welfare case worker’s public statements to welfare recipients urging them to pressure their case workers and demand rights did not constitute ground for discharge where no showing of any harmful effects of the speech
How later courts described this case
- welfare case worker’s public statements to welfare recipients urging them to pressure their case workers and demand rights did not constitute ground for discharge where no showing of any harmful effects of the speech
- public assistance caseworker’s advice to welfare recipients to pressure their caseworkers and demand their rights protected because of no showing of deleterious effects of speech
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Bell :
I vigorously dissent. The Majority stretch the Constitutional right of “freedom of speech” to a point where a Governmental employee, by his public attacks, may hold his Department up to such public ridicule and contempt as to jeopardize its efficient administration, and indeed its very existence. Both our Court and the Supreme Court of the United States have often said that “freedom of speech” is not absolute or unlimited. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 ; Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 ; Andress v. Zoning Board of Adjust, 410 Pa. 77, 188 A. 2d 709 ; Taylor and Selby Appeals, 412 Pa. 32 , 193 A. 2d 181 , and a dozen cases cited therein.
*386 The public exhortations of this Public Assistance Department employee urging public assistance recipients “to get on caseworkers’ backs and demand their rights”, and further exhorting them to “agitate, agitate, agitate”, passes far beyond the protection of the First Amendment. If the Majority’s “near-absolute freedom-of-speech approach” be carried to its logical conclusion, it could conceivably create such lack of public confidence in one or more Departments and such bitter resentments and divisions as to not only (I repeat) greatly impair the efficiency and existence of that Department (or Departments), but also could jeopardize the effective operation and functioning of our entire Government. An employee of the Commonwealth, working in a sensitive area of the business of his Governmental Department, is—and quite properly should be —subject to much greater restriction, in regard to (legislatively unsolicited) criticism of the Department which he purports to be serving, than a person who has no connection therewith. Cf. Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 . Indeed, even an ordinary business employee owes a certain amount of loyalty to his employer, and if the employee publicly attacks, ridicules or undermines his employer or his policies, he should be, and usually is, subject to dismissal or appropriate punishment.