In mid-June of this year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided the Richerson v. Beckon case, involving a First Amendment claim by a public school teacher after she was demoted for comments she posted on her personal blog (article in the National Law Journal can be found here (subscription required)).

As it happens, I included an analysis of this case at the district court level in my recent paper, Blogging While (Publicly) Employed: Some First Amendment Implications, 47 U. Louisville L. Rev. (forthcoming 2009).  There, I wrote in part:

In Richerson, the Central Kitsap School District initially employed Tara Richerson as the Director of Curriculum. She then was in line for a voluntary transfer to a new position that would permit her to work half time as a curriculum specialist and half time with a new instructional coaching model. Importantly, the instructional coach component of her prospective job required her to follow a model which emphasizes the sensitive and confidential relationship between her coaching position and the teachers that she would be mentoring.

Before being transferred, the school district became aware that Richerson was using a personal blog to be critical of her replacement in the Director position. Language is everything in these public employee free speech cases, so here is the entire blog posting in question: