From Hiers v. Board of Regents, released today by Judge Sean Jordan (N.D. Tex.):
Writing for himself and Justice Brandeis nearly a century ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes extolled what he viewed as a foundational tenet of freedom of expression in our country: "[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." Since that time, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that the Founders "believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
This case implicates these bedrock constitutional principles protecting freedom of thought and expression. The setting is a public university, the University of North Texas ("UNT"), and the speaker is [an untenured] mathematics [adjunct] professor at that university, and a public employee, Nathaniel Hiers. Amidst a slew of constitutional claims asserted by Hiers following his departure from UNT, a single question is paramount: What can a public employee say, and what can he choose not to say, without fear of reprisal from his employer? …
