee.

Coming from a registered unaffiliated voter, your last two paragraphs will probably become more and more relevent during the next four years. Interestingly, the previous eight didn’t show much in the way of a government getting out of the way of the individual, either. Americans really need to think about how much additional government control and regulation affects one’s ability to govern oneself. What’s scary is the majority of Americans support federal government intervention into state or private matters (ex. medical insurance, marriage definitions). If the majority opinion is in direct opposition to the founding principles of our country, does that mean we should begin to move in a different direction? Or do we tell the majority of Americans their views are unamerican? Sorry to get political and pseudo-philosophical, but the can of worms was already open.