The Supreme Court Strikes!

First Amendment? Never heard of it:

The Supreme Court yesterday bolstered the government's power to discipline public employees who make charges of official misconduct, ruling that the First Amendment does not protect those who blow the whistle in the course of their official duties.

[...]

Dissenters on the court, civil libertarians and public-employee unions said the ruling, which extends to all of the nation's public employees, could deter government workers from going to their bosses with evidence of corruption or ineptitude.

[...]

In a separate opinion, Stevens questioned the court's distinction between speech by public employees acting officially, which gets no free-speech protection, and speech by public employees acting as citizens -- such as in a letter to the editor -- which can still get protection.

"[I]t seems perverse to fashion a new rule that provides employees with an incentive to voice their concerns publicly before talking frankly to their superiors," Stevens wrote.

So a public employee can go on television and reveal a crime commited by the government but said public employee can't tell her own boss about the same crime?

This perverse, to use Stevens' word, ruling is going to cause problems for years to come.


.