A Manager’s Guide to Free Speech and Social Media in the Public Workplace: An Analysis of the Lower Courts’ Recent Application of Pickering

Authors

Adam M. Brewer, University of Montana, Missoula

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

9-2020

Abstract

The article provides a unique focus on the increasingly relevant public personnel issue of employee personal-use social media and the negative implications on workplace efficiency faced by current public managers. Public employees uniquely have free speech rights—within the context of their employement—not held by their private sector counterparts. The jurisprudence on these rights is well established with the development of the Pickering balancing test by the US Supreme Court. However, cases in the lower courts involving speech and social media and the implications of these decisions on public agencies and public managers are not well understood or explored in the public personnel literature. This study explicitly addressed this gap and provides the public manager with guidance on the matter.

Keywords

public employee, free speech, social media, public workplace, matter of public concern

Comments

The attached report does not include the published article. The article can be found at the publisher's web site.

Rights

© 2020 Adam M. Brewer

Recommended Citation

Brewer, Adam M., "A Manager’s Guide to Free Speech and Social Media in the Public Workplace: An Analysis of the Lower Courts’ Recent Application of Pickering" (2020). University Grant Program Reports. 61.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/ugp-reports/61