Pickering a Fight with the Wrong Guy

Paul Secunda has a new paper on SSRN that provides the full story of the famous First Amendment case Pickering v. Board of Education.  Paul interviewed the plaintiff, Marvin Pickering (now in his 70s), and collected other historical records in order to supplement the background information supplied in the United States Supreme Court’s decision.  Pickering was fired from his job as a public school teacher in Lockport, Illinois, in 1964 after he wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the Lockport School Board.  Pickering challenged his dismissal all the way to the Supreme Court and eventually won reinstatement.

In addition to recounting Pickering’s colorful life story and the history of the case that made him famous, Paul’s paper also critically appraises the post-Pickering cases that have pared back the First Amendment rights of public employees.  The paper appears as a chapter in the book First Amendment Law Stories.  An abstract appears after the jump. 

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The Reporter’s Privilege Goes Incognito in Wisconsin

Few professional groups in our society are less popular than journalists, so it’s a rare occasion when legislators – obsessed as they are with reelection – take actions specifically designed to help the press.

The Wisconsin Legislature showed some of that political bravery this month when it passed the state’s first reporter’s shield law (although some members still seem a little sheepish about it). The new statute, signed into law by Gov. Jim Doyle on May 20, gives “news persons” protection from certain subpoenas seeking their testimony, work products or confidential information, including the identities of their unnamed sources.

Journalists have been fighting for these statutory protections since 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to recognize a First Amendment reporter’s privilege in Branzburg v. Hayes. Wisconsin is now the 39th state to have responded by adopting concrete statutory protections for journalists.

As anchorman Ron Burgundy might say, this is kind of a big deal. But so far the response has been muted: no significant news coverage, no pubic outcry, no dancing in the streets.

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Playing with Fire and an Obama Effigy

People do imbecilic things when alcohol enters the mix.  It is a fact of life.  On one end of the spectrum, drunkenness promotes relatively harmless buffoonery, whether it is singing along to “Sweet Caroline” completely out of tune at the bars on Water Street or repeatedly professing one’s love for his or her friends and family.  Sometimes, the passions of the moment, coupled with inhibitions lowered, push one to act out ill-conceived ideas that the voice of reason would have prevented, such as drunk-dialing.  On the other end of the spectrum, a beer- and liquor-swilling patron’s conduct may cross the line into the unlawful.

As the story develops, the burning of a statue of President Obama in West Allis may be in the company of the latter behavior.   TMJ4 reported that at the Yester Year’s bar, patrons lit a bust of Obama on fire.  The video footage was blurry given the room’s darkness and only focused on the statue placed on the bar, though “hoots and hollers” can be heard in the background.  Though West Allis is investigating whether the burning violated the city’s municipal fire code, the Milwaukee District Attorney’s Office will not charge anyone involved in this incident, and the Secret Service has terminated its own investigation.

This incident may very well not prompt legal action beyond those for possible fire code violations.  One cannot help but wonder, however, if the First Amendment would provide protection for burning an Obama effigy. 

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