We didn’t even know where everyone came from. And that was upheld by the lower court and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and we’re asking the Supreme Court to take up the case and vindicate our client’s rights. As we say in our lawsuit release, or excuse me, in our press release, Judicial Watch announced it filed a petition for Ritt Assertiary. This is the thing. This is the Ritt Assertiary, the petition. It’s a nice big, big fun. Now, it’s colored white. Now, the interesting thing about the Supreme Court, or an interesting thing, is you have to have the filings like this in a booklet form, and each booklet has a different color depending on what type of brief it is.

So we’re asking the Supreme Court to review a decision of the Seventh Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit that permits public school officials to fire a tenured teacher for political speech made privately, off-duty, and far removed from the classroom. So our client, Jeannie Hedgepath, who was a longtime social studies teacher at Palatine High School in Illinois, was fired after posting commentary on her private Facebook page during her summer vacation in 2020, addressing the riots and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd. School administrators cited concerns about disruption after receiving complaints largely from members of the public with no direct connection to the school.

Hedgepath praised Tom Sowell, who is one of my favorites, and other black conservative leaders in one of the posts that got her fired. So she’s praising Tom Sowell, I think Larry Elder, and Candace Owens, and making straightforward comments about the rioters and the outrageous activities of that, and they fire her. So it isn’t like she was at school making political statements that were causing disruption. She was just making straightforward political comments on her private Facebook group. So we filed this lawsuit back in 2021, and we asked for damages from the school district and the district board members and the officials who participated directly in her firing.

So we challenged the Seventh Circuit’s decision, which held that the school district’s interest in avoiding disruption, specifically emails and phone calls from members of the public, most of whom had no direct connection to the school, expressing concern or outrage about Hedgefest’s summer vacation post, outweighs her right to speak. So some people, you know, what is called the heckler’s veto, the peanut gallery, saying we don’t like what she said, it’s no reason for her to lose her job. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, beginning with Pickering versus Board of Education, courts must balance the public employee’s right to speak on matters of public concern against the government employer’s interest in maintaining the effective operation of a workplace.

So as I said, if she were in class making politicized comments and controversial comments, or even non-controversial comments that were just causing disruption and all sorts of things happening in the school, that’s one issue. Maybe they have a case. But the idea that anything someone says that might cause an email to a school district and you’re a teacher and you’re just talking privately on the outside or on Facebook or a tweet or whatever will get you fired, that means you have zero First Amendment rights under the law, under this so-called Pickering test that balances the employer’s right as a government entity to have basically, you know, a non-disrupted workplace with someone’s First Amendment rights.

Judicial Watch argues the test does not permit public employers to punish employees based on disagreement with their political views. The viewpoint discrimination in this case is unmistakable. The district fired Hetch Path because members of the community objected to the political views she expressed in core First Amendment speech on her private Facebook page while on summer vacation. Rather than condemn that blatant censorship, the court below sanctioned it, holding the vague and unsupported claims of the disruption in power of public school officials to silence this favored viewpoints. The petition further warns the Seven Circuit’s decision posed a serious threat to free speech nationwide.

If allowed to stand, the decision threatens to chill the political speech of millions of public employees nationwide. It teaches that lawful, off-duty speech on matters of public concern may be punished whenever enough people complain. That rule cannot be squared with Pickering with this court’s precedents or with the First Amendment itself. And we argued that the Seven Circuit misapplied the law by transforming a narrow balancing test into a broad license for censorship, allowing government employers to discipline employees not for workplace misconduct but for expressing controversial political appointees that provoke some opposition.

In fact, the Seven Circuit, showing frankly to me outrageous judicial bias, criticized her speech and her opinion. They essentially said we don’t like what she said either. Well, thank you. Now we know why you wouldn’t rule in her favor. So it really was, as far as I’m concerned, a judicial mess and an indication of abuse. This case goes to the heart of whether the First Amendment still protects 22 million public employees from being fired for daring to exercise their God-given First Amendment right to express views outside the workplace. No teacher should lose her career because outsiders object to political views she expressed privately and lawfully.

Do you agree with that? Now it may surprise you to know there are 22 million public employees, but that’s the reality. And they shouldn’t lose their First Amendment rights just because they work for the government. The government would like nothing more than have us all work for it and therefore lose your First Amendment rights to criticize the government, to criticize anything. And that’s not, of course, that’s not the law. And here she made the mistake of criticizing the conduct of leftists during the George Floyd craziness. And the school panicked, the Seven Circuit got nervous, and they threw the First Amendment out the window.

That’s how I read this. That’s my non-lawyer way of explaining what’s going on here. This is why we have a Supreme Court to step in and say, step in and say, hold on, let’s figure this out. So this Pickering Test has been abused by courts throughout the country. Some courts are very, you know, they take Judicial Watch’s view. Look, they’re not on the job. They get to talk about stuff in the public domain. Relax. Others take the Seven Circuit’s views, saying that they can go back as, you know, potentially as far as forever to find out what you said online and then fire you.

With no real showing of, quote, disruption. So whether this case will be taken up by the Supreme Court, I don’t know. It should. But this is another example of Judicial Watch doing the heavy lifting again for the First Amendment. You may recall we represented a teacher who was fired for making similar posts up in Massachusetts. Excuse me. Yeah, it was up in Massachusetts. McRae, the Supreme Court didn’t want to take up the case. I think they’re going to have to take up this case respectfully. We represented a coach who was fired, got that case settled.

This is a significant issue. You know, and the left is out there talking about those people who were fired for making what many people believe to be inappropriate comments about Charlie Kirk. And they’re making the same argument in reverse, right? So you can’t have it both ways, leftist. You can’t say that someone can criticize Charlie Kirk or, you know, suggest he deserve what he got or whatever outrageous thing they say and still be protected from being fired while allowing the firing of this poor teacher for daring to criticize people burning a city.

But this is the way the left is, right? You can say whatever you want and you’re protected. But if you’re conservative, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to you. So I hope the Supreme Court takes up this case. [tr:trw].

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