Public employment -free speech jurisprudence: Proposal of a new constitutional test for disciplined whistleblowing teachers.

摘要

This study proposes a new approach for analyzing teacher whistleblowing cases. In proposing this approach, the author addresses three questions: (1) Can the United States Supreme Court's public employment-free speech jurisprudence be categorized into eras? (2) Is there a way to categorize the types of speech that whistleblowing teachers engage in under the United States Supreme Court's public employment-free speech jurisprudence? (3) What is the author's proposed constitutional framework for analyzing whistleblowing cases under the United States Supreme Court's public employment-free speech jurisprudence?;The constitutional framework the author proposes is based on the three-tier framework used in the Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence. The author proposes this three-tier system to replace the current single-tier system represented in the Pickering balancing test so as to account for multiple and different categories of whistleblowing speech; this would ensure greater protection for such speech as well as opportunities for employers to proffer operational efficiency in defense of retaliatory actions taken against employees for their speech, without discounting the employee's speech.