Labor & Employment Law

Former teacher found to lack standing to challenge policy regulating teacher speech

Former teacher found to lack standing to challenge policy regulating teacher speech
Linda M. Price v Saugerties Central School District, USDC, Northern District of New York, WL 314458

A communications protocol adopted by the Saugerites Central School required teachers who disagreed with some aspect of the decisions at their school to address their complaint first to their immediate supervisor before taking the issue up the chain of supervision or bringing the complain to the attention of the public.

Linda Price, a teacher with the school district, was told to follow this protocol after she complained [1] in an e-mail to her colleagues about issues at her school, [2] in a letter to the board of education about support for new teachers and [3] to the police about an incident she felt the district had failed to investigate sufficiently. A court held that this protocol was unconstitutional because it inhibited a broad range of speech, including matters of public concern as to which a public employee?s speech is protected [Price v. Saugerties Cent. Sch. Dist. WL 314458].

The school district then revised its protocol, limiting it to matters relating to the employee?s personal employment situation.

A challenge to this revised protocol brought by Price and community activists [Price] was dismissed by a federal district court. Price was a retired teacher at the time this second challenge to the district?s policy was initiated.

The court ruled that Price lacked legal standing to challenge the district?s communications protocol regulating teacher speech. In addition, said the court, Price failed to show that applying this protocol would lead to suppression of protected speech. The court agreed with the district that the issue, as framed by Price, had not yet reached the level that constituted an actual ?case or controversy.?
As to the issue of standing, the court pointed out that Price and the community activists were not employees of the school district and thus they were not exposed to having limitations placed on their speech by the district.

The decision noted that the district?s policy neither limited a teacher?s speech involving matters of ?public concern? nor exposed a teacher to discipline in the event he or she failed to abide by the protocol. According to the decision, if an employee violates the protocol by submitting personal employment matters directly to the Board of Education, ?the only official response allowed under the protocol is to refer the employee to the chain of command.?

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).