ABSTRACT
Historically courts have granted speech as an employee almost no protection from employer coercion, but have granted speech as a citizen expansive protection from government coercion. Thus, while the courts had firmly established constitutional protection for freedom of speech of persons as citizens from the coercive power of government, no constitutional protection was afforded for the speech of persons as employees in the workplace. The professors' speech was thus unprotected, and the reassignments were justified. Fifty years later, the courts finally moved in 1968 to provide some constitutional protection for freedom of speech, but only in the public workplace. While the Supreme Court in Pickering required a balancing test for Amendment protection for public employees, the test was only valid to the extent that the employee was speaking as a citizen.
